The most treacherous road in the world
A journey to Spiti - The Middle Kingdom
The sign by the side of the road makes it plain. We are travelling on the most treacherous road in the world. This is not a sign that has been put up a local, or some wise guy tourist. It is a sign that has been put up by folk whose daily job is to build and maintain roads in the toughest terrain on the planet - The Himalayas. It has been put there by GREF – the General Reserve Engineer Force of the Border Roads Organization.
The Road to Spiti
It is their job to keep this road open all through the year. For this is the NH22 – better known as the Hindustan Tibet Road. A road that makes the Death Road of Bolivia a walk in the park. The original Hindustan Tibet Road started at Rampur, the capital of the erstwhile Bushahar kingdom and entered Tibet at Shipki La 185 km away. Back then on pack mules, the journey took nearly a fortnight. Today it takes the whole day if the weather gods are kind, or a week if the mountains decide to collapse.
Sights like these are common - but one needs to remember that the road was literally carved from the mountain by hand in the 19th century
Today the road to Tibet is closed for civilians, but the men of GREF are in charge of the road all the way from Rampur to Rohtang Pass via the Spiti Valley. This is Spiti’s only link with the rest of the country in winter, when snow cuts off the route via Rohtang in to Manali.
The officer folk of GREF are not from the hills – nor are the workers who crush stones by muscle power and a hammer, carry heavy loads and camp under a tarpaulin sheet by the night at the edge of a precipice. Some come from Kerala, where it is green as far as the eye can see and oxygen as plentiful as water. The dry, high altitude desert which is their office, is as far removed from their home as it is from the steamy forests of Jharkhand.
There are memorials on the way paying homage to those who gave their lives in the line of duty - keeping this road open
Sajit Topno and his gang hail from the Chota Nagpur plateau. They’ve been here for the past five years, working with a GREF sub-contractor – a local who drives in an SUV and has a summer home in Kullu. They make minimum wages a day and send most of it home. They eat porridge and potato gruel on most days and miss their home though they are too proud to admit it.
We met them a few miles out of Kaza – the Spitian headquarters. They are repairing a road that was damaged by landslides. They need to fix this before the short summer ends – so they take the fast route – by blasting the hillside. But the only easy part is the dynamite – the resulting rubble needs to be cleared and that is Harman’s job. He comes from Batala in Punjab and he can make a backhoe perform more gracefully than a Bolshoi ballerina and that too at the edge of a 250 ft drop into the fast flowing Spiti river.
Clearing a landslide, a common occurence on this road
And this is just summer - the men continue to work throughout the winter to keep the road open, or the people of the valley lose their only connection to rest of the planet. And it is no ordinary winter - we are talking about temperatures that routinely go below -30 Celcius, at an average altitude of 13,000ft or more - where oxygen is 25% less than that in the plains below. Snowdrifts can pile up to 8-10ft high, but none of this daunts these master road builders.
The road to Komic, one of the highest inhabited villages in the world
Beyond Spiti, the road heads to Manali via the 15,060ft high Kunzum pass. After which it descends into the Chandra River valley, where the road has essentially been cut into the river bed. The going is rough, and only a 4x4 or a high clearance SUV can tackle it.
The road to Manali, through the Chandra river valley
Snowmelt in the summer causes many a dry stream - known as nullahs in India, come to life. The Paagal (mad) Nullah, named so after its unpredictable nature was forgiving when we crossed it. But the Dorni Nullah was in no mood to relent. It required man and machine to pay obeisance to its power, before letting anyone pass.
Having said that, the rough nature of road is slowly being tamed. The Indian Government has realised the strategic value of the road, due to its proximity to the sensitive Chinese border. So the road is is being widened and metalled in most places to facilitate quick movement of troops. While this will have benefits for the local population, it has also meant that hordes of tourists in little hatchbacks are being able to drive up to Spiti in summer.
The elusive snow leopard - sitting in plastic trash!
The valley is ecologically sensitive, and home to rare wildlife like the Snow Leopard. Unfortunately, unchecked tourism and inadequate waste management is already creating issues. In a recent winter trip, I even came across a Snow Leopard sitting in a pile of plastic trash. Which opens up the debate on development - is it really all the good, when brought in without checks and balances?
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