The Spiti Valley Circuit: Which Way Round, and Why It Takes Ten Days

Spiti done properly - the Kinnaur approach, Kunzum La from Lahaul, and why the direction you drive it decides how well you acclimatise. Village altitudes, the Chandratal and Chicham detours, fuel gaps, and the season each half of the loop is open.

Spiti is the cold desert valley on the far side of the Himalaya from Shimla, at the point where Himachal Pradesh stops looking like Himachal Pradesh and starts looking like Tibet. It is the best high-altitude trip in India that does not require a permit for Indian nationals, and it is routinely attempted in half the time it needs.

The Himachal road trip guide covers Spiti as one of four corridors. This is the article for when you have decided Spiti is the trip.

The loop, and which way to drive it

Spiti has two entrances and they are nothing alike. You can go in one and out the other - that is the full circuit - or in and out the same way.

The southern approach: Kinnaur

Shimla - Narkanda - Rampur - Jeori - Reckong Peo - Nako - Tabo - Kaza. Roughly 420 km from Shimla, and three days of driving is the honest figure. You follow the Sutlej up through pine forest, then apple orchards, then bare rock, then high desert, and the transition over two days is the best thing about this route.

Altitude gain is gradual: Shimla 2,200 m, Reckong Peo 2,290 m, Nako 3,660 m, Tabo 3,280 m, Kaza 3,800 m. That is a profile a body can handle.

The northern approach: Manali over Kunzum La

Manali - Atal Tunnel - Gramphu - Batal - Kunzum La (4,590 m) - Losar - Kaza. About 200 km and, in good conditions, eight to twelve hours. The Gramphu-Batal stretch is not really a road so much as a riverbed with a route through it, and it is where most Spiti breakdowns happen.

Altitude gain is brutal: Manali is at 2,000 m and you cross 4,590 m the same day. Going in this way is the reason people spend their first night in Kaza unwell.

Drive the circuit south to north: in via Kinnaur, out via Kunzum La and Manali. You acclimatise on the way up over two days, and you cross the highest pass on the way out, when you are adapted and descending. The reverse direction is the commonest planning mistake on this route.

Why ten days, honestly

Here is the circuit at a pace that works, from Chandigarh or Shimla:

Shimla or Narkanda. An easy first day.
To Sangla or Chitkul in the Baspa valley - a detour off the main road and worth the day.
To Nako or Kalpa. First night above 3,000 m.
To Tabo. The 1,000-year-old monastery, and a low night at 3,280 m that helps.
To Kaza, via Dhankar and the Pin valley turn-off.
Kaza and the high villages - Key monastery, Kibber, Chicham bridge, Langza, Komic, Hikkim.
Pin valley - Mudh, and the walk up the valley.
Kaza to Chandratal, over Kunzum La.
Chandratal to Manali, through the tunnel.
Manali to Chandigarh.

You can compress this to seven days by cutting the Baspa valley and the Pin valley and doing longer days. You cannot compress it to four, which is what a long weekend allows, and the attempt is how people end up sick at 4,000 m.

The villages, and their altitudes

Kaza is the base. Everything above is a day trip from it, and the numbers matter because you are sleeping at 3,800 m and going higher for fun.

Key (Ki) monastery - 4,166 m, 12 km from Kaza. The one in every photograph of Spiti, and deservedly.
Kibber - 4,270 m. A village on a limestone shelf, and the base for snow leopard tracking in winter.
Chicham bridge - the deep gorge crossing above Kibber, among the highest bridges of its kind in Asia.
Komic - about 4,590 m, and among the highest villages in the world connected by motorable road.
Hikkim - 4,400 m, with the post office that markets itself as the world's highest. Post a card; it genuinely arrives.
Langza - 4,400 m, the big Buddha statue and fossil-hunting in the fields behind it.
Dhankar - 3,890 m, an old fort monastery on a crumbling spur, with a lake an hour's steep walk above it.
Mudh, Pin valley - 3,700 m, the end of the road, and the quietest place on the circuit.
Chandratal - 4,250 m, reached from the Kunzum La road. Camping is restricted to sites a couple of kilometres from the lake, and sleeping here is a real altitude decision.

Altitude

Everything the Ladakh guide says about acute mountain sickness applies in Spiti, with one difference: there is no hospital. The community health centre at Kaza is small and the nearest real hospital is a very long drive in either direction. Descending is the only reliable treatment, and here it is also the only option.

Spend a night at Nako or Kalpa before Kaza, and a night at Tabo before the high villages.
Do not sleep at Chandratal on your first night at altitude.
Headache, nausea, breathlessness at rest, confusion: go down, immediately.
Drink far more water than feels necessary, and skip the alcohol at least for the first two nights.

Season, by half

The two halves of the circuit have different seasons, and this is what makes the full loop a narrow window.

Kinnaur to Kaza - roughly April to November. This side stays open longest and is the winter access route to Spiti when the northern pass is shut.
Kunzum La (Manali side) - typically only about June to early October. The pass is snowbound the rest of the year.
The full circuit - therefore roughly June to September, and September is the best of those months: stable weather, thin crowds, cold clear nights.
Monsoon - July to mid-September. Spiti itself is a rain shadow desert and gets very little, but the Kinnaur approach has the most active landslide zones in Himachal, and that is the road you have to drive to get there. This is the real monsoon risk on this trip.
Winter - Spiti via Kinnaur is reachable in deep winter and is an extraordinary, serious trip at -25°C. Not a first visit.

Fuel, cash and connectivity

Fuel - pumps at Reckong Peo, Kaza and then nothing until Manali. The Kaza-Manali gap over Kunzum La is the one that catches people. Fill whenever you are below half in Spiti rather than when you are low, and carry a jerrycan on a motorcycle.
Cash - there are ATMs in Kaza and they are regularly empty or out of network. Carry enough cash for the whole valley. Assume no card acceptance in the villages.
Phone - only BSNL and Jio work reliably in most of Spiti, and in patches. Tell people at home that you will be out of contact for days rather than worrying them.
Accommodation - homestays in the villages, guesthouses in Kaza and Tabo. Booking ahead in September is sensible; outside season, half of it is shut.

Vehicle notes

Cars - a standard hatchback does Shimla to Kaza via Kinnaur perfectly well. For the Gramphu-Batal-Kunzum stretch, higher clearance is strongly preferable; the water crossings around Batal have taken a lot of low bumpers, and they are worse in the afternoon than the morning.
Motorcycles - the classic way to do it. Tyres, chain and brakes serviced before you leave, spare cables and a puncture kit carried, because there is no help between Kaza and Manali.
Brakes - the descent from Kunzum La towards Batal, and the long drop from Nako towards the Sutlej, are what kill brakes. Engine-brake in a low gear.
Documents - licence, RC, insurance, PUC, carried physically. Checkposts in Kinnaur do ask, and the inner-line area near the border requires a permit for foreign nationals.

Money and groups

A ten-day Spiti circuit is around 1,200 km of driving in a vehicle whose fuel, tolls and hire cost the same with one person aboard or four. Homestays are per head and cheap. The result is that the per-person cost falls steeply from one traveller to four and then flattens - and the safety case for not being alone on the Batal road is at least as strong as the financial one.

Have a look at upcoming trips for Spiti runs with seats going spare, or the travel clubs that do the circuit every September. Work out the money rules before you leave using how to split trip costs fairly - it is a much easier conversation in a Shimla car park than at 4,590 m.

Pack from the Himalayan packing list, read the road trip safety checklist before the first long day, and if you are riding, preparing a bike for a mountain trip is the service list.