HIGH ROAD IN THE HIMALAYAS

A barefoot holy man stood imperiously in the middle of the road just as our four-wheel-drive reached the last ridge overlooking the Sutlej River.

Dilarum Sharma, our driver, pulled over, and the holy man gave his blessing, pressed red paste (signifying awareness) to Sharma’s forehead and offered him a few kernels of sweet, popcorn-like prasad, a blessed offering.

“Siva insurance,” Sharma explained, referring to the Hindu god of destruction and creation.

“Don’t be worrying,” he continued. “God’s insurance is good.”

For the next seven days, on a 300-mile journey along the sometimes-harrowing Hindustan-Tibet Road, we were in his hands--so we hoped he was right.

Isolated within the Himalayas in the north Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, the dramatically beautiful valleys of Kinnaur and Spiti lie close to the border of Chinese-occupied Tibet on this road, which dates to the days of the great trans-Himalayan trade caravans of the 9th century. For those hardy and curious enough, this rugged, single-lane track links these remote and distinctly different cultural strongholds: the lush Kinnaur Valley, once an independent Hindu kingdom, and the desert-like Spiti Valley, formerly part of the west Tibetan kingdom of Guge.

The road, two miles above sea level, opened to tourists in 1994, just as my partner, Maria, and I were completing another spectacular drive on the road from Leh to Manali, also in India. We knew the region’s reputation as an unspoiled area of stone-roofed Hindu temples and Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, but we didn’t have the time to make the detour. Vowing to return, we continued to Manali but feared we had lost our chance to see these valleys before tourism altered them forever.

Last September we had the chance to keep our promise. We returned to India, landing in New Delhi and taking the train from there to Simla. At the Himachal Pradesh Tourism Department office, we arranged for a four-wheel-drive vehicle and driver for the trip through the Kinnaur and Spiti valleys. Although buses also ply this route, a vehicle and driver afforded us the freedom to visit the more remote villages and keep our own schedule.

The distances between villages are not great, but the going is slow on this mountain road, sometimes no more than 20 mph. But with surprises around every turn, there’s no point in rushing.

As we rounded one blind curve 2,000 feet above the Sutlej River on that first afternoon, we encountered a massive landslide that obliterated the road. It appeared hopeless. Sharma, displaying characteristic patience, simply shrugged and said: “They will have it cleared by tomorrow or the next day. They always do.” Disheartened, we backtracked to Sarahan, a half-hour down the road and another half-hour up the mountainside. The tourism department’s

Srikhand Hotel ($16 a night) had spacious rooms, a good restaurant and a view of the Kinnaur Valley from its terraced lawn. For an unplanned stopover, this was a pleasant surprise. We strolled among the British-era apple plantation homes and explored a temple to Kali, a Hindu goddess, that was built in the Indo-Tibetan pagoda style.

At midmorning the next day, we returned to the landslide. It still looked hopeless. We were resigned to losing another day from our trip when a man appeared from the far side, balancing a suitcase on his head. Another followed. Then another. People were crossing over, changing vehicles from one side to the other. Sharma told us we would have to do this if we really wanted to continue. We grabbed our backpacks and shoulder bags and dashed across the field of rubble. Once across, Sharma found a vehicle for us and bargained the asking price of 800 rupees down to 400 (about $9) for the two of us for the two-hour drive to Kalpa, our original destination. We piled into the vehicle, along with several other passengers. We would wait for him at the HPTD hotel there.

“Don’t be worrying!” Sharma called as we took off. “I’ll catch up with you in a day or two, God willing.”

On the road to Kalpa, the scenery changed from merely dramatic to astonishing. The Himalayan peaks rose steeper overhead, and the blind hairpin curves (drivers give a warning blast on their horns) grew more precarious. Driving on the left and heading north meant we were on the outside when we inched around oncoming vehicles. Our wheels often were inches from the drop-off. There were no safety barricades, usually nothing more than a row of whitewashed rocks to highlight the lip of the dirt track, and sometimes not even that.

It was definitely not a road for night driving.

After descending to the banks of the river at Rekong Peo, we left the main road and drove up through beautiful, dark forests of deodar (Himalayan cedar) and apple orchards into the cool, fragrant air of 9,400 feet and the village of Kalpa. The six-room HPTD Kinnaur Kailash Cottage was a five-minute walk down to the pedestrian-only village. Our $16 room was simple but spacious, with a sleeping room, dressing room, full bathroom and even a small sun room. (One sign of the times: Two carpenters were working on a 14-room addition.)

