Spiti's two routes in: Shimla-Kinnaur or Manali-Kunzum

The climb happens differently on each side

Shimla sits at 2,398 m. The road climbs through Narkanda and Rampur Bushahr to Reckong Peo, which Himachal Pradesh's own Kinnaur district site gives as 2,670 m and a widely used reference gives as 2,290 m. The two don't agree and neither looks like a typo, so both are worth knowing. From there the road keeps rising gently to Nako, where the district site and the state tourism site agree on 3,662 to 3,663 m, and settles into Kaza at roughly 3,650 m. That's around 1,250 m of net gain spread across more than 400 km.

Manali sits at 2,050 m. The Atal Tunnel's south portal, a short ride out of town, is already at 3,060 m. Past it the road runs through Gramphu and Batal to Kunzum La, whose height depends on who you ask: 4,551 m by the figure quoted most often, 4,590 m by a 2019 Tribune report, and a third figure from Kaza's own Wikipedia page sitting in between. Whichever number is right, the road puts most of that climb into about 130 km before dropping back to Kaza. Same destination, roughly the same total ascent, a third of the distance to do it in.

The odometer tells the same story from a different angle. Sources put Shimla to Kaza via Kinnaur at somewhere between 412 and 422 km; nobody publishes a government milestone table for either route, so the range is the honest answer rather than a single figure. Manali to Kaza via Kunzum comes out shorter on paper, somewhere between 182 and 225 km depending on which alignment and which source you use. On the road, that gap closes fast: the shorter route's surface can make it take as long as the longer one, which is the whole subject of the next two sections.

Kunzum La doesn't open on a date you can plan around

Look at the last five winters and there's no fixed pattern, only a wide one. The pass shut on 23 September 2018 and didn't reopen until 30 June 2019, nine months later. It shut again in mid-October 2022 and reopened 30 May 2023, after a 69-day clearance operation. It was officially closed on 23 November 2024 under the Disaster Management Act and reopened for four-wheel-drive traffic only by late May 2025. It shut again in the first week of November 2025 and was reported open by 20 May 2026. Wikipedia's own page on the highway puts the range at six to nine months closed a year, which matches what's actually happened better than any single date would.

It isn't only a winter problem. An early snowfall shut the pass on 6 October 2025, well inside what should have been the riding season, and it took eight days to reopen it for four-wheel-drive traffic alone.

If it shuts while you're on the far side, there's one way out

This is not a wait-it-out situation. When Himachal Pradesh closed the pass in November 2024, the same order advised travellers to use the Kinnaur route instead. Tourism operators said the same thing during the nine-month closure in 2018-19: no option but to leave Spiti through Kinnaur. If Kunzum shuts on you mid-trip, your way back to Manali isn't a backtrack over the pass you rode in on. It's the Kinnaur road out to Shimla, a different highway in a different direction, with days added to the ride.

Kinnaur's road doesn't close for winter, but it slides

The Shimla-Kinnaur road stays open through the year in a way Kunzum can't, because nothing on it crosses a pass anywhere near 4,500 m. What it does instead is fail in smaller pieces, more often, mostly around Nigulsari on NH-5. A 400-metre stretch there washed out on 8 September 2023 and blocked the road for about ten days; two more slides hit the same stretch that October. A 70-metre section collapsed again on 18 September 2024, cutting Kinnaur off from Shimla while it was repaired. Rain triggered another blockage there on 2 September 2025. None of these closures ran to months. Each one closed the only road through for days at a time, usually without much warning.

The Gramphu-Batal stretch has its own reputation

Even inside Kunzum's open season, the roughly 47 km between Gramphu and Batal is unpaved in places and crosses meltwater streams that rise through the day, worst in the monsoon months. On 15-16 July 2024 a bus carrying 44 passengers got stuck in mud short of the pass and had to be rescued by district police overnight. The district then barred tourist vehicles on that stretch after 4 pm. It's the clearest sign that open and easy aren't the same word on this route, and that crossing before midday isn't a suggestion.

Permits depend on which way you're headed, and who's asking

Indian riders need no permit for the Kinnaur road itself, though checkposts, commonly at places like Jangi, log ID and vehicle papers. Foreign nationals face a different rule: the stretch between the inner line and the international border in upper Kinnaur is a declared protected area, and Himachal Pradesh's own Kinnaur district guidelines put the fee at Rs 200 per person, processed through the e-Governance Centre and arranged through the SDM office at Kalpa or Reckong Peo. That is a separate process from the Spiti permit itself, and its fee has been published at other figures elsewhere, so confirm the current one at the office rather than budgeting against a number found online. It's paperwork, not a route decision, but it belongs to the Kinnaur side specifically.

Side by side

Before you commit to a way in

How we run it

Our own Spiti route avoids making this choice twice. We enter through Kinnaur, cross Spiti, and continue over Kunzum La onward to Chandratal and Pangi rather than turning back the way we came, so a pass closure mid-trip isn't a return-journey problem for the group. That's a routing decision, not a guarantee about the pass's behaviour; we watch its status the same as anyone else would, and the itinerary is built so the group is never depending on Kunzum to get home.

For the months each route is realistically open, not just legally open, see our season-by-season breakdown. This page is about what the two roads demand. That one is about when to ride them.