A four-day overland pilgrimage to the ghost village of Milam, last threshold of the lost Indo-Tibetan trade
Sixty-four years of silence in the highest village of the Johar Valley
For more than five centuries before the war, Milam was a town that breathed twice a year. Each summer, five hundred Shauka families climbed up the Gori Ganga gorge with their mules, their salt, borax, sugar and wool, and reopened the highest village in the Johar Valley. Each winter they descended to the warmer hamlets around Munsyari and Tejam. The Untadhura, Jandi Dhura and Kungribingri passes carried their caravans across the watershed into Gyanima mandi in Tibet, and the Bhotia traders returned with rock salt, pashmina, gold dust and stories.
Then, in 1962, the People's Liberation Army crossed the McMahon Line and the Aksai Chin. India and China went to war. The passes were sealed. The trade ended. Within a generation Milam became one of the largest ghost villages in the Himalaya — five hundred empty stone houses, a school with no children, prayer flags fading into rags above the snout of a glacier that still feeds the Gori Ganga.
A motorable road — the Munsyari–Bugdiyar–Milam Road being cut by the Border Roads Organisation — is finally arriving in 2026. When it is finished, Milam will not be the same place. We are driving it before it changes. We are going to listen, while the silence still belongs to the people who left.
The Gori Ganga starts at the snout of the Milam glacier and runs the whole length of the Johar Valley before it meets the Kali at Jauljibi — and for five hundred years, every story along that river started at the same place.
A Hilux on the front, a Thar on the back. Recovery gear forward, dust-pause at every blind turn, radios live the entire time we are above Thal. The mountain decides the pace; the convoy keeps the order.
| Lead | Alpha-One | CH 03 |
| Sweep | Bravo-Two | CH 03 |
| Reserve | both | CH 07 |
| Check-in | every 20 min | 10-4 |
Last assured pump is Thal. Munsyari has fuel most days but never bet on it. Carry jerry cans, refill at Thal on Day 01 and again on the morning of Day 04.
We skip the Kainchi Dham shortcut on purpose. The longer line through the fruit bowl of Kumaon, across the Saryu at Seraghat, down through the Berinag tea slopes and up the Birthi Falls gorge is the only honest way to arrive at Little Kashmir. Eat fish and rice on the river. Top off the tanks at Thal. Sleep at altitude. Thar meets near Barechina, and follows.
Apricots, plums, apples, peaches by the kilo on the Bhowali–Mukteshwar road. Tagore wrote here. The British camped here. The mountains start to mean it from this point on.
Orchards thin out, the road climbs into oak and rhododendron. Mukteshwar viewpoint 4 km off-route — skip it; the better views are still ahead.
Where the Saryu — born from the Nanda Kot slopes, the great tributary that becomes the Sarayu of Ayodhya — bends past a small clutch of dhabas. The fish thali here is the lunch that justifies the long route.
Tea estates, a serpent temple on the ridge (Nag Devta), and the first proper view of the Panchachuli wall to the north. The road tilts.
The last assured diesel pump before the mountains close in. Fill both vehicles to the cap and both jerry cans. Bridge over the Ramganga. From here it is all climb.
126 vertical metres of glacial-melt thunder, 35 km short of Munsyari. Five-minute walk down. Five-minute walk up. The legs deserve it before the homestays.
The Panchachuli wall fills the eastern sky. Camp or homestay. Rent extra tents if needed. Buy permits at the SDM office for Milam if not already in hand. Sleep early. Tomorrow is the day everything has been about.
Fifty kilometres of half-built road and four river crossings between Munsyari and the highest village in the Johar. We climb beside the Gori Ganga through the abandoned hamlets of Lilam, Bugdiyar, Rilkot, Martoli, Burphu and Bilju — empty stone houses, lichen-eaten walls, prayer flags going to dust — until the glacier opens and Milam appears at its foot. We arrive in daylight. We sleep in the ghost village. We stargaze under the snout of the Milam glacier.
Pitch on the flat above the village. The wind comes off the glacier — anchor everything. Cook hot. Eat hot. Light a small fire from biomass; wood is sacred here, do not break standing branches. The Gonka stream joins the Gori on your left; the pyramid above is Hardeol (7,151 m), with Nanda Devi East behind the ridge.
After dinner — no headlamps for twenty minutes. The Milky Way clears the eastern ridge by 21:30 in late
May; find Scorpius rising over the glacier. Listen for the cracking ice. This is the only place in the
country where you can hear a glacier breathe and a ghost town sleep at the same time.
Carry Snacks/Fruit/Dryfruit/Chocolates/Chickpeas etc for on-trek breakfast on day 3
We earn this day. Up at first light, hike to the snout of the Milam glacier and wander the deserted lanes of the old village before the sun melts the cold off the walls. Pack camp by ten. Drive carefully back down — the same boulders, less adrenaline, more attention. Tonight we sleep beside Thamri Kund: a sacred Bhotia lake the locals pray to for rain, and where the musk deer come down at dawn to drink.
A 3 km out-and-back to the toe of the Milam glacier. The Gori Ganga is born here — literally, a hole in the ice. The blue you see in the moraine pool is not paint; it is light going through a thousand years of compressed snow. *not compulsary
Walk the five hundred stone houses of Milam slowly. The Rawat family compound — Nain Singh's family — is on the upper terrace. The school is at the far end. Carry nothing out. Leave nothing behind. Photograph quietly.
Drop tyre pressures before the descent — the boulders haven't moved. Bilju → Burphu → Martoli → Rilkot → Bugdiyar. Lunch at Bugdiyar. Continue down past Lilam, ford the Quirry Gar one more time. Reach Munsyari road by 16:00.
Park at the small Hanuman temple 7 km short of Munsyari town. A 3 km woodland hike — paper trees, oak, Himalayan monal calls — leads to a small alpine lake the Harkotiya clan have prayed at for centuries. Musk deer drink here at dawn. The legend says no leaf ever falls in the water; the birds clear them, no one knows when.
Instead of retracing yesterday's road, we drop south through Madkot, descend to Jauljibi where the Gori meets the Kali, brush the mouth of the Darma Valley — sister of the Johar, parallel ghost towns of its own — and arc the long way home through five centuries of Kumaoni history: the 80-fort kingdom of Askot, the Chand dynasty fort at Pithoragarh, the Banasur fort above Lohaghat, the Baleshwar temple at Champawat where the Chand kings were crowned, the Sikh gurudwara at Nanakmatta, and the forest at Chorgalia where the plains begin.
South of Munsyari, on the Gori. Hot sulphur springs (a quick stop, not a soak). Bridge crosses into the lower valley.
Time-permitting, a short detour up the Darma — the sister valley parallel to the Johar. Same Shauka diaspora, same ghost towns (Dugtu, Sela, Dantu) under the Panchachuli's western face.
Sacred meeting of the Gori Ganga (which we have followed for two days from her glacier) and the Mahakali — the river that becomes the Sharda, then joins the Ghagra, then becomes the Sarayu of Ayodhya.
Asi-Kot — 80 forts. Once the seat of the Katyuri dynasty. Now the gateway to the Askot Musk Deer Sanctuary — 600 sq km of snow leopard, Himalayan black bear, monal pheasant.
The Soar Valley town the Chand kings ruled from for four centuries. Their hilltop fort — once renamed London Fort by the British — still looks across to the Panchachuli. Lunch stop.
The original capital of the Chand dynasty (953 AD). The 12th-century Baleshwar Shiva temple. And — for the Kipling readers among us — the forest where Jim Corbett shot the Champawat man-eater in 1907, 436 dead before he was done.
A small descent off the route — 7 km — gets you the medieval fort of Banasur (1,859 m). Skip if light is short.
Sikh gurudwara on a quiet lake; then the forest belt — Chorgalia — where Kumaon's foothills surrender to the Terai plains. The headlights go on. Haldwani is twenty minutes away.
Everything we carry, sorted the way it will be needed — recovery first because the road decides, then comms, then light, then fire, then shelter, then commissary, then living, then capture, then security. Procure the kettle before departure. Khukri stays in the Hilux. Drone batteries below 5°C lose 30% capacity, keep them in the sleeping bag.
Milam camp at 3,450 m. Drink 4 L of water per day. No alcohol on Day 02 evening — save the party for after dinner on Day 02, not before sleep. Diamox 125 mg morning & evening from Day 01 night if anyone is altitude-sensitive.
Inner Line Permit recommended for Milam — If needed apply at the SDM office in Munsyari on the evening of Day 01 with two photocopies of ID and one passport photo per person. Carry originals. Carry copies.
Late May is the post-winter / pre-monsoon sweet spot. Days 12 — 18 °C, nights at Milam 0 — 4 °C with possible flurries. Pre-monsoon thunder builds after 14:00; we move in the mornings.
Top off both vehicles + both jerry cans at Thal on Day 01. Top off again on Day 04 morning at Munsyari if the pump has stock, or at Pithoragarh by 11:00 at the latest.
Jio & BSNL work in Munsyari town. Nothing works above Darkot. Inform one person at home before going dark, again when you return.
From Haldwani to the snout of the Milam glacier and back is roughly nine hundred and fifty kilometres of asphalt, gravel, river boulders, and dust. It is also one of the last drives in this country where the terrain still owes you nothing. The road we are taking on Day 02 was a footpath for centuries. It became a half-built road only this decade. By the time the Munsyari—Bugdiyar—Milam highway is finished, it will be a different valley.
We are driving it now because now is the last time it will feel like this. Bring your patience. Bring your headlamp. Bring your camera but turn it off sometimes. The villages we walk through on Day 03 held five hundred families before 1962. They hold lichen and silence today. The least we can do is be worth their attention while we visit.
Five hundred families used to climb up here every May. Some of them still come. The least we can do — we, with our radios and our winches and our jerry cans — is climb up gently, and remember whose glacier this still is.