Realm of the Snow Leopard

Maria Visconti takes to two wheels to explore the Indian Himalayas, a landscape of towering peaks, ancient monasteries and brazen snow leopards.

A little boy feeds medicine mixed with milk to sheep and goats huddled together behind Chitkul's ancient temple

There is a hidden valley, at the heart of the Indian Himalayas, where Buddhist monks live in isolation, where monasteries hang off dizzying cliffs, where whitewashed villages cascade down the mountainside, and where high-altitude lakes stare unblinkingly at the sky. The Spiti Valley, in Himachal Pradesh, is a harsh, alpine desert that’s home to snow leopards and ibexes, yaks and goats.

We have reached the valley from Delhi on a Royal Enfield motorcycle, that two-wheeled icon of British design and Indian manufacturing and the classic choice for any adventurer setting off to explore the subcontinent. Our Enfield Bullet is comfortable, powerful and reliable, whether it’s on the six-lane highway out of Delhi, on the narrow, twisting mountain roads of the Spiti Valley, or climbing to over 4,000m altitude. I’m riding pillion with veteran rider, tour organiser and photographer Vikas Panghal on a 2,000km roundtrip journey from Delhi, researching his next group ride of the region.

After bypassing Shimla and negotiating turns carved out of the mountainside, magnificent vistas open up. There are curtains of rock overhead, their pleats so neat you can imagine them fluttering in the breeze. This is one of the many unique things about motorcycle riding: you’re a part of the landscape in which you’re cruising, and you can actually look up and imbibe your surrounds.

We reach Narkanda after sunset and decide over dinner to include Chitkul in our itinerary. Close to Tibet and once part of the Silk Road, Marco Polo is said to have passed through here and the detour is worth it. Golden spires and slate roofs crown this ancient village, which we explore over two days. Getting here is blissful too on an excellent road flanked by pine forests so fresh and fragrant we throw our visors open to inhale it all in.

Riders on the Pangi Valley on their way to Spiti

Villagers bringing back their animals before sunset at Dankhar Village

Key Monastery, at Key

Riders enjoying the winding roads towards Spiti

Tabo's mud-brick Monastery, founded in 996CE, is the oldest continuously operating Buddhist enclave in both India and the Himalayas

Once back on track for the Spiti Valley we aim to overnight in Pooh. Getting to the higher regions as soon as possible is our plan. The road here (being surfaced at the moment) turns hellish. We ride on bone rattling sharp stones on a very narrow and winding road. A very flat tyre greets us the following morning… no surprise here, given the previous day’s road conditions.

Non-Indian travellers need a permit to proceed from this point and I get mine on the way at Reckong Peo’s Tourist Office. This could take a couple of hours or longer depending on how many foreigners are applying.

Finally, above the treeline, the silence is so intense you can actually hear it. A break by the roadside proves this; once we cut the engine the only sound is happy crunching as we eat apples purchased in Tabo, where harvest season is in full swing. Exploring Tabo’s 8th-century mud-brick monastery and strolling around the village proves so pleasant we stay put at Namsay’s Guesthouse for a few days.

While the lower villages shine gold and copper with their orchards basking in the late autumn sun, higher up, the titanic clashes of tectonic plates that gave birth to the Himalayas put on the greatest rock-show on earth. Every kind of geological formation is on display here; incredible angles of rock squeezed out of mother earth’s womb tower over you, their colours ranging from stark black to pale blond.

Against an almost perennially porcelain blue sky, coursing through rockscapes such as this gives you an overwhelming feeling of freedom. When Key Monastery comes into view (via Kaza), sitting high up on its own mountain, we decide to overnight there. The monks at Key offer basic accommodation for a small fee and we’re lucky to score a corner room at the very top of the complex.

A few metres below, on a terrace, some 80 children congregate in a clamour of clanging metal plates and cups. They’ve been summoned to dinner by the blowing of a conch and sit on the ground in the open air in neat rows waiting for the cauldrons of rice and dhal to be brought out from the kitchen. Staying here for a couple of nights allows visitors to do day trips to Chicham and Kibber, gateway to the Kibber Wildlife Sanctuary, where traditional Tibetan medicinal plants are harvested.

Call by the blowing of a conch to al fresco dinner for the youngsters of the Key Monastery

From Key we cross over to the Pin Valley and aim for Mudh, following the Pin River shining silver below us. Here we hear talk of snow leopards taking livestock, even during daylight, but none materialise for us.

Dhankar, back in the Spiti Valley is nestled precariously on top of a series of eerie crags. The ride here is on a stunning, zig-zagging tarmac road. When a full moon climbs into the sky that night, throwing a silver mantle over Dankhar’s Monastery and ancient fort, I wonder what might have driven people to settle in such inhospitable terrain. Dhankar Lake (4300m), accessible only on foot, has a layer of thin ice encrusting its surface by the time we reach it at noon the following day.

Chitkul's ancient houses are quite unique with their adobe walls and slate rooves now being replaced by tin rooves.

From Dankhar we start retracing our steps back to Delhi. Once in the megalopolis we drop exhausted after three weeks of adrenalin-soaked riding. Our sleep is peppered with images of a land studded with vertiginous monasteries and roaming snow leopards. Stamina and daring are required but if you allow yourself to tune in the vibe, to hear the silence, to be mindful and to be patient when setbacks occur, the heart of the Indian Himalayas will quickly reveal its treasures to you.