Spiti Valley Has Tabo Monastery, Founded in 996, Key Monastery at 4,116 Metres and Tashigang, the Polling Station at 15,256 Feet Where All 52 Voters Voted in 2022

Tashigang, a village in Spiti above Kaza, has the polling station that the Election Commission’s note of 1 June 2024 captions “the highest Polling Station”. The Tribune and PTI put it at 15,256 feet, and the Tribune reported on 12 November 2022 that all 52 voters on its roll took part in that year’s Himachal Pradesh Assembly election. The valley around it also holds Tabo Monastery, founded in 996, and Key Monastery, and since September 2025 a cold desert reserve that UNESCO has added to its biosphere network.

A cold desert with a valley floor at 4,270 metres

The district administration’s website gives the average height of Spiti’s valley floor as 4,270 metres (14,010 feet) and its annual rainfall as 170 millimetres. Spiti is the eastern part of Lahaul and Spiti district, which was formed in 1960 from two separate districts, and Kaza is its sub-divisional headquarters. Kaza stands at 3,660 metres, HP Tourism says. The usual road in from Lahaul crosses the Kunzum Pass at 4,551 metres, and the Spiti River leaves the valley to meet the Sutlej in Kinnaur. India’s entry on UNESCO’s Tentative List counts 113 villages in Spiti, 81 permanent and 32 temporary.

The state around it has its own profile in our guide to Himachal Pradesh. April to October is a good time to visit, according to HP Tourism, which adds that winter can bring temperatures of about minus 20 degrees Celsius in places.

Key Monastery, 12 km from Kaza

Key (also spelled Kee, Ki and Kye) was founded by Dromton, who lived from 1008 to 1064, HP Tourism says, and is the largest and one of the oldest monasteries in Spiti. It stands on a hill shaped like a volcano at 4,116 metres, which the district administration gives as about 13,500 feet. ProTibet, an organisation that has worked at the monastery since 2008, says it probably has its roots in the 11th century.

Inside are a large assembly hall lined with religious paintings, rare thangkas (painted scrolls), old trumpets, cymbals and drums, and a library of manuscripts of the Tangyur, one of the Tibetan Buddhist scriptures, according to HP Tourism, which counts more than 300 resident lamas. The district page adds murals, stucco images and a collection of weapons, and says the wind instruments join the orchestra when the masked Chham dance is staged in summer.

The district administration says most of Spiti’s Buddhists follow the Geluk-pa school, and the HimachalStory guide names Key as a Gelugpa monastery. ProTibet says an earthquake in 1975 damaged the monastery and that it was repaired with help from the Indian government. The same earthquake brought down the old Tangyud monastery near Hikkim, the district page records, and villagers rebuilt it at a new site near Komic. Key offers some basic accommodation, HP Tourism says.

Tabo, founded in 996

Tabo was founded in 996, HP Tourism and the district administration both say. The district page credits the translator and teacher it names as Rinchensang Po. It lies on the left bank of the Spiti River at 3,050 metres by HP Tourism’s figure, about 46 to 50 km from Kaza depending on the official page. It is the largest monastic complex in Spiti, with nine temples, 23 chortens (shrines that hold Buddhist relics), a monks’ chamber, a nuns’ chamber and caves in the cliff above where monks lived.

The district administration says the murals and stucco sculptures resemble those of the Ajanta caves, which is why Tabo is called the “Himalayan Ajanta”. The same UNESCO text says Tabo belongs to the tenth century and keeps faded mandalas (ritual diagrams painted on the wall) in its Kyil Khor temple. A gompa is a Tibetan Buddhist monastery. To mark a thousand years, the Dalai Lama conducted a Kalachakra ceremony at Tabo in 1996, HP Tourism says.

The Archaeological Survey of India’s list of centrally protected monuments carries two entries at Tabo, in Lahaul and Spiti district under its Shimla Circle: a Buddhist monastery with its adjoining land, and the Phoo Gumpha Buddhist monastery. In April 2015 India sent UNESCO a Tentative List entry, the Cold Desert Cultural Landscape of India, that covers Spiti, parts of Ladakh and part of Kinnaur and names Dhankar, Ki and Tabo among its important gompas. A Tentative List entry is not an inscription on the World Heritage List.

