Hitchhiking solo from Kaza to Manali for two days, and in between, a roadblock before Losar, just around Kunzum Pass at 4551m. Julley from Spiti Valley!

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Looking back at the same roads differently. The same roads I walked on for nine days from Manali to Kaza, the same roads are rushing back on wheels. I am returning from Kaza to Manali by hitchhiking. By the time I had hit the same roads again, everything had changed! The experiences, the feelings, the landscape…. the intentions!

Am I the only person who traveled to Kaza and did not visit Key Monastery or Chicham Bridge? Could be.

But why didn’t I?

From Kaza to Manali – What’s There?

The villages across Spiti Valley are little colonies. Some have their own monasteries, a few have their own banks and schools (slowly moving to zero number of students), and all of them have homely homes for insiders and outsiders. ‘Somebody will feed you!’ Really, they did.

Kaza, on the contrary, is the headquarters of Spiti, with offices, cafes, homestays at every corner, markets, and the responsibilities for necessitating the kilometer-long cold desert mountains of this high-altitude valley, where life has a different timeline, where the months are less and days are agile.

The freshly-rained Kaza that was still sleeping in the early wakes. I never had to wait for more than an hour to hitch a ride before! It’s just that there were very few cars on the lazy morning of last night’s newly-snowed mountains. People were still sleeping.

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How did peeling onions and dicing garlic make me the happiest, happier than all the feelings of every day? I was truly happy at the backside of the kitchen of Didi’s dhaba in a mudhouse. Right on the only bed there was, I took refuge for the night.

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Limited time, limited money, in a limited frame. The lines in my handmade Map were in circles around the Spiti circuit Manali-Kaza-Kinnaur-Shimla, but winter was knocking at the door in September. I had to squeeze the chances in the last two weeks before the roads get blocked! And with a limited budget, I could only afford one night’s rest in Kaza.

I couldn’t visit Key Monastery, Chicham Bridge, or the villages of attraction. I was out on the roads of Kaza, with a thumbs-up, anticipating a way out (no roadblocks please!) and the adventures of hitchhiking for around 200 km from Kaza to Manali.

Also read – Connecting to Himachal through Village Kulthi in Tirthan Valley

From Kaza to Losar… The Roadblock!

Ten minutes. Thirty it seemed. The last thing I ever wanted was to stand by the roadside in the rain! The droplets began to rush, fall, and merge.

Forty-five minutes. I crossed the Kaza market and changed position. Motion and turns break the monotone and ameliorate determination.

Sixty-nine minutes. I wrapped my blue jacket warmly around my upper body. I felt my backpack. I love how it distributes the weight around my waist, neutralizing the demands on my back. She has never failed, in despair or negligence, in two years of living the inside-outs.

It could have been half an hour before I could stop the first car. Somewhere around a pool, one road crosses over towards Manali through Losar-Kunzum Pass-Gramphu, and another road wheels to Key Monastery, the largest monastery in Spiti Valley. That man in the car was a local of a village just below Village Kye, and he offered me a ride to the pool, where, incidentally, another car was magically standing to take me further. There was a downpour outside the window.

Before the car left me at Rangrik, the cab driver from Shimla first informed me about the situation of the Kaza-roads to Manali; the bubble that really couldn’t hold the air for a day longer, the roadblock I so wanted to avoid!

Last night’s heavy rain had gifted the first snowfall in Spiti Valley. Kunzum Pass, the connecting pass between Lahaul Valley and Spiti Valley, was all snowed out, to the point that the roads had become dangerous to pass. The news of the roadblock was floating by, with no grounds, from one ear to another mouth.

I asked in Rangrik again, in a dhaba with Buddhist chantings.

I asked in the next car that dropped me off at Village Hull, then to Pangmo. No one really knew.

I asked the Sardarji, who stopped his Tempo Traveller near Pangmo, to make room for me amid his passengers. This group of Bengalis and I had a strange relationship! In my two days of hitchhiking, they gave me lift thrice! We kept meeting each other on the same Kaza-Manali road at different intervals. Even when every other car said ‘no’, Sardarji appeared out of thin air, riding his Tempo Traveller, and a smile that had known the roads for 20 years.

In Losar, the queue of vehicles and the guards at the check-post confirmed that the roads were, in fact, blocked from there. For how long? Who knows!

Also read – Offbeat Places Near Manali You Didn’t Know About

How Glad Was I for the Roadblock on the Kaza-Manali Route!

