Eight days through the high desert between Shimla and Manali, Key monastery, Asia's highest villages, and roads your friends will not believe.
Spiti is what people hope Ladakh will be before Ladakh got an airport. The valley opens for a short season, the villages sit at altitudes that sound made up, Komic at 4,587 metres has a restaurant, and the pizza is fine, and the night sky is the best in India.
We run this as a private circuit, Shimla in and Manali out, because doing it as a loop is the whole point: the Hindustan–Tibet road is the journey, not the transfer. This is our most demanding regular departure and we are honest about that. Two days are long. One hotel has bucket hot water. Everyone who comes back says the same thing, which is that they are going back.
Youngest we take is fifteen. Oldest so far was sixty-eight, and she overtook the rest of the party at Dhankar.
Nine days, start to finish. The route, then the rhythm of it.
Shimla to Sarahan. Orchards, then the Sutlej gorge.
Sarahan to Kalpa. The Kinner Kailash range fills your hotel window.
Kalpa to Tabo, crossing into Spiti proper. The thousand-year-old monastery after tea.
Tabo to Kaza via Dhankar, balanced on its cliff. Acclimatisation walk in the evening.
Key monastery at morning prayers, then Kibber and Chicham bridge. Komic for lunch, because you can.
Langza's fossil fields and the Buddha at sunset. Slow day at altitude, by design.
Kaza to Chandratal, camp beside the moon lake, weather permitting.
Over Kunzum La and down the Atal tunnel road to Manali.
Depart Manali.
The facts most itineraries leave out. We print them because they are what decides whether this trip suits you.
Simple, clean hotels and homestays, the best available in each village, which in Spiti means warm blankets, honest food and hosts we have known for years. One night in a fixed camp at Chandratal. Manage your expectations on plumbing and the valley will exceed them everywhere else.
Friends travelling together and fit couples who want a real road journey. Fifteen and up. Not for first-time mountain travellers, anyone advised against altitude, or anyone who needs a lift, there are none in the valley.
Journeys that suit the same travellers.
Nine days over the high passes to Nubra and Pangong, at a pace that lets everyone sleep well at altitude, oxygen in every vehicle, doctors' numbers in every driver's phone.
Six nights across Srinagar, Gulmarg and Pahalgam in the fortnight the tulips are actually out, with a houseboat night your children will talk about for years.
Seven unhurried nights from Kochi through Alleppey to Kumarakom and the hills, a houseboat, a spice garden, and afternoons with nothing in them, on purpose.