Places
Tabo MonasteryHeritageLahaul and Spiti
Founded in 996 CE and in continuous use since, which makes it one of the oldest functioning Buddhist monastic complexes in the Himalaya. It is built entirely of mud brick, with no exterior ornament at all, and the interior of the main assembly hall carries life-size clay figures set against painted walls in a scheme that has survived a thousand years because the climate is dry and the building was never grand enough to be plundered. It is protected as a monument of national importance, and photography inside is restricted.
Best time: June–September.
Key (Ki) MonasteryHeritageLahaul and Spiti
The largest monastery in Spiti, stacked in tiers up a conical hill above the river near Kaza. Its accreted fort-like form is the result of repeated destruction and rebuilding — rooms added around and on top of what survived, rather than to a plan. It is a Gelugpa establishment and a working teaching monastery, not a monument.
Best time: June–September.
DhankarHeritageLahaul and Spiti
The old fort-monastery of Spiti, perched on a crumbling spur above the confluence of the Spiti and Pin, and the seat from which the valley was once administered. The structure is fragile enough that the community has built a new assembly hall below and limits access to parts of the old one. A short walk above it lies a glacial lake.
Kalpa and the Kinner Kailash viewHillKinnaur
An orchard village on a shelf high above the Sutlej, facing the Kinner Kailash wall across the gorge. The rock pillar on the massif is held to be a form of Shiva and changes colour through the day; the village below it has both an old temple complex and a Buddhist monastery within a few minutes' walk.
Best time: April–June and September–October.
Chitkul and the Baspa valleyNatureKinnaur
The last village up the Baspa, at around 3,450 m, with wooden houses, slate roofs and a temple to the local goddess. Beyond it the valley leads towards the watershed, and the road stops. Sangla, lower down, is the valley's main settlement and the centre of its apple growing.
Best time: May–October.
Kamru FortHeritageKinnaur
A tower fort in kath-kuni above Sangla, associated with the early seat of the Bushahr rulers before the centre moved down the valley. Its stacked timber-and-stone construction and projecting balconies are the clearest example of the technique in the region after Sarahan.
Bhimakali Temple, SarahanPilgrimageShimla
Two slate-roofed towers in kath-kuni standing side by side, one older and now unused, at the former seat of the Bushahr state on the shoulder above the Sutlej. It sits just outside Kinnaur district but at the exact threshold this region is about — the last great timber temple before the treeline gives out upstream.
Best time: March–October.
NakoHeritageKinnaur
A village on the Hangrang plateau built around a small lake at about 3,600 m, with a group of early temples of the same mud-brick and mural tradition as Tabo. Poplars, barley terraces and flat roofs — the first place on the road up that looks unmistakably trans-Himalayan.
Pin Valley National ParkWildlifeLahaul and Spiti
High cold-desert habitat protecting snow leopard, Siberian ibex, blue sheep and Himalayan wolf. The park and the surrounding Kibber landscape have become one of the more reliable places in the world to see a snow leopard in winter, which has produced a small, community-run wildlife tourism economy where none existed.
Best time: January–March for snow leopard tracking; June–September for the valley itself.
Kibber, Langza, Komic and HikkimNatureLahaul and Spiti
A cluster of villages on the plateau above Kaza, between roughly 4,200 and 4,500 m. Langza sits on marine fossil beds and children sell ammonites at the roadside; Hikkim runs a post office that is among the highest in the world; Komic claims one of the highest villages reachable by motor road.
KazaUrbanLahaul and Spiti
The administrative and market centre of Spiti at about 3,800 m, split between an old village and a newer bazaar. Everything in the valley — permits, fuel, medical help, the bus out — happens here, and the town empties in winter.
Reckong Peo and Kalpa bazaarUrbanKinnaur
Kinnaur's district headquarters and its apple marketing centre, on the slope above the Sutlej. In September the town is a traffic jam of loaded trucks, and the year's income for most of the district passes through it in about six weeks.
Khab and the Spiti–Sutlej confluenceNatureKinnaur
Where the Spiti river, grey with rock flour, meets the Sutlej coming in from Tibet. The two waters run different colours below the bridge, and the road forks here — up the Spiti to Kaza, or on towards Shipki.
Nathpa Jhakri and Karcham WangtooUrbanKinnaur
Large run-of-river hydropower schemes on the Sutlej, with the water diverted through tunnels driven for kilometres inside the mountain. They are the largest single intervention in the region's landscape and its biggest source of outside employment, and the tunnel spoil, the blasting and the slope destabilisation are a standing local grievance.