The Road to Dodra Kwar: Siddu, a Rs 30,000/Kg Mushroom, and Chanshal Pass

Asia · Solo Travel

Solo traveller · 18 min read

Theog Chauraha, about 30km from Shimla, is where this Himachal Pradesh route genuinely splits in two, one road toward Kinnaur and Spiti, the other toward Rohru and eventually Dodra Kwar. I took the Dodra Kwar road, and this first stretch alone, before Dodra Kwar itself even starts, turned into three genuinely packed days.

Siya Ram Siddu, a short drive from Theog Chauraha, was the first real stop, and Siddu itself is worth knowing about before you go looking for it. It’s a steamed bread made from wheat flour fermented overnight, traditionally stuffed with poppy seed and lentil, sometimes paneer instead, occasionally left unstuffed, though the stuffed version is the real deal. Eaten with ghee and a tomato-chilli dip on the side, it’s genuinely one of the better regional dishes I’ve had. Worth knowing, Siddu was nearly a lost recipe in Shimla as recently as 10 to 12 years ago, and it only came back into restaurants once social media demand brought tourists asking for it specifically. Now it’s everywhere, in Shimla town and well beyond it.

The drive toward Kharapathar, 75km from Shimla, passes apple orchards around Kotkhai wrapped in white netting to protect against hailstorms, genