Taranda Dhak, Kinnaur, Himachal Pradesh, India, 7 July 2017, 1100 hours

I have travelled upon this road several times in the past three years, and it never ceases to amaze me.

Of course, it is a famous road, what with people from all over posting photographs and videos and reiterating the few pieces of information that are easily available about it – that it is one of the most dangerous roads in the world, that it is an engineering marvel, that it is cut into the rock, et al.

It is no more and no less a dangerous road than many others in Himachal Pradesh. It is an engineering marvel or rather the entire stretch of the erstwhile Old Hindustan Tibet Road – and many other Himalayan roads – were (and are) engineering marvels when they were conceptualised because of the sheer audacity of the idea of connecting remote, high places with one another, and the sheer risk that the engineers and labour took in working on the building of such roads.

There is a lot of information available in print (many of them are travel accounts, and administrative reports by erstwhile government officers). Recently, I happened on a wonderful online article on The Hindustan Tibet Road written by one Sanjay Sharma – you might want to check it out at WanderWisdom.

And, for the time being, here’s another brief video on the Taranda Dhak.