Dhankar, the old capital on a spur

Dhankar’s citadel, the district page says, is the official capital of Spiti, built on a spur that ends in a precipice, 32 km downstream from Kaza near Shichling. Its position let the people of Spiti watch the approaches against raids. Dhankar means fort in the local language, and the monastery served as the castle of the Nono, the valley’s hereditary ruler, according to HP Tourism, which names a statue of Vairochana as its principal figure. The UNESCO entry counts about 100 lamas there and describes the Vairochana as four figures seated back to back. Dhankar is reached by a 7 km branch road from Shichling, and HP Tourism lists only home stays and basic monastery accommodation.

Tashigang, the polling station at 15,256 feet

The Election Commission’s note of 1 June 2024, issued as the seventh and last phase of the Lok Sabha election closed, carries a photograph captioned “Voters at the highest Polling Station, Tashigang, Himachal Pradesh”. The Tribune and PTI give the height as 15,256 feet, and PTI saw a board at the booth painted with 4,650 metres. PTI says Spiti is part of the Mandi Lok Sabha seat.

PTI wrote that 2024 was the fourth poll held at Tashigang. The Tribune says the highest station before 2019 was at Hikkim, also in Lahaul and Spiti district, and that Tashigang became a polling station in 2019. It counted 45 voters that year (27 men and 18 women), 48 in the 2021 Mandi by-election and 52 in the 2022 Assembly election (30 men and 22 women). On 12 November 2022 all 52 voted. The booth was made a model polling station, to ease voting for older and disabled people, and voters were welcomed with local custom and a community meal. PTI put the 2024 roll at 62 voters from Tashigang and Gete, although the Tribune’s April 2024 report still listed 52, so the figure depends on when the roll was read.

A polling party travels about an hour and a half from Kaza, PTI reported, and found no mobile signal at the booth. Resident Tanzin Takpa told PTI that Tashigang has no hospital, clinic, school or market, and that the dirt road to Kaza, about 30 km away, is shut by snow for six months. The machinery behind the poll is covered in our guide to the Election Commission, EVMs and the model code.

The cold desert reserve and the snow leopard

The Environment Ministry said on 27 September 2025 that the Cold Desert Biosphere Reserve had been included in UNESCO’s World Network of Biosphere Reserves, which gave India 13. UNESCO’s page gives its area as 777,000 hectares (7,770 square kilometres) at heights from 3,300 to 6,600 metres. It records 732 vascular plant species, 30 of them endemic to the Indian Himalaya, and 12,457 people. It includes Pin Valley National Park and the Kibber and Chandratal wildlife sanctuaries. India’s Tentative List text says the cold desert was declared a biosphere reserve in 2009.

HP Tourism says the Kibber sanctuary spreads over 1,400 square km beyond Kibber village, which stands at 4,205 metres, and shelters blue sheep, ibex and snow leopards. The Wildlife Institute of India’s first national snow leopard assessment, released on 30 January 2024, estimated 718 animals in India, based on surveys from 2019 to 2023 in which camera traps photographed 241 individual leopards. It put Himachal Pradesh at 51. That figure covers the whole state, not Spiti alone. Our piece on how India counts its tigers and lions explains how camera-trap estimates work.

The Atal Tunnel and the road to Kaza

The Atal Tunnel was dedicated on 3 October 2020. The Ministry of Defence factsheet says the 9.02 km tunnel connects Manali to the Lahaul and Spiti valley through the year, where the valley had earlier been cut off for about six months each year by heavy snow, and that it cut the Manali to Leh road by 46 km. The factsheet adds that the district has had an unprecedented rise in tourists. District arrivals rose from 1,32,983 in 2019 to 9,60,952 in 2021, the Tribune reported, citing data from the state’s tourism department. Our piece on the tunnel covers how it was built.

The tunnel ends in Lahaul, so the last stage to Spiti still crosses the Kunzum Pass. From Keylong one can reach Kaza only between June and October, HP Tourism says, while from Shimla through Kinnaur the road is safe from March to November. Kaza has the valley’s only petrol pump, the page adds, and foreign visitors entering by the Kinnaur route need an inner line permit, available at Reckong Peo. In HP Tourism’s table of distances from Kaza, Key is 12 km away, Hikkim 17 km, Kibber and Komic 18 km each and Tabo 48 km.