Day 4
Nako & Tabo
A lake village in upper Kinnaur and a monastery founded in 996 CE — the two places the brochure links to the crossing into Spiti. Day 4
Four stops.
Four climates.
The Spiti Odyssey crosses the Himalaya’s full range of moods in a week: temperate pine hills, the gorge country of Kinnaur, the cold desert of Spiti and a warm river valley on the way home.
Day 2 · ~2,700 m
Kufri
Pine ridges and the first snow line, above Shimla.
Day 3 · ~2,960 m
Kalpa
Orchards, old towers and the Kinnaur Kailash range.
Days 4–6 · ~3,800 m
Kaza
Base for Key, Chicham, Langza, Komik and Hikkim.
Day 7 · ~1,000 m
Rampur
A palace town on the Sutlej, at the bottom of the descent.
Destination images supplied by the organisers. Route photographs on each destination page are credited to Wikimedia Commons contributors — see the credits page.
Start and finish · Days 1 & 8
Delhi, the starting line.
Every journey north begins in the capital — Mughal domes, winter fog over the ring roads and the last flat horizon for a week. Day one is for arriving, meeting the group and an early night at the Hyatt Centric; day eight brings everyone back down to the plains.
28.61° N · 77.21° E · ~215 m
The altitude profile
Up three and a half kilometres. Then down.
Approximate heights of the places on the route. The body notices every step of this — which is why the journey spends a night at Kufri and Kalpa before sleeping at Kaza’s altitude.
Approximate altitudes, rounded. Not survey data.
How they connect
A loop through Kinnaur and Spiti.
The outbound road follows the Sutlej into Kinnaur, climbs past Nako into Spiti and reaches Kaza. The return retraces the river valleys to Rampur. In winter this Kinnaur approach is the usual way into Spiti, as the high passes on the northern side are closed by snow.
The diagram is illustrative and not to scale. Delhi has been drawn much closer than it really is.
Between the overnight stops