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2400Km of Solo Spiti Sauntering – Compendium

Lokesh Shah

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Route Map

All Pictures

Panoramas

Day 1- Nainital to Rudraprayag

Day 2 – Rudraprayag to Purola

Day 3 – Purola to Sangla

Day 4 – Sangla to Chitkul to Nako

Day 5 – Nako to Dhankar

Day 6 – Dhankar to Kaza

Day 7 – Kaza and Around

Day 8 – Kaza to Chandertaal

Day 9 – Chandertaal to Sundernagar

Day 10/11 – Sundernagar to Chandigarh to Nainital

34 responses to “2400Km of Solo Spiti Sauntering – Compendium”

  14. Hey Lokesh

    Have been through all your travelogues and have enjoyed each one thoroughly. Your unhurried saunters through Kumaon and Garhwal have been epic, and the way you narrate things – keeping it crisp yet interesting without any info overload makes for good reading. The pictures are delightful, being superbly composed – and you’d agree that the Himalayas almost always make for great subjects !

    I too subscribe to the nice and easy school of travelling – travel easy, and soak up the sights and sounds and get the essence of the place. Stay options, if you aren’t too choosy are aplenty and cheap in the hills. The best way to do it is on two wheels – unhurriedly.

    Mountains have that pull that on natives that can be best described in these words by Rudyard Kipling (that he penned in the story ‘ Namgay Doola’) ….

    “….the night had closed in rain, and rolling clouds blotted out the lights of the villages in the valley. Forty miles away, untouched by cloud or storm, the white shoulder of Donga Pa — the Mountain of the Council of the Gods — upheld the Evening Star. The monkeys sang sorrowfully to each other as they hunted for dry roosts in the fern-wreathed trees, and the last puff of the day-wind brought the unseen villages the scent of damp wood-smoke, hot cakes, dripping undergrowth, and rotting pine-cones. That is the true smell of the Himalayas, and if once it creeps into the blood of a man, that man will at the last, forgetting all else, return to the hills to die……”

    I have been steeling myself for going on a lazy and longish solo trip to the hills on my bike. Though we visit Kumaon each year, this time I want to stray off the beaten path and delve into the interiors, visit nondescript places and do it slow – one hamlet at a time. Maybe it’ll materialise, if I can shake out of my laziness and get to it !

    All the same, let me tell you that you’re doing a wonderful job penning down these travelogues. Keep at it, for the sake of armchair travellers like us who can only marvel at the wonder that are Himalayas, and miss the hills all the more. Good show indeed !

    Cheers !

    Reply

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