The Journey To The World's Highest Village Accessible On Wheels

An endless, desolate moonscape thousands of metres above sea level, mammoth mountains guarding rugged terrains that call for adventurous detours, monasteries that hark back to Tibetan mores, and not a soul in sight for miles—Spiti is a wonderland.

- Sushmita Srivastav

DAY 1

“This is going to be about the journey,” I had declared before we hit the road to explore Spiti—a land that feels like a slice of Tibet marooned in India. But the thought of driving through scattered villages on an ever-changing, serrated moonscape—a turquoise-grey ribbon of the River Spiti and steep gorges the only constants—made us get through the relatively uneventful NH44 on an overnight journey from Delhi to Manali.

There wasn’t much of a road left once we crossed the main town of Manali. With our permits in place and the usual traž c snarls missing, crossing Rohtang Pass took little time. Past the proverbial gateway to Lahaul and Spiti, the landscape changed dramatically and the temperature plummeted. The honking of cars stopped, as did the chirping of cellphones. The greens of the mountains turned into solid greys and browns, and paved paths were replaced by rocky trails.

I had just started to curl up in the passenger seat when our Thar came to a screeching halt. Ahead of us, a convoy of cars, with their engines humming and windscreen wipers swinging, had queued up. A car was stuck in one of the notorious streams on the route. This was a common sight, I was told, at pagal nala—the ‘mad stream’ that runs alongside the Chenab River in Batal, its impish flow the bane of SUVs. After an hour of waiting, my friend Sumit—the man behind the steering wheel—took charge. Tethered to the stuck car with a rope, our fourwheel drive roared as its engine strained and the two rear wheels swayed up in the air. Both ba– ed and thrilled at once, I struggled to hang on to my seat as everything else was flung about inside the car. With a sudden thud, both cars were free, and a crowd of spectators cheered.