Between Wild and Heaven, A world beyond civilization- Himachal Tribal Circuit

He continues “ They tied everyone in the trees and gun them down”-The young supervisor in charge of the road work in SachPass.

Early morning on 4th August 1998, many people of India , came to know a place Kalaban , not because of any conventional reason but , a group of terrorist has gun down a around 35 Indians, mostly the innocent road-workers in Kalaban in the darkness of the night. They probably have entered Himachal via the Killar –Chamba Sach pass route and before killing all these innocent workers they have tied them with the trees and killed them one after another. The first ever terrorist activities in Himachal.
“They didn’t even left the kids and the women.”- He added.
Just to get these political edge, in the name of some religion , human became so violent and wild, and left a permanent shadow of fear on the locals there. I am a traveller, and quite obviously has always failed to find a reason of these kind of wild activities. After I visit the place , I felt , I had a much better weapon to shoot the assets of nature there- my camera. These places are heavenly , the untouched nature and the living, away from the civilization. An innocent smile on everyone’s face , happy just getting their basic needs , but still scared of these wildish humans.

I remember a special quote by Cesare Pavese ““Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.”

Its been more than a year since I had joined Indiamike , I have come across many different persons many different personalities , many different taste, but for all of them I found one single thing in common – They are truly passionate of travel. They love to know the world , they love to trust the stranger , selflessly , and suddenly in course of time they become such a close friend, who start caring you passion and encourage it.

Travelling gives us the opportunity met with different people, different culture. It allows us to breath fresh air, sleep beneath the sky, a bucketful of dreams and nevertheless bring us close to many many simple innocent people - who teach us Happiness is eternal has no relation with how much money you have.

Himachal Pradesh - as the statistician would say , a land of 55 thousands square KM , one of the northan states of India , bordered by Jammu and Kashmir on the north, Punjab on the west and south-west, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh on the south, Uttarakhand on the south-east and by the Tibet Autonomous Region on the east. But from a travellers point of view it is a diversified land of abundant nature, a magical land of several culture , a nature lovers paradise.

We had 8 days in our hand , but how much and what route needs to be covered - that was a million dollar question. Our main intention was to visit Chandratal , and what could had been a better time than August.

Now how to reach Chandratal ? There are four routes available(Please correct me if you had recently invented one more)
1) The normal route that goes via Rohtang , The shortest but one of the most traffic prone roads /pass of Himachal.
2) You fly to Leh and then come back via Leh manali route.
3) Via Kinnaur , Spiti and Kunzum pass.
4) The last but not the least the one Sach Pass , an extremely remote pass that connects Chamba with the Pangi Valley and remain open just for a couple of months in a year.

Decision was taken we will enter via Sach Pass and would exit via Spiti and Kinnaur. But in 8 days , is it possible , where most of the part would be off-roading , and there are so many uncertainties on the way. We took a chance, where is the fun in a predictable life. Most of the hill-lovers enjoy the uncertainties, every turns offer something new , something you wont had imagine in your wildest dream.

If Chandratal , why not enroute Rohtang, are you crazy?

As we had travelled through some of the most interior parts of Himachal , I can very well use the adventure matrix I found in adc's travel log which in turn has been referred from some other travel report < http://www.paddlinglight.com/articles/adventure-matrix-ranking-trips-graph>.



On any given day if someone has been asked to go to Chandratal , , he/they would be first station themselves on Manali , start early morning and probably reach Chandratal by the end of the day- it would save some day for them and would allow them to venture out in a familiar territories. But where is the fun?? It would reduce by quite a few folds.

I would consider this trip somewhere between B and C, an fun flavoured trip , that also allowed us to met and know the people of Pangi Valley , Pattan Valley met quite a few nice people who have hardly encountered tourist in their places and a journey through Sach Pass was itself was more fun than any other destination , where before reaching Killar , we were never sure , that we will be able to make it.

So the route was decided , and chalked down the entire itinerary and thanks to the weather God , we can stick to it.

