The road that most people don't take
You leave Shimla and the hills start changing almost immediately. The pine forests thin. The rock face closes in. By the time you reach Rampur, the Sutlej is a grey-green roar below you and the road is a single lane cut into a cliff that has no interest in your comfort. This is NH-5, the old Hindustan-Tibet Road, and it was built not for tourists but for a border. Kinnaur begins here, in the narrowing, in the sense that the valley is doing something to the sky above it, compressing it, making it bluer and sharper than it has any right to be this side of Ladakh.
