Spiti Valley

Spiti means the middle country, and it was for centuries a Buddhist kingdom tied to Guge and Ladakh rather than the plains. Rinchen Zangpo founded Tabo in 996 CE; its mud-walled chapels still hold clay bodhisattvas and murals that earned it the name Ajanta of the Himalaya. Key Monastery, founded in the eleventh century, sits at 4,166 m above the river like a stacked wedding cake of white cubes, and its morning prayers, with young monks blowing dungchen horns, are open to visitors.

Dhankar balances on a crumbling spur above the confluence of the Pin and Spiti; a short trek above it reaches a blue lake. Around Kaza, the district headquarters at 3,650 m, a loop of high villages waits: Kibber at 4,270 m with its snow-leopard sightings in winter, Komic at 4,587 m, Langza with its giant Buddha over a valley full of marine fossils, and Hikkim, where you can post a card from the highest post office on earth. Gue village keeps the five-hundred-year-old mummy of the monk Sangha Tenzin.

The Pin Valley National Park shelters ibex and snow leopards. A Spiti day is stark blue sky, wind, barley fields, a bowl of thukpa in a homestay kitchen, and stars thick enough to read by. Reached over Kunzum La at 4,551 m from Manali (June–October) or year-round via Kinnaur, it is the most extreme, and most rewarding, road trip in Himachal.