The mountains are a natural curtain for the sun, so dusk comes early in the valleys. With the setting sun playing off the peaks across the river, we asked to take dinner on the lawn. Pramod Guleria, working as both manager and waiter, gladly set a table for us. At 18,750 feet, the Kinnaur Kailash mountain dominated the view as we dove into a north Indian-style meal of chicken and mild curried vegetables, delicious fried vegetable cutlets (similar to potato patties) and a crisp cucumber and tomato salad (just $4 for both of us). The evening turned chilly, so we turned in early. Kalpa was so enchanting, we half hoped the landslide would delay Sharma an extra day.

In the morning, after a hearty breakfast--omelets, stuffed rice pancakes and potatoes delivered to our little sitting room--we sauntered back down to pocket-sized Kalpa, a showcase of clever stone and slate craftsmanship. Most of the low-walled houses had attached stables and fit together so closely that they formed only crooked lanes between them. We passed village women, in colorful outfits, carrying huge bundles of fodder from the nearby fields up to their stables. Here and there, people leaned out shuttered windows to say hello or smile. A villager explained the friendliness. “This village sees only about a dozen Western tourists a year,” he said.

The sound of drums drew us to the Siva temple, the centerpiece of the village. The altar and courtyard were situated so that devotees faced Kinnaur Kailash, believed to be the winter home of the god Siva. It was a harvest ceremony, and fruits and vegetables--and some potent apple cider--were blessed and distributed among the dozen or so onlookers. We left with an armload of apples and bunches of ripe grapes, perfect snacks for the road.

When we arrived back at the hotel, Sharma was sitting in the shade on the lawn, sipping tea, waiting for us. With the help of an earthmover and a blasting team, the rubble was cleared, at least well enough for his four-wheel-drive to get through. By the following morning we were on the road again. The 65 miles to Tabo, our next overnight stop, took five hours. This was perhaps the most dramatic leg of the trip, full of hairpin curves that clung to steep slopes high above the river. Only constant road maintenance kept such a fragile route open. We passed scattered crews of road workers moving boulders, crushing gravel, filling potholes and repairing dry-stone ramparts, using only simple hand tools.

An hour before Tabo, the Sutlej River passes through a narrow mountain gorge. Tibet is just on the other side. It was here that the main trade caravans from Lhasa in Tibet breached the Himalayas heading for the markets of India and the Middle East. (This short stretch remains restricted to the Indian military.) Our route, a north spur of the Hindustan-Tibet Road, now followed the Spiti River, a tributary of the Sutlej.

We had left the Kinnaur Valley and entered the Spiti Valley. Although the arid, high-altitude Spiti Valley is in India, it was part of western Tibet until 1630. Isolated and remote, it remains thoroughly Tibetan Buddhist in character, culture and race.

Tabo Monastery, the most renowned in Spiti, sits on a plateau at 10,000 feet, surrounded by stark, stony slopes. A small town has risen around the mud walls of the monastery, which surround the original eight small temples. From the outside, those temples appear to be mere mud-walled blocks.

We stayed at the Himalaya Ajanta Guesthouse in Tabo, which was homey, spotless and traditional, with a bathroom down the hall, for $5 a night. (The old Government Rest House was overpriced at $25, even though it offered hot showers, which our quarters did not.)

Yeshe Pmuntsok, a monk who spoke good English and who has lived all his 25 years at the Tabo monastery, gave us a tour of the temples. Several of the original Tibetan Buddhist wall paintings (dating back to the 10th century and used as meditation aids) were water-stained, and others had been repainted. But in the 15th century Golden Temple, the imposing and beautifully preserved wood statues of bodhisattvas (Buddhas-to-be who have devoted their lives to the path of enlightenment) alone were worth the visit.

We lingered until noon, having only a 40-mile drive that day to Kaza, the main town in Spiti and a two-day stop. On the way, we made a side trip to Dhankar, a 500-year-old mountain fortress and monastery at 13,000 feet. As usual, the road ended short of our destination, and we followed a dusty footpath around to the dramatic spur on which the tiny village is built. As at Tabo, the young monks spoke the best English (older ones generally speak only Tibetan), and one took us around. Inside one meditation room, through a 3-foot-high entrance, we saw scroll paintings and artwork every bit as good as we had seen in Tabo.

Kaza was not quite the place we had imagined or hoped. Change had come to this village in the form of hastily constructed cement-block guest houses and dusty shops.

We stayed at Sakya’s Abode ($12 a night) because it was close to the center of town and for the chance to talk with other travelers who had just hiked in from the Kullu Valley.

Because of the altitude and the dryness in Spiti, food is less abundant than in Kinnaur, but the fare at Sakya’s was still good, if simpler. We stuck to vegetarian: garlic mashed potatoes, Tibetan-style vegetable noodle soup, fried rice and egg dishes.

We planned two days in Kaza to accommodate a side trip to Kibber, just 11 miles from Kaza but a figurative continent away by contrast. The switchback road up to the village took us into sky so deeply blue that it looked surreal. The sign at the end of the road read: “Kibber, 14,583” feet. The neatly trimmed whitewashed houses, designed to withstand bitter winters, had thick mud walls and tiny windows and were grouped in tiers on a rocky spur. The flat roofs were used for storage and work areas, and were rimmed with neat stacks of winter kindling and bales of hay, often stuck with colorful prayer flags. The surrounding flank of the mountain, sloping gently, was covered in tilled fields dotted with grazing yaks, docile beasts that thrive above 10,000 feet. (If not exactly thriving, we were, by this time, acclimated to the altitude, nagged only by a slight headache.)

At the top of a ridge, as we stood admiring one classic house, a man emerged from the next dwelling, introduced himself as the village English teacher and volunteered that the house we stood next to was “the oldest house in Kibber.” He was not sure how old exactly--”maybe 300 or 400 years.” He was much more certain of Kibber’s population, and his tally made me smile: “400 people and 200 yaks.”

Maria and I walked to an overlook and sat in the sun. Below our dangling feet the Hindustan-Tibet Road looked like nothing more than a scratch along the Spiti Valley floor.

Our last day’s drive was the longest, taking us over the Kunzum Pass and the Rotang Pass and down into the Kullu Valley.

As our dusty vehicle entered the busy bazaars of Manali, I recalled that six years earlier, we had feared that these valleys would be spoiled by the time we returned. The week’s road trip convinced us that time had not run out--at least not yet.

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GUIDEBOOK

Routes to the Hindustan-Tibet ‘Highway’

Getting there: Connecting service from LAX to New Delhi is available on Swissair, Lufthansa, British Airways and Asiana. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $1,078 on Asiana and $1,803 on the others.

From New Delhi, 240 miles south of Simla, most people take a morning train (five hours, about $10) to Chandigarh (77 miles south of Simla), then continue by long-distance taxi (three hours, about $25) or bus. Long-distance taxis to and from New Delhi to Simla cost about $96.

Direct flights from New Delhi to Simla are available on Trans Bharat Aviation and Jagson Airlines.

We arranged our vehicle and driver, $380 for seven days, through the Himachal Pradesh Tourism Department office in Simla (on the Mall at Scandal Corner). Telephone 011-91-177-252-561, fax 011-91-177-252-557.

An “Innerline Permit” (free) is still required for the route. The tourism office can arrange one for you.

Where to stay: In Simla, the Cecil, a luxury hotel, has 71 rooms and eight suites. Doubles from $175. Tel. (800) 562-3764 or 011-91-177-204-848, fax 011-91-177-211-024, Internet https://www.oberoihotels.com . Also suggested: the 31-room Hotel Combermere, doubles from $50. Tel. 011-91-177-213-987, fax 011-91-177-252-251, Internet https://hotelcombermere.com. We stayed in the Hotel Classic, doubles about $8, on the Mall near the railroad station. No telephone; just drop in and have a look.

Staying at guest houses along the Hindustan-Tibet Road is a matter of selecting one from among those in a town. You may look before you commit.

For more information: The State Government Tourist Office for Himachal Pradesh in New Delhi, Changerlok Building, 36 Janpath, New Delhi; tel. 011-91-11-332-5320, fax 011-91-11-373-1072. Government of India Tourist Office, 3550 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 204, Los Angeles, CA 90010; tel. (213) 380-8855, fax (213) 380- 6111, Internet https://www.tourindia.com.