See also: Kashgar China to Chitral Pakistan.

Late in the 2009 season, we flew to Leh in lovely Ladakh, then cycled south across Himalayan passes up to 5200 metres. By now acclimatised to riding at this elevation, we decided to string it out and, just before the once notorious Rohtang Pass for Manali (now tunnelled), we jeep-taxi’d east up to Kunzum La (4590m). Here, we let ourselves loose down the amazing Spiti Valley (below) which skims by the Chinese border then swings back towards Shimla for a bus back to Delhi.

I was on a crappy, too small Chinese-market Specialized HR Pro (below left) I bought the previous year in Kashgar and upgraded to cable disc wheels (the originals were left in Islamabad). Steve was on his continent-crossing Thorn Nomad, the long-haul Chro-Mo tourer of choice back then, and maybe still.

To make things a little harder, we followed a fork north off the Spiti, and took a then new track up to Chicham, said to be one of the highest permanently inhabited villages in the world. Here we were thwarted by what I named the Kibber Span, a kind of community zip wire basket which spanned a huge chasm to the next village of Kibber. Watch our short vid above to see what happened next.

I see now on Google they built a nice, solid bridge.