Spiti Valley

Spiti is the far side of the Himalaya — the rain never gets over the range, so nothing grows that is not irrigated by hand. Villages are the colour of the hill they stand on. The monasteries have been there for a thousand years and are still in use, not preserved.

It is the trip we are asked about most and the one we turn people away from most often, usually because they have five days and want to see it. You cannot. The altitude sets the pace and there is no arguing with it.

Fuel, cash and the two hundred kilometres in between

This is the practical fact that shapes the whole route. Between Reckong Peo and Kaza there is roughly two hundred kilometres of road with no dependable fuel on it. There is a pump at Kaza — one of the highest retail outlets anywhere, and it is a real one — but it runs dry in peak season and after any supply disruption, so nobody sensible plans around it being open. We fill at Reckong Peo and carry a spare can, every trip, and the same goes for the stretch on from Kaza towards Kunzum La.

Cash works the same way. There are ATMs at Kaza and one or two further down the valley, and they are genuinely unreliable — out of notes, out of network, or out of power. Draw what you need in Reckong Peo or Shimla and treat anything you find above that as luck. Almost nothing up here takes a card.

Mobile signal is patchy and postpaid connections do considerably better than prepaid. Assume you are out of contact between towns and tell people at home that before you go, rather than after they have started worrying.

If something goes wrong

Worth knowing before you need it. The Civil Hospital at Kaza is the only real medical facility in the valley; there are primary health centres at Tabo and in the Pin valley, and small government hospitals down the Kinnaur side at Chango and Lippa. For anything serious the answer is descent and distance, and both take hours. This is the practical reason we run the route in the direction we do and keep a night in hand.

There is no mechanic worth the name between Reckong Peo and Kaza either, which matters more on this road than it would on most.

Permits

For Indian passport holders, none — the whole Shimla-to-Kaza route is open and you need nothing beyond a photo ID for the checkposts. Foreign nationals need an inner line permit for the stretch near the Tibet border, which is straightforward to obtain at Reckong Peo and which we arrange as part of the trip. Rules here have changed more than once, so we confirm the current position before every departure rather than relying on what was true last season.