Soon enough we were at Rohtang La. The name translates literally to “Pass of Death”, but this clearly does not deter visitors as seen in the heavy footfall. My personal connect with Rohtang La goes back to my childhood days when, during a family trip, I threw a tantrum when fired by my father and ran off, and the whole group went bonkers looking for me, and me for them!
Twenty kilometres beyond Rohtang La and some more fun — the road was washed out. Till Khoksar, to be precise, there was a kutcha road (common in these parts) that the winter snowfall had rendered mercilessly potholed and broken. After a quick lunch at Khoksar we headed for Tandi on what was a brilliantly surfaced double-lane road, complete with cat-eyes lining the sides. Alas, our joy was short-lived. A freak flash flood that morning had wiped out a 150-metre section of this road and it was under repair. Luckily for us, some good Samaritans stopped us short of the site, and advised a detour through some side roads in the hills. The said detour took us beyond the washout site and we continued to Tandi, 40 km ahead and the site of an IOC fuel station where a signboard warned: “Next filling station: 365 km ahead” (that is, at Karu). Be sure to tank up here, lest you fancy the possibility of spending a night in your car whilst awaiting help.
The Khoksar episode cost us a fair bit of time and we chose to halt at Keylong, famous as the administrative centre of the Lahaul and Spiti district in Himachal Pradesh. Himachal Tourism has set up Hotel Chandra Bhaga here, with comfortable and well-priced rooms and some lovely food. The name of the hotel comes from the river Chandra Bhaga or Chenab, formed by the confluence of the Chandra and Bhaga streams at Tandi.
An early start the next day had us off towards our second pass of the trip — Baralacha La. About 20 km from Keylong, you reach the small town of Jispa, which has a few accommodation options. We stopped for lunch at the curiously-named Zingzingbar, which Wikipedia describes as “a road building camp and tea house situated 18 km from Bara-lacha-la”. Indeed, there were only a few dhabas and some trucks parked in the area, along with bikes and cars of visitors like us.
