Rohtang Pass

Rohtang Pass

Gateway to Lahaul/Spiti

 (Coordinates: 32°21'48"N   77°14'25"E)

(el. 3979 m./13,051 ft.)^[1], 51 KM from Manali, is a high mountain pass that connects the Kullu Valley with the Lahul and Spiti valleys of Himachal Pradesh, India.

It has become a summer holiday spot, all thanks to the rising popularity of Manali, and excellent roads maintained by Border Road Organization. Almost half of visitors to Manali yearns to visit Rohtang Pass.

The pass is only open from June to September, has a well-deserved reputation for being very dangerous because of unpredictable snowstorms.In fact in the local language, Rohtang literally means the "pile of corpses".

The pass provides a natural cultural divide between the foothills and wet lowlands of northern India and its primarily Hindu culture, with the dry desert uplands north of the first range of the Himalayas and its mainly Buddhist and heavily Tibetan-influenced culture.

There is a small temple at the top of the pass with a spring that is the source of the Beas River.

The road through the Kullu Valley, past Manali and over the Rohtang Pass to Keylong, and Lahul and on to Ladakh, has become very busy during the summer months as a military route, because of the troubles in Kashmir which have meant that the road from Srinagar to Leh is now less used. Traffic jams (as pictured) are common occurrences caused by the inability of military vehicles, trucks, and goods carriers to navigate the tight roads and rough terrain, not to mention, snow and ice and the large number of tourists taxis.

 

Rohtang Pass

 

 

 

place comments:

	4 months ago roadtraveller		+3
The road leading upto the pass from Manali is pretty narrow with tons of traffic. Looking down u can lose not only ur hat but ur life too.....
	4 months ago ABC		0
This place is not worth visiting on Summer Tourist Peak time (May to July), as load of mindless people try to drive recklessly on high mountain road and end up hundreds of feet below in the river! OR Just create a high altitude traffic jam (Could be the highest road jam in the world). Indians are capable to make world records in all wrong domains/areas. Why can't they be just a little sober in the mountains!