Pin Bhaba Pass Trek

I have crossed a border where no country changes, only the planet does.

The Bhaba valley walks you in gently: Kafnu's orchards, then Mulling's long grass, then Kara, where the meadow is so complete it feels furnished. Waterfalls stitch every slope. Sheep move like weather.

At Phustirang the green thins to gravel and cold, and the pass wall stands over camp with its cards face down.

Crossing morning is wind and count-your-steps. Then the crest at nearly 4,915 metres, and the trick the mountain plays: you turn around and Kinnaur is still emerald behind you; you turn forward and Spiti is bare bone and ochre, purple scree, a desert sky with no ceiling. One ridge. Two Earths.

We descended into the Pin's silence, which is not the absence of sound but a substance you walk through. By Mudh, the first barley fields looked like an act of stubborn love, and the thukpa there deserves its own chapter.

Local truth: the Pin side is snow leopard and ibex country, and its villages keep old Buddhist rooms alive with butter lamps. You arrive as a guest of a fragile economy of grace: spend in the village, ask before photographing, keep your voice down in the gompas.

Late June to September only, with a strong team and honest acclimatisation. This is the library's hardest chapter; read the easier ones first.

Somewhere on that crest, between the green world and the bare one, I could not tell if I was leaving a garden or entering a temple. It was both.