Passes on the Pashmina Route: 9 Famous Trade Passes of Western Himalayas — Then & Now
Why the Pashmina Route Runs Through Checkpoints, Not Just Scenery
A mountain pass used to be the only door between two worlds — cross it, or don't get in at all. Every one of the nine passes below had a check post, a toll, or an army watching it, because whoever held the pass held who came through. No permission, no passage — traders paid, pilgrims prayed, and armies fought, just to get their wool, salt or silk to the other side.
Today, most of these same doors just have a signboard, a chai stall, and a parking lot. Four of them are still the actual drive on our own Pashmina Road trip, from Manali to Kashmir via Zanskar and Kargil. The rest carried the same trade in their day — except one, which carries no trade story at all. Here's what each one used to move — and, since a name is worth knowing too, what it actually means.
Here are the 9 mountain passes behind the Pashmina Route's story. Every one of these used to move something — wool, salt, soldiers, prayers — long before anyone crossed them for a selfie. Some still do. Here's what's changed, and what hasn't.
The Nine Passes: Then vs Now
Rohtang - La | 3980 Mts | Manali, H.P. | Mid June - Mid Nov The Most Photographed Pass Near Manali Is Named, Quite Literally, 'Pile of Corpses'
What the name means: Rohtang is generally read as Persian for 'pile of corpses' — earned over centuries of weather that didn't spare every caravan that tried to cross.
This is also where the Pashmina Route itself begins. An officer of the Kullu rajas weighed every sack of salt and grain here before letting caravans through — a real customs post at Rahla, right at the base of the pass — because Rohtang was the oldest and most-used route into the Buddhist regions of Lahaul and Spiti, and every trader moving wool toward Kashmir had to clear it first.
After the 1999 Kargil conflict it became a strategic backup route to Ladakh. Then in 2020 the Atal Tunnel made the pass optional — so now it's mostly tourists who choose to go up, not people who have no other way through. On our own trips, Day 1 of the Pashmina Route starts right here, the literal gate of the route. We still take the climb when we can; some views are worth the harder road.
Kunzum - La | 4550 Mts | Lahaul-Spiti, H.P. | June - Oct The Pass That Forks Off the Same Road — Kunzum, Spiti's Doorway
What the name means: Kunzum is commonly explained as 'meeting place' — from the Tibetan kun ('all') and zom ('meeting') — fitting, since this is where the roads to Spiti, Lahaul and Ladakh all converge. Worth flagging that this is the popular travel explanation, not one we've found confirmed in an academic source.
Kunzum isn't part of our current Pashmina Route itinerary — the drive we run today continues on toward Zanskar rather than turning off into Spiti. But it forks off this very same Rohtang gateway, and it carried its own share of the same wool trade south, so it belongs in this story.
Every trader crossing from Lahaul into Spiti stopped at the same tiny temple near 15,000 feet first, asking the mountain for safe passage before going on. Our drivers on the Spiti routes still do the same thing today — habit more than superstition, and only possible for about five months of the year before snow shuts the pass again.
Shinku - La | 5100 Mts | H.P. - Ladakh | April - Dec The Direct Way Into Zanskar — And a Tunnel Being Drilled Beneath It Right Now
What the name means: genuinely undocumented. Neither 'Shinkun' nor 'Shingo' has a settled meaning in any source we could find — a real gap, not an oversight on our part.
Shepherds walked this pass on foot for generations before it had a name most travellers would recognise — the more direct of the two historic ways from Lahaul into Zanskar, cutting straight across rather than the longer route traders bound further north took instead.
This is the actual pass our groups cross on Day 2 of the Pashmina Route, descending from Himachal into Zanskar. Right now, India's Border Roads Organisation is drilling what could become the world's longest high-altitude tunnel beneath it — we're watching that one change in real time.
Pensi - La | 4400 Mts | Zanskar, Ladakh | April - Dec Zanskar's Only Road Out Used to Shut for Winter — So People Walked Out on a Frozen River Instead
What the name means: no clearly documented meaning found either — even Zanskar's own gateway pass keeps this one to itself.
For half the year, this was Zanskar's only door to the outside world. When it snowed shut, people didn't wait for spring — they walked out on the frozen Zanskar river below instead.
That same walk is the Chadar trek, which people now sign up for on purpose. Our Day 4 crosses Pensi La in the easier direction — the road here only runs mid-June to early October, the same seasonal rhythm the traders always worked around.
Zoji - La | 3530 Mts | Kashmir | April - Dec In 1948, Someone Sent Tanks Across This Pass at an Altitude No Tank Had Ever Operated At
What the name means: usually read as 'mountain pass of blizzards.' Local oral tradition tells it differently — Zoji is said to come from Du-Zhi-la, the goddess of Tibet's four seasons.
This was the seasonal chokepoint of the whole corridor — closed by snow roughly November to May, which meant caravans planned their entire trading calendar around this one crossing. Then in 1948, Zoji La was captured by Pakistani forces, cutting off the route to Leh. India's answer was to send tanks across a pass at over 11,500 feet — an altitude no tank had ever operated at before, anywhere on Earth. Engineers built the track in secret at night; the tanks crossed with their turrets removed. It worked.
Today it's a regular, if still nerve-wracking, stretch of the Srinagar–Leh highway, soon to get an all-weather tunnel of its own. Our groups cross this on Day 6, descending from Kargil toward Sonamarg and Srinagar — the same stretch where the raw pashm this whole route carried finally became a shawl.
From Here, the Same Trade Network Keeps Going
Zoji La is where our own 8D7N itinerary's road trip closes the loop. But the pashmina trade this whole route existed for reached further than just this one road. The next three passes carried the exact same wool economy in their day — Baralacha La, Khardung La and Chang La. None of them are part of Travel AIP's current drive, but every one of them is part of the same story. The last pass on this list, Umling La, breaks that pattern entirely — it has no trade story to tell at all, and we're keeping it in for exactly that reason.
Baralacha - La | 4890 Mts | Lahaul, H.P. – Ladakh | June - Oct The Long Way Round — Baralacha La
What the name means: widely explained as 'pass with crossroads on the summit' — marking the point where three mountain ranges, the Zanskar, Pir Panjal and Great Himalayas, meet.
This was the longer of the two historic ways out of Lahaul — the road traders bound for Zanskar and Ladakh took when they went the wider way instead of Shinkun La's more direct crossing. Same trade, same wool, just the slower route.
It's part of the modern Manali–Leh highway today, not our Zanskar-bound drive — the road not taken on this particular trip, but very much part of the same network back when all of it moved on foot. We haven't been able to source a verified historical photograph of Baralacha La itself, so we're leaving this one without an image rather than filling the gap with a stand-in.
Khardung - La | 5360 Mts | Ladakh | June - Nov For Years, I Posed at a Signboard That Was Quietly Lying to Everyone Who Read It
What the name means: not clearly settled. The Tibetan spelling (mkhar-gdong) hints at 'mkhar' (fort) and 'gdong' (face) — the same 'khar' root behind Kargil's own fort-derived name — but no source confirms this reading outright, so treat it as a plausible lead, not a fact.
This was a working leg of Ladakh's own trade routes, carrying pashmina, tea and salt north toward Central Asia and Yarkand — part of the same pashmina economy this whole road existed for, long before anyone came here for a selfie. It's genuinely part of that history
Today the road exists mainly to supply the Siachen Glacier, the world's highest battlefield. And that famous 'world's highest motorable road at 18,380 ft' sign everyone photographs? GPS surveys later found it's actually several hundred feet lower. Nobody's changed the sign.
Chang - La | 5360 Mts | Ladakh | June - Oct The Road to Pangong Tso Is Named After Either a Direction or a Hermit — Nobody's Settled Which
What the name means: genuinely disputed. Ladakhi Tibetic reads it plainly as 'southern pass' (chang = south). Local tradition tells a different, more colourful story — a hermit named Chang who once kept watch from a shrine at the summit. Both versions get repeated; neither has fully displaced the other.
Whichever story you believe about its name, this pass opens onto the Changthang plateau — where Ladakh's Changpa nomads herd the actual goats behind the wool this whole trade was built on. As close to the source as any pass on this list gets. It carried real pashmina-trade weight in its day, just not on our current itinerary.
It's also the third-highest motorable pass on Earth — most people driving to Pangong Tso have no idea. We take almost every Pangong-bound group across it on our other routes.
Umling - La | 5798 Mts | Ladakh | June - Oct A Road Built Quietly to Move Soldiers Ended Up as a World Record for Auto-Rickshaws
What the name means: nothing dramatic — most likely just named for the area around it, near Umling village. No legend, no hermit, no goddess. Fitting, for the one pass on this list with no story to tell.
This is the one exception on this whole list. Built in 2017 near Demchok, right on the Line of Actual Control, mainly to move troops quietly through Ladakh's remote Changthang region. There's no caravan behind it, no wool, no centuries of people who had no other way through. Every other pass on this list carried someone who had no choice. This one exists because someone wanted a road.
From 2017 to 2025 it held the record for the world's highest motorable road at 19,024 feet — a record foreign teams later chased in modified auto-rickshaws. India's own border engineers then broke their own record a few years later, at a different pass, in the same region.
Travel These Old Trade Routes Yourself
Nine passes. Nine different reasons people once risked them — trade, war, pilgrimage, weather that didn't care either way, and one, Umling La, built for no reason but a road. Four of them are still the actual drive on our Pashmina Route trip, Manali to Kashmir via Zanskar and Kargil. The rest carried the same trade, just not on this specific route we run today. Now most of us just cross them for the view.
I still drive several of these routes myself, on the Silk Route Circuit and beyond.
If you want the fuller story of one of these routes, read The Pashmina Route — our Manali to Srinagar story via Zanskar and Kargil on the Old Silk Route.
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