Day1 - Chandigarh - Journey to Khajiar - Stay at Kalatop Forest RH
Day2 - Khajiar - Tissa - Bairagarh - Sach Pass - Killar - Stay at Killar PWD GH
Day3 - Killar - Udaipur - Tandi - Sissu - Khoksar - Stay at Khoksar PWD GH
Day4 - Khoksar - Chatru - Batal - Chandrataal. - Stay at tent
Day5 - Chandratal - Kunzum Pass - Losar - Kaza - Tabo - Stay at Kungri PWD GH
Day6 - Tabo- Kalpa - Stay at Private Acco
Day7 - Kalpa- Narkanda - Stay at Private Acco
Day 8 - Narkanda - Kalka - Borad Kalka Mail at 11.55pm

Have been waiting long for this thread. Have seen the photos on FB which made me hungrier than ever for the narration - and now it comes.

Great start Mithun, am bookmarking this thread.

Grand Tribal Circuit of Himachal in just 8 days - are you kidding? Concern raised from different persons who have been to most of the places and came to know our plan. Valid concern- even we were worried when planning the trip, we knew most of the places there is no road at all , there are several river crossing on the road and the season being of monsoon , there is a possibility of getting stranded due to landslide, but when 3 travel crazy plans this they are ready for almost everything. A few teaser before I start.

HPTDC Cottage in Khajjiar



Forest rest house of Kalatop National Forest



World of snow in Sach Pass- and that too in August


Sunset in Kalatop


Narrow valley in Pangi , where Chandrabhaga flows at its best


Chandratal - A heavenly place on the earth


A cold Desert


High altitude passes - for now Kunzum La


Several deadly water crossing on the road


Landslide-stone fall


Narrow road - deep gorges on one side and steep hill on the other


Sweet , innocent angels

lovely captures mithun. For some reason the images are appearing as varying sizes on my machine. e.g. 1,3,6-8 are small while rest are good sized. Could be my machine...

A very good start Mithun. I have just managed my time to read the post 1.
Every TR of you is better than your previous one

Tantalizing phtographs, waiting for your log

That's the beauty of IM Saugata- what I mentioned.

I was been away from this forum for few months in a row due to office work, and when I return , I feel the same encouragement from these great souls around once again. I thank you very much for the encouragement and would be eagerly waiting for your Ladakh trip reports too.

Vaibhav , please wait for a while before throwing your machine off. It was not a problem of your machine, but the facebook link, it apply some artificial intelligence to resize the photos.I have corrected these now , a Thank you very much for the encouragement.

Thanks as always Ruchira , for the kind of motivation (of writting these long and never ending TL's) I have always got from you. As you know I am slower than a Turtle when it comes to writing a trip report, but I promise to finish it before my next trip.

Thank you very much srb. The log will be on very soon.

Excellent photographs, Mithun. I particularly like the black and white ones.

Not sure that I understand the diagram though.

Thank you so very much Theyyam. That reveals your love for B&W photographs , these are to my likings as well(And I bet , by the end of the TL, you will have overdose of B&W photographs) , but it was equally needed to capture the colours of Spiti Valley , Chandra Tal etc. Hence some of the colour pics as well.

It was not a very usual route , specially the Pangi Valley part and Sach Pass, where there was uncertainties in every turns of the road. Sitting at the front seat of the vehicle so many times in this trip I could able to see deep gorge vertically down from the windshield, encountered live landslide, deadly river crossing and we had stucked there for hours- no one to help around. So I neither consider this trip as adventurous as an effort to swim in Bermuda Triangle no as conventional as walking in the park in front of my house . Thus I kept this trip somewhere between B and C.

Wonderful pics of chanderTal and landslide...somehow make me remember the adventure i had while doing the chanderTal trip. We stayed 4 days at chanderTal (northface camp) in august 2011 stuck due to sudden snowfall and landslides.

Your sikkim travelogue also was wonderful, I got lost in the pics you took. Thanks Mithun.

4 days in Chandratal due to sudden snowfall , must had been a hell of an experience, would had loved to read the experience , must had been much more thrilling than any of the "Socalled thrilling" hindi movies. Thanks a lot for praising the snaps.

A few of these golden days , when I had no other work than browsing the Indiamike after my office hours. With the time responsibility increases and so the priorities had to rearrange accordingly. That was the time when I even used to write a half-day tour in Indiamike , and now didn't even got time to jot down my previous two trips(Kerala and Kanyakumari) photographs properly.

Actually in Sikkim we had got an wonderful weather which we couldn't had expected in a August. I will try to put my best of efforts to make this log as interesting as that one. Thanks for all your kind words.

Aahh! What a set of photography truly marvelous ........... must must upload more with detailed TR