How did peeling onions and dicing garlic make me the happiest, happier than all the feelings of every day? I was truly happy at the backside of the kitchen of Didi’s dhaba in a mudhouse. Right on the only bed there was, I took refuge for the night.

‘Where would you stay at Losar?’

‘I know someone. It will be alright.’

Remember Losar? This is where I camped for two days. The first village in Spiti Valley. Now the last. And because I was already here, I knew Didi and Bhaiyaa on whose land I had camped before.

All of a sudden, I was making roti for 30-40 people, I was drinking a local Himachali Rum that only people of Chicham make and serve with a dollop of homemade ghee, I was serving the guests, all stuck, and connecting with Didi, her Malik (the way Didi liked to address her husband), her father-in-law who doesn’t drink, another in-law who comes only for liquor. I was not a guest waiting for a warm plate of Rajma-Chawal. I was backstage, part of a life.

I wanted to camp, but Didi had a bed for me. She also had stories. ‘We know each other’, she would tell the guests.

No, she didn’t take any money from me.

P.S. Stay at their homestay in Losar on your way to Kaza from Manali – Samsong Cafe and Homestay

Also read – Overtourism in Himachal – Are You A Responsible Tourist?

Walking through Kunzum Pass the Next Day

Akash prodip jwole durer tarar paane cheye,

Amar noyon duti sudhui tomare chahe…

Why was I singing Bengali songs in Himachal? At that moment of an unbelievable recluse that could hardly be real (yet it was), a car from Chandigarh took me from Losar and flung me into a world that had changed its shell in less than one week! I had crossed the pass in a storm before, here I was crossing back in the snow.

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I felt my backpack. I love how it distributes the weight around my waist, neutralizing the demands on my back. She has never failed, in despair or negligence, in two years of living the inside-outs.

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That 11 km that spiraled down from Kunzum Pass to Batal had to be walked. Really, really had to be. And believe it or not, after a wait of an hour in Batal, watching the flaky sunlight occupying the possibility of a sundown, Sardarji picked me up again.

Also read – The Hidden Villages in Parvati Valley – Rasol and Stona

Why Does He Love the Radio?

You are riding a big four-wheeler on one of the worst roads in India, the Manali-Kaza road, particularly right after the preceding snowfall. The sun has left its last light. Your only way forward is your headlight and experience. Without this magnifying duo, you would be lost in the pitch-black of Lahaul and Spiti.

Sardar Ji had never really known Punjab. He was a child of the Mandi district in Himachal, and married a woman from Shimla. Punjab is where the relatives live. And Sardar Ji was a Himachali.

On a road like Kaza-to-Manali, he had his way mapped out in the darkness. The blind curves that can stop your heartbeat in a split second, did not take the smile away from his face.

The car would bend, in the jerkings of left and right, and his hand would leave the steering for the radio that kept falling off the little cabinet.

‘Why the hell is he not holding the steering with both hands?’ I was scared throughout, whispering to my mind again and again.

But he really chose the radio, even at the deadly bends, sliding through rifts, where a simple stepover on a loose stone would stow away lives. He chose to save the radio.

At some point I just let it go. I had to trust him. I had to close my eyes. I had no choice. He knew better.

Also read – Ways of Chamba – Culture, Wildlife And the People

Hitchhiking at Night in A Truck to Manali

I was monitoring his hands and movements. The pepper spray was clutched under my thighs. 25 km on a vigilant alert from Atal Tunnel to Manali, scanning his gestures, turns, eyes…

Hitchhiking at night is strictly off my book. That too in a truck? No. But yes, sometimes, circumstantially, you fall into a situation that pushes you off the safety gear. I took a risk. It’s on me.

It was already 8 pm, when the dense black all over the Kaza-Manali route was pressed in by the hard lights of Atal Tunnel. No bus or shared Jeep can be availed at that time from the tunnel itself. Only the trucks and private cars move.

I went to the police booth at the entrance of Atal Tunnel and asked the person-in-charge what I should do. He stopped a truck for me, noted down all the details of the truck and the driver, wrote down his contact number for me, and asked me to call him the moment I landed in Manali.

It was reassuring, but unsafe. The kind of situation I would give a perfect miss, but circumstances! The key thing is…. I was safe and only after I got down from the truck in Manali, I took out a shy of relief, and realized… I have done something I had never done before! Hitchhiking at night all alone!

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When I look back on the Kaza-Manali hitchhiking journey, my mind is occupied with the simple order of onion-peeling inside the kitchen of Didi’s mudhouse. Funny. Anyways, how has your journey been from Kaza to Manali?

Have you ever hitchhiked alone at night?

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