News

Winter road trip to Spiti in my Skoda Kushaq

9th February 2022, 14:12 by Dev Shah

A thing to note here, I saw a lot of people who had diesel cars struggling with starting them up in the morning, petrol is a boon in such cold weather.

BHPian KharbandaKartik recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

A little introduction:

I have a huge hunger for adrenaline, and I constantly look forward to adventures.

Being in Delhi, Himalayas are an easy access, well almost, and we decided that it had to be Spiti this time in December.

Preparation:

Most of my trips are impromptu and there's less planning involved, but when it comes to an expedition like this, especially during winters, planning for the worst is important.

What all we carried:

A butane stove.
Two blankets.
20 litres of drinking water.
Dry fruits.
Ready to cook food (Wai Wai, Pasta, etc).
Pinnis (Any punjabis here?).
Extra jackets.
Torch.
Chewing gum.
Snacks/munchies.
Disposable cups/plates.
Coffee.
Medicines and anti-inflammatory spray.

A day prior, I took my car to my nearest Skoda service centre for a general checkup just to make sure everything was okay.

Day 1:

We started off on 22nd December 2021 at around 10:00 PM, tanked up at the nearest Indian Oil bunk and took the eastern peripheral expressway to avoid Delhi traffic.

Reached Shimla in a comfortable 7 and a half hours and took our first coffee break, breathed in the fresh air and started off again.

We had initially planned to stay at Rampur Bushahr or Reckong Peo but cancelled it as we thought we could stretch and reach Kaza by evening.

It was around 4:00 pm and we had reached Nako, took a break, bought a few essentials from the local store and started off again.

Hit Kaza (Subdivisional headquarters of Spiti) at around 8:30 PM, and there we were, Delhi to Kaza in 22-23 hours, thanks to the butane stove, because of which, we could take relatively shorter breaks.

To let the body acclimatize, it is always suggested to take it slow and reach higher altitude destinations slowly with halts in between, we avoided staying as we were short on time.

Once, we reached, started looking for a homestay, found one and quickly snuggled in.

A little later, there was a knock on the door and we were invited for the dinner:

He's Dorje, our homestay host, a very warm and welcoming guy:

Had a tasty meal and wished them good night.

Since we had come in directly from Delhi, and were still acclimatizing didn't have a sound sleep and there was a lot of tossing and turning the entire night.

Day 2:

The next morning, I had a few office calls to make, thanks to the fast mobile internet (60mbps+), I could do so.

I was not wearing gloves and went out to do Facetime with my fiancee to show her around a little and in less than 2 mins, my hands were frozen and that's when I realized that it's not cold, it is really cold.

Minus 13 degree celsius:

The water lines in Spiti at this time of the year are frozen and it really affects the everyday routine. You can forget about bathing if you're here in winters.

We were relaxing and enjoying the morning sunshine and started our day late, had aloo pranthas in the breakfast and left homestay at around 2:00 pm for Losar.

Losar is a village situated at around 13500 ft. and it receives a lot snowfall every year, in summers, the local crop is green peas.

You'll come across beautiful landscape on your way to Losar, you would really want to stop and take pictures.

Frozen Spiti river:

Cooking a meal on our way:

That's me, soaking sun:

Skoda's ad shoot:

And then we are welcomed to the village with this:

We didn't see even a single human being in the entire village, wonder where everyone was, inside their homes maybe.

In the evening, we could see the clouds coming down and in a while it started to snow, didn't wanted to take any risks, as it's very easy to get stuck in snow especially when you're not travelling in groups and have no one around to pull you out, we headed back to our homestay in Kaza.

Fortunately, we had a better sleep today.

Day 3:

As usual the day started with a few office calls and we were off to Langza before 12:00 pm.

Langza is a village situated at 14,500 ft. and is a must visit if you're in Spiti, it is famous for large Buddha statue, said to be 1000 years old.

The statue:

Buddha watching over the Himalayas:

Meanwhile, I was making us pasta and a local guy came over very curious asked me about the stove and it's working etc, later on I got to know that he had a tea/maggi stall over there.

Spent some time here and headed to Hikkim.

Hikkim is known for it's world's highest post office, to get to the post office, you'll have to park your vehicle and walk 100 metres inside the village.

Sent a souvenir to my fiancee:

Beautiful landscape in between:

After Hikkim, we headed to our safe haven in Kaza and were bound to leave for Delhi next morning.

Day 4:

Woke up at usual 7:00 - 7:30 am.

No office calls today, it's a Sunday.

Had good breakfast, exchanged a few pleasantries with the homestay hosts and bid them goodbye.

Fired up the engine and waited a couple of minutes, then went straight to the "world's highest petrol pump' to tank up.

A thing to note here, I saw a lot of people who had diesel cars struggling with starting them up in the morning, petrol is a boon in such cold weather.

The petrol pump was open and the attendant was nowhere to be found, had a little chitter chatter with locals, and went off without filling up any fuel.

Came back after a while and tanked up.

My friend was not really feeling well, so we went to the nearby chemist and bought a few sachets of ORS. We told him we were heading back to Delhi and he told us to be careful because it had snowed in Narkanda and we would be reaching there in the night and it could be risky because of black ice.

On our way back :

Wallpaper:

The journey back was smooth till Narkanda, after which there was snow on the road, and we saw a Bolero not being able to climb a hairpin bend, we carefully creeped forward for at least 10-12kms and it proved to be the most tiring part of the entire journey as my eyes were out on the bonnet.

We took a nap soon after to recharge ourselves and later got back on track.

The rest of the journey was smooth and we were home by Monday evening, very tired but fresh.