"…that this was pleasingly beautiful, while the other was sublimely grand" -Meriwether Lewis, June 14, 1805
Inner Line: Sumdo to Jangi
Perhaps still fallowing the Spiti, the vibe after Tabo changes sufficiently enough to warrant a subsection (Nako for example is still along the Spiti before its confluence with the Sutlej though it is in the district of Kinnaur). Sumdo is the first checkpoint where military police allow only tourists with an inner-line permit in hand (a document assembled in Kaza, if traveling clockwise, from your own provided 2×2 photograph and their rubber cement; out of season, it took days to find an official to do the task). Here the Parchu Rivers flow out of disputed land to east and join the Spiti near the station’s bridge: China’s claims cross the recognized International Boundary though in these remote stretches you are certainly not likely to ever find yourself in crossfire. After a brief inspection and answering a few questions, the bar is raised and I cross the Spiti and the valley tappers so that I am running out of sides, and the road must climb. Nearer the top, the visible Leo Pagral (6727) sits halfway in Xizang Zizhiqu (Tibet) to the east, its other half stateless. A tiny shack pitched along the roadway just after Nako is designated the world’s highest dispute resolution meeting place. And it is breath taking Himalayan road engineering and motorcycling at its finest.
Inside the Inner-Line, a few km south of passing through a checkpoint and climbing high into the Himalayas.Difficult to image but local buses traverse these roads. Here I am looking back at a gut wrenching outside corner i’d just cautiously navigated; the flag pole warner of an infinite drop. Workers were also busy on the inside corner to photographer’s right. It is past noon, so we are looking west.
Arriving to Nako from Tabo, the riding was enjoyable and amazing. There were a few snacks available at the second guesthouse I looked at after tromping about the town through low dark quarters with narrow passages and animals; I almost felt like I was intruding though the people where friendly enough. Power did not come on the length of my visit, the entry level kitchen thick with kerosene cooking and I joined in the kitchen to help prepare eggs.Terraced fields outside of my room in the sharp crisp of morning after a very cold night in Nako.A bridge that brings me back over the Spiti, or what is now the Sutlej River. The confluence occurs about Khab, 6 km further upstream (north). Google maps shows a town of Dubling even higher up to the south of this bend in the road, which would be the lefthand side of the river immediate. It is about here that the originally designed Hindustan Tibet Highway would have reached its terminus, having began a rough-for-1860 x kms back in Shimla.Following the Sutlej River on the north side after crossing 6 km south of Khab, I am now running west southwest towards Shimla. The country is very different from Spiti; very wide and green allow the road to stay alongside the river though at times it overruns and takes out section of road according to LP.
South of Jangi
About to cross the Sutlej (near a town called Akpa) about 9 km south of Jangi. The asym single masted bridge doesn’t have a suspension tower on its southern side. The weather is still coolish to balmy, though not like fall and of course, I am not as exposed lower in the valley.A bridge project, where in the lower left and in the dry river bed the foundations are going in. Between the suspension bridge and the blown rock photos is only 4 km.Looking forward: The Satluj River below me to the right (I am on the north side still), rock overhead.Looking back. The Satluj cascades below me to the right, and you can see where I’ve just motored along the shelf to the left.1 of 3. Quite the orchard (I assume apples as I am now in Kinnuar) perched above the Sutlej River past Jangi along the rock slide prone section of India’s 22 (tracking to some degree was originally the Hindustan-Tibetian Highway under Dalihousie).2 of 33 of 3, looking slightly back now.
