Chitkul

Chitkul is not in Spiti. It is worth saying that in the first line, because the maps in people’s heads put every beautiful Himachal village into the same valley. Chitkul is the last inhabited village up the Baspa, in Kinnaur, a side road off the way we use toward the Spiti river. We add it when the week has room, and we refuse it when the week is already full. A last village is not a tick. It is a night, or it is a rush, and a rush wastes it.

The road in follows the river. In season it is one of the prettier approaches we use anywhere on these tours: water, high banks, villages that still look like they grow food, a valley that narrows until the idea of going further becomes obviously a walk and not a ride. The village at the end has a gate of sorts, a cluster of houses, a temple, a sound of water that does not stop at night. Compared with Kaza it is lush. Compared with Shimla it is remote. Both comparisons are accurate and neither is the point. The point is the pause before Spiti’s dry country, or the pause on the way home, when people’s shoulders drop.

We stay if we are here. A turnaround from the highway, a photograph, and back, is how the place gets a reputation it did not earn. The evening is the village. Walk to the end of the lane. Look at the valley you will not ride into, because that track is not the tour and the day is over. Eat. Sleep with the river. In the morning the light comes into the valley late or early depending on the wall above you, and the ride out is the same road in a different mood, which is a gift if you are not late for a bed in Kalpa or beyond.

There are times we will not add it. Apple season can fill the Kinnaur roads with a traffic that makes a side valley into a long delay. A group that still has a pass to cross the next day does not need a pretty deficit of sleep. Winter changes the calculation again: the Baspa side is not where a winter expedition should be collecting villages. If your enquiry says Chitkul and the dates say otherwise, we will tell you, and we will offer the night somewhere that fits the road we can actually ride.

Just the keys riders often want it as a personal extra. It works, if your papers and your fuel and your daylight agree. The village has limited rooms in the weeks everyone else has the same idea. Do not arrive at dusk assuming a bed. That advice is dull and it is the difference between a story and a night in the car. The desk, on a guided tour, has the bed before you see the river.

People ask what to do. Less than they fear. There is no compulsory trek. There is a trailhead toward the meadows that we will not turn into an itinerary unless a private group asked for a walking day and the bikes are happy to wait. For almost everyone, Chitkul is the opposite of a programme. It is proof that the tour can stop. Spiti will be stark enough, soon enough. This valley is here so the week contains more than one kind of mountain.

Leave the lane as you found it. The last village of a valley is used to visitors and not improved by them. Then the main road, and the drier hills, and the tour you came for. Chitkul is the detour that makes the direct route feel intended.