Chandigargh - Shimla - Spiti Valley - Manali - Delhi

After Leh, there were a few choices that were in my bucket list. I was caught between a tour of the northeastern states or the Spiti Valley. In the end, I ended up choosing Spiti mostly because the charm of Spiti is it’s not fully discovered by the general populace, unlike Ladakh. Although not fully discovered it is in the process of becoming another Ladakh. Hotels are popping up, the roads will get paved. So I wanted to explore Spiti before I lose the chance to see it in its raw state.

The Plan

There were two of us who planned to do Spiti. Ben is one of my oldest friends and someone I know can handle both the pace and the road. I was sure that we will get along well as well. He had a spare week, so we planned to fit the tour in that span. It was quite set on the stone that we will be doing it on our steeds. After all, I went and got a bigger motorcycle after Ladakh just for this purpose. Ben has a Himalayan, so quite self-explanatory.

There were two options. I ride up and meet up with Ben in Delhi, to where he will send the bike. This was quite difficult to plan since I would have to start from home in the middle of the week for us to reach Delhi simultaneously.

We both decided to send our motorcycles to Chandigarh by train and take a flight to Delhi. The bikes would be staying in the railway goods lot of a day for which we paid a bit extra. We picked Chandigarh because it was a smaller town and we were worried about leaving our bikes alone in a large place like Delhi. There was a single train that would take our bikes from Yeshwantpur directly to Chandigarh.

Looking back now this ended up being a major pain in the ass. We made the mistake of not planning our transport from Delhi airport to Chandigarh. We should have booked the train tickets or get a bus ticket. Travelling in general after a red-eye flight from Delhi to Chandigarh before a gruelling motorcycling journey is... unnecessary.

We approached a private courier because we were afraid of damaging our motorcycles in transit in the case of the transporting via the Indian Railways. Our schedules were quite tight and we couldn’t afford unnecessary downtime that could come up if the motorcycle ends up getting damaged more than cosmetically in transit.

We booked a red-eye flight on Friday night that got us to Delhi on Saturday morning. We took an uber to the nearest railway station that had a Chandigarh bound train, all the while carrying our entire luggage including saddle bags and tents bundled in our 90L bags. After a bit of confusion in finding the right train, we ended up boarding the wrong train to Chandigarh (In fairness both the trains were departing from the same platform and were both heading to Chandigarh a few minutes apart, It didn’t help that the first train departed late either). Now we were on a passenger that would take around 10 hours to get to Chandigargh. We stumbled around to get our luggage to get out at the next station. We booked an uber back, and after significant running with 30kg of luggage slinged unconveniently on our shoulders, we managed to catch the right train. Which started a fresh torrent of horrers. The compartment was absolutely jam packed. We showed our luggage in it and chased after. The tiny spaces next to some of the most disgusting toilets where all the places we would get to rest for the next 4 to 5 hours.

The Route

The route plan we started with was to reach Chandigarh unpack our bikes load up our luggage, fill up fuel and start to Manali and hopefully reach by nightfall. All the way we were constantly looking up the government sites and other information sources about the road status from Manali - Kaza. We had our beyond rohtang passes ready, but that would end up being wasted because we were in Chandigarh now and the road status was still closed. So we decided to head to Shimla and hope for the best.

So our final route plan was :

  • Chandigarh to Shimla
  • Shimla to Chitkul via Narkanda
  • Chitkul to Tabo
  • Tabo to Kaza
  • Explore around Kaza
  • Kaza to Manali
  • Manali to Delhi

//TODO add the km and expected duration for each point

This was a good call. By the time our bikes were ready it was already noon and the harsh Punjabi sun completely drained us of our remaining strength. Pushing till Manali was impossible. We reached Shimla in good time. Shimla is a beautiful city with narrow winding roads that run through gardens, roads that disect the sides of the mountains they are built on into layers. The old colonial buildings add much character to the city. The sun had begun to go down, giving the part the city on the mountain side facing the setting sun a golden tint. Beautiful indeed.

We had booked an Airbnb in the outskirts hoping for a good and relaxing stay after our ordeal for the day and hoping to get a helpful host who would give us a good route plan.

[Post under construction: AKA Am lazy]