Road to Kibber

We were picked up from Beas Bridge and driven to the Indiahikes Manali Jungle Line base camp. Kanamo was still far away, but this was where the trek began for me: meeting the people I had known only through names and phone numbers in our WhatsApp group.

Trek Itinerary

That first drive was only the beginning. According to the full route details, we had seven days ahead of us: travel from Manali to Kibber, let our bodies adjust at 13,500 feet, climb to the 19,553-foot summit of Kanamo Peak, and make the long journey back.

Manali Jungle Line Campus

Day 1 · Saturday, 1 August

Arrival, gear check, trek briefing, and meeting the group.

6,000 ft

Ten of us arrived on time. The eleventh trekker would join us later in Kibber. She had completed the Pin Bhaba Pass trek only a couple of days earlier and was already in Spiti.

I thought the base camp would be just outside Manali. It was actually a good 45-minute drive away, and I was glad it was. We passed quiet mountain villages and apple orchards full of deep red fruit that looked almost ready to be picked.

I grew up in North India and have visited the Himalayas often, so apple orchards were not new to me. Some trekkers from South were seeing them differently, with the same excitement I feel when I see coconut trees in Bangalore, the Western Ghats, or along the Konkan coast. That made me look outside again. Maybe the orchards were not ordinary. I had just become used to them.

Some people say all mountains look the same. I have never understood that. To me, every mountain feels different. Some rise above wide green valleys, while others crowd narrow gorges. Some have gentle, forested slopes, while others are sharp and bare, exposing bands of brown, red, grey, and yellow rock. We were heading towards the last kind, into Spiti's high-altitude desert.

That drive reminded me to look at familiar places like a visitor. I wanted to be as excited about the twenty-first apple orchard as I had been about the first.

Red apples growing at the Manali base camp — Apple and Ramphal trees at the Manali base camp.

Ramphal growing at the Manali base camp — Apple and Ramphal trees at the Manali base camp.

When we reached the base camp, I realised it was one of the largest Indiahikes campuses I had visited. Fruit trees grew around the grounds, and rows of huts held bunk beds for trekkers. There was enough open space to touch grass and relax.

The Small World

I knew I would see one familiar face at the base camp. Shubhankar, our trek leader for Kanamo Peak, had also led my Kashmir Great Lakes trek two years earlier, in July 2024. I was excited to see him again, and even happier to find the same old Shubhankar waiting for us. Two years had passed, but he was exactly as I remembered him.

Shubhankar walking through an arch of trekking poles during the Kashmir Great Lakes trek — Shubhankar getting his walk of honour on the last day of our Kashmir Great Lakes trek.

Kashmir Great Lakes is still the most beautiful trek I have ever done. It also changed me more than any other trek, mostly because of the people I met there. I will save that story for a separate post. No promises on when, or whether, I write it.

The people I have met are what I cherish most about travelling. I have made friends across India and beyond, but I did not expect to meet so many of them again at one base camp.

Me with Manish Rawat, my trek guide from the Bali Pass trek

The first surprise was Manish Rawat, my guide from the Bali Pass trek just two months earlier. Manish is cheerful, caring, and always ready for fun. We had played nearly twenty different games during Bali Pass, which must be some kind of trekking record. Neither of us expected to meet again so soon.

I had also hoped to meet JJ at the camp, but a roster change had sent him away with another group just one day before I arrived. We missed each other by a day, but the mountains had arranged several other reunions for me.

Me playing cricket at the Manali base camp

Me playing Frisbee with the Indiahikes interns at the Manali base camp

A group of Indiahikes interns was also staying at the campus. I played cricket with them that afternoon, then squeezed in a quick game of frisbee before we left the next morning.

While playing on the ground, I ran into Yash. I had first met him at the Karchi base camp during the Kuari Pass trek in November 2025. He works with the Indiahikes Urjino cafe at Manali Slope and makes the best hot chocolate. He was already doing the same work when we first met.

Me with Abhimanyu at the Manali base camp

I thought I was done running into familiar faces, but after dinner I spotted Abhimanyu. I remembered him clearly from the Kuari Pass trek, where he had been part of our group. He was already working with the Indiahikes Green Trails initiative back then, just as he is now.

Right before we left the next morning, I was playing frisbee when I met Guri, another Indiahikes trek leader. We had crossed paths once before on my way from Rohru to the Rupin Pass base camp in Jiskun. He had travelled with us in the cab.

Guri is a sweet, fun Himachali guy. We had never trekked together, but we both remembered each other from that short journey. We had stayed connected on Instagram, and he was also friends with Archie, my Rupin Pass trek leader.

Seeing Guri added one final surprise to a base camp already full of them. The trek had not even started, and I was already incredibly happy to be there.

The Manali camp had felt less like a staging point for a difficult climb and more like a very good offsite in the mountains. Now the offsite was over. It was time for the long drive to Kibber.

The Bumpy Ride

On the itinerary, Day 2 was simply a drive from Manali to Kibber. The road had a more elaborate plan for us.

On the morning of 2nd August, we loaded our bags into the Traveller and prepared for a long, dusty ride. Nearly 80 kilometres after the Atal Tunnel would be off-road, with lunch waiting somewhere in the middle at the Indiahikes camp in Chatru.

Shubhankar riding his Himalayan towards Kunzum La

The group travelled together in the van, joined by Praveen, who would lead the next Kanamo Peak batch. I had seen him at the Kotgaon base camp during my Bali Pass trek, where he was the slope manager, but we had never met properly.

Shubhankar chose a more exciting seat. He was riding his Himalayan through Spiti for the first time, sometimes following our Traveller and sometimes disappearing ahead of it. Whenever the road curled into a series of hairpin bends, we would spot him again through the window, a small figure climbing through a cloud of dust. He looked thoroughly happy, and watching him made the rough road seem much more fun than it felt from inside the van.

Lunch at the Indiahikes camp in Chatru came at exactly the right time. The food was delicious, and the stop gave us our first small taste of camp life on this trek. It was not our campsite, though. Once we had eaten and rested, we returned to the Traveller and the bumpy road.

Back on the road, the landscape never became boring, even when the ride became exhausting. Dust entered through every possible gap, the sun was harsh, and the road shook us around for hours. Thankfully, the route was open. Our only real interruption came at an icy stream where another vehicle had become stuck.

Us standing in the icy stream as we tried to free the stuck car.

Chandra, the driver, a few others from the group, and I climbed out to help. We removed our shoes and slippers, stepped into the freezing water, and tried to push the vehicle free. It was cold, chaotic, and much more entertaining than a traffic jam had any right to be.

Later, we climbed to the mighty Kunzum Pass, the high gateway between Lahaul and Spiti at roughly 4,550 metres. A temple and an old stone chhorten stand at the crest. The views from the top were mesmerising, with bare mountains opening in every direction and the great Shigri peaks across the valley. We stopped, offered our prayers, and then continued towards Kibber.

Me admiring the majestic ranges at Kunzum La in the crazy wind — I could have stayed here much longer, if the wind had allowed it.

Prayer flags and chortens at Kunzum La — I could have stayed here much longer, if the wind had allowed it.

The Mountains of Spiti

By the time we crossed Kunzum La, the landscape around us had changed completely. The rivers showed how close we were getting to the origins of North India's great river systems. The Beas stayed near us around Manali. Beyond the Atal Tunnel, the road entered the upper Chandra valley and began following the Chandra River. It is one of the two headstreams that meet the Bhaga at Tandi to form the Chenab, so we were not beside the Chenab yet. We were beside one of the rivers that would become it. The water here was colder, faster, and far closer to the glaciers that feed it.

The familiar green slopes around Manali had given way to bare ridges striped with brown, rust, grey, yellow, and muted purple. Some looked neatly stacked. Others had been cut into sharp fins, gullies, and crumbling towers. We kept asking how so many colours had ended up inside one mountain, and why this part of the Himalayas looked so much like the moon.

Layered mountains beneath the blue Spiti sky — Spiti in layers of rock, colour, and river.

Dark ridges rising above the Spiti River — Spiti in layers of rock, colour, and river.

The answer began hundreds of millions of years ago. Spiti is part of the Tethys Himalaya, where sand, mud, and marine material once settled in layers along the northern edge of the Indian plate and hardened into rock. When the Indian plate collided with Eurasia roughly 50 million years ago, those layers folded and rose into the Himalayas. Rivers, glaciers, rockfall, and freezing later exposed them. Spiti's dry rain shadow leaves little vegetation to hide the coloured bands and eroded folds, giving the valley its stark, moon-like appearance.

One Last Bridge

The road still had one landmark left for us. As we approached Chicham Bridge, a distant peak appeared behind the gorge. It was our first sight of Mt. Kanamo, though we did not know it yet. We only realised what we had been looking at after we reached Kibber.

Then came the Chicham Bridge, a 120-metre suspension bridge on the road between Chicham and Kibber. It stands at roughly 4,145 metres and spans the deep Samba Lamba gorge, with the bridge deck about 150 metres above the gorge floor. It is famous as one of the world's highest-altitude motorable bridges, but the setting is more impressive than any record label. A steel bridge stretched across that enormous cut in the mountains, connecting two remote villages where the gorge had once made travel far harder.

Chicham Bridge crossing the deep Samba Lamba gorge, with Mt. Kanamo in the distance. Chicham Bridge photo by Timothy A. Gonsalves, cropped and resized under CC BY-SA 4.0. — I knew the long drive was over when Kibber finally came into view.

Kibber settling into the evening — I knew the long drive was over when Kibber finally came into view.

After the dust, the rivers, the ancient seabed, the freezing stream, the mountain pass, and one final bridge across a gorge, we reached Kibber around five. The long drive was behind us, but our first evening at 13,500 feet had only just begun.

The next part, Acclimatizing at Kibber, is coming soon.