Destinations
Narkanda and Hatu Peak
An hour and a half past Shimla on the road to Kinnaur, where the apple country starts and the crowds stop. Hatu Peak is 3,400m and you can drive most of the way up it.
Suits — day trips from Shimla, apple season, early snow
Read the full descriptionClose the description
Narkanda is the point where the Shimla day-trip circuit gives up and the road becomes a working highway again. NH-5 goes on from here to Rampur, Kinnaur and eventually Spiti, and most of the traffic through the town is going somewhere else.
That is what makes it worth stopping. It is 500m higher than Shimla, the forest is deodar and blue pine rather than plantation, and there is no promenade, no ropeway and nothing to queue for.
Hatu Peak is the reason people come. Eight kilometres of narrow tar leave the highway and climb to just under 3,400m, and the top is an open grassy dome with a wooden temple on it and the Sutlej valley laid out on three sides. The road is single track with drops and no barrier in places, so it is a genuinely better drive with somebody else at the wheel.
The other half of the district is apples. Kotgarh and Thanedar, half an hour down the valley, are where Himachal’s apple industry began — one man planting American rootstock in 1916 — and in the last week of September the orchards, the packing sheds and every road out are working flat out. It is not a sight laid on for anybody, which is exactly why it is worth seeing.
- Altitude
- 2,708m at Narkanda, 3,400m at Hatu
- From Shimla
- 65km, about 2 hours on NH-5
- The Hatu road
- 8km of single track off the highway, tarred but narrow
- Snow
- Hatu usually holds it December to March. The top road can close
- Give it
- A long day from Shimla, or a night if you are going on to Kinnaur
- Best months
- April to June for orchards in blossom, late September for the harvest, January and February for snow on Hatu.
Worth your time
What to actually go and see
Hatu Peak
A single-track road climbs 8km off the highway to just under the summit, and the last stretch is a short walk through deodar to an open top with a view over most of the Sutlej basin. The road is the sort of thing you want a driver for.
Hatu Mata temple
A wooden temple at the top, built in the local style with a heavy slate roof and carved beams. It is associated with Mandodari, and the timber work is the reason to look closely rather than the view, which you already have.
The ski slope
Narkanda has one of the oldest ski runs in India, in use since the 1980s, and it is a beginner's slope rather than a resort. It works in January and February in a good year and not at all in a bad one.
Tani Jubbar lake
A small still lake about 6km away with a temple on the bank and deodars all the way round. It takes twenty minutes to walk round and almost nobody is there.
The Kotgarh and Thanedar orchards
Apples were brought to this stretch of hillside in 1916 by Satyanand Stokes, an American who settled here, and the whole economy of the district still runs on that decision. In late September the roads are full of crates.
Keep reading