North India is not exactly known for it’s ease of travel! The roads in the Nubra Valley were just a glimpse as to what else I’d have in store for me up in this part of the world. With the infrequent public buses, expensive taxis and poor information, it’s a real treat. In Leh particularly I swear the bus stand people made it as confusing as possible for tourists to use local buses so you’d have to deal with the taxi cartels! Anyway it was about time to for me to be moving on from Ladakh to Himachal Pradesh (the next state to the south) via the vaunted Leh-Manali highway. And the word ‘highway’ is used very loosely here! It’s 266 miles through the mountains with often poor road conditions. It used to be a mandatory two day trip, but with the completion of the Atal Tunnel near Manali you can do it one full day now, only 14 hours! A government bus does the route once per day.
The afternoon before I wanted to leave I stopped at the bus station and the guy in the office told me it leaves at 3am, so I should show up at 2:30, UGHGH. Fine. That evening I attempted to get to bed early and of course I was treated to some of the loudest sobbing, yelling, hysterical screaming I have ever heard. I was 100% sure that someone must have just died, so I did feel pretty bad. The man in the room left, then woman was leaving shrieking voicemails, some women in the guesthouse came down to offer help - turns out it was an Israeli girl and it was just a breakup, whew! But omg wow, such drama! She turned down the offers to help look for him and went back to crying. Not much sleep for me.
I was off just after 2am to walk the 25 minutes downhill to the bus station. The street dogs were just going nuts at me. They mostly talk (bark) a big game, but never get too close to bite. Still kinda scary though. I made it to the bus station and it was eerily quiet. Uh oh - Literally nobody there, no lights on, just a few dogs barking their heads off at me. It didn’t take a genius to know that there was no bus going. Damn that bus station attendant! I waited until 3am just in case, but yea, it was hopeless. And then I had the 30 min walk straight uphill to get back to the guesthouse with all my stuff. Come on. And now round Two of possibly be turned into dogmeat, yay. But you see, this one of the things I like about traveling, always staying active! Not.
I had read you can also try and get a shared taxi in the morning, so I got a few hours of sleep, and it was back down to town and into a taxi to the shared-taxi (jeep) stand. I found one, but I would have to wait for it to fill up. After 1.5 hours (9:30am) it was totally packed and we were ready to go. Fortunately I had a window seat, but man it was just not a comfortable seat, at all. Bring the pain! The first few hours were nice and flat until we got up into the mountains. Then it was a mix of decent road and unpaved track. There were certain parts where our driver would turn off the road and take these extra steep and bumpy dirt trails to cut some time off of the switchbacks and pass trucks. That was kinda fun.
Getting high up in altitude
These buses are everywhere, pretty cool decorations
Everything was going smooth enough, until it wasn’t. We turn the bend and LOG JAM. We sat in the jeep for maybe 30 minutes not moving and then people started getting out to investigate what was going on. As always it was a narrow part where only one car could pass at a time, but now the cars were so piled up in each direction that nobody could go anywhere. The only remedy for this was a coordinated effort to get all the people in one direction to back up and keep backing up until all the cars going the opposite way could pass. We’re talking 50 or 60 trucks and cars that all would have to back up in unison. It took forever, but they got it done, and maybe 2 hours later we were back moving again!
There ain’t enough room for both of us pal
Our dinner stop
It was smoother for the rest of the afternoon; we stopped at a scenic spot with roadside stalls for dinner, as the sun sank behind the hills. It’d been over 9 hours and we still had a long way to go. After dark the roads turned into complete shit again and it was a miserable couple of hours. We also got a flat tire, so that was another half hour sitting on the side of the road. It’s never just a super straightforward trip! But at least they built that tunnel getting into Manali. We finally pulled into the bus station at 1:45 am, so about 16 hours. Nice. I had booked a hotel three minutes away and went to pass out.
Temple in Manali
I had a full rest day in Manali, my one short excursion was visiting some temple in the forest (greenery yesss!) and I also inquired about the bus up to the Spiti Valley. It left at 6am, but I couldn’t buy my ticket now, I’d have to buy it on the bus the next morning. Hmmm. So fast forward to 5:30 the next morning, I find the bus and all the seats are full. Internal groaaaaan. Well I’m already up, packed, wide awake, I guess I’m standing. The high pass that this bus goes over to get into Spiti Valley had only just been cleared of snow recently, which is why the bus was so crowded I guess. When the bus started to move, all the standers outside the bus hopped on and crammed in the aisles. This would be fun.
We went back north through the tunnel and then east towards our destination: Kaza. Eventually the paved road just abruptly disappeared and you’re left with a bunch of rocks and gravel. At one point everyone had to get out to make it easier for the bus to get over a stretch of boulders. We continued on and on this bumpy 4x4 track for hours and hours and hours, it never improved, not even for small stretches. We had to be averaging less than 10mph. The bus driver’s navigational work getting past every obstacle was quite impressive though. And like usual, there were lots of parts where the bus has to pull over or go in reverse to let other cars get by. Often the driver would be shouting instructions to the self driving noobs in SUVs who weren’t confident on these types of roads.
Getting rocks in the proper location
Everybody out!
The route was just recently cleared of snow, can you tell?
It’s kind of trippy seeing the next village on the map being 20 miles away, and it’s well over two hours to get there! Oof. It was entertaining watching some people being able to sleep on the way, I mean if you could sleep on this bus, you could literally sleep through anything. As for me, I’d been still standing for six hours or so, kind of numb to the discomfort at this point. Sometimes in India you just have to switch on the Zen mode.
We finally climbed over the Kunzum La Pass and it got better from there. We stopped at the first village marking the beginning of the Spiti Valley, I gave my passport details to an officer, and amazingly some people got off the bus!! After eight (EIGHT!) hours of standing I was able to sit down, thank god! And two hours later on good roads we were in the largest town in the valley, Kaza. This would be my base for exploring the area.
Outskirts of Kaza
I must say, I’ve seen plenty of long bus rides and horrible roads before, and normally I’m pretty resilient, but these couple of days were really pushing my limits! As for the worst roads, this part of India might just take the cake. Either that or Western China. Honorable mention to Tajikistan. Real distinguished company…
Will the worst of my India bus travels be over now?! We’ll see!