Highway to Tibet

It may seem strange to write about a piece of road rather than a place, but that’s also what life on the road is about, and this 470-km-20-hours-ride was definitely a highlight. The ride starts at 2000m in Manali and goes straight up to the first pass at 3900m: Rohtang la. Up to this pass, we’re still on the southern face of the Himalayas so rainfalls are very frequent, making the road in the worst state possible.



Straight after this pass, change of scenery: almost all the trees have disappeared and after each pass, the landscape becomes more arid.



Here we are after a few hours ride for a Thali (mainly rice, lentils and curry potatoes) for lunchbreak.


One of the highlights of this journey is definitely the high camp at 4300m after the second pass at 4900m. it’s not what you could call luxurious but it’s a 10 hours drive in either direction to the next place, so anything will do in order not to freeze and especially to break the journey in two (note that some people do make the journey in 1 day, that is: leaving at 2 am and arriving around midnight). All the “hotels” consist of tents or ondulated steel plates.

Arrival at the camp, this is the police “station”.

In spite of the altitude sickness, the atmosphere is really good and we throw a game of monopoly with our fellow travelers from the US.


Here is our room, which we shared with another 7 people, so at least it wasn’t cold… we were just lacking oxygen the whole night.


The second day offers amazing lunar landscapes between 4300m and 4600m for most of the day.




The way is dotted with “adrenalin” obstacles such as “weak bridges”, road works or recent landslides.



Here is our breakfast break the second day, in another one of these “improvised” camps.


After a snow shower at 5000m, we finally make it to the highest pass of the journey at 5300m (the world's second highest motorable pass: note that the highest (5600m) is just another 100km from there....) before going down to the Laddakh Valley.


As we approach the valley, we finally find a bit of human life after 2 days of solitude.


And of course, we start to see the first Tibetan buddhist monasteries.


Here in this valley, plastic bags are legally banned from the system. This would be really a good thing if all the other manufactured products were not made out of plastic as we found out in this shop arriving in the Ladhak valley….

For lunch break we could observe how momos are being prepared before they are steamed.

Here I’m turning an XXL prayer wheel.