A road that climbs out of the green world entirely.
The Manali-Leh Highway is less a road than a transition — a single continuous journey that begins in the deodar forests above Manali and ends, roughly 480 kilometres and several thousand vertical metres later, in the high-altitude desert of Ladakh, a landscape that looks more like the Tibetan plateau than anywhere else in India. In between, the road climbs over a sequence of passes, each one higher and starker than the last, each one a small ecosystem of its own.
The journey typically begins at Rohtang Pass, then continues through the Lahaul valley, climbs to Baralacha La, crosses the vast gravel plain at Sarchu — a common overnight stop for acclimatisation — and continues over Lachulung La and finally Tanglang La, one of the highest motorable passes on Earth, before descending into the Indus valley toward Leh. Along the way, the colour palette of the landscape shifts entirely: green gives way to ochre and grey, rivers turn the colour of glacial silt, and the sky takes on the deep saturated blue that only exists at extreme altitude.
These 13 photographs trace that transition — the high passes, the switchback roads, the barren plateaus, and the particular quality of light that exists only at 4,000-5,000 metres.
Rohtang Pass~3,978 m
Baralacha La~4,890 m
Sarchu Plain~4,290 m
Lachulung La~5,059 m
Tanglang La~5,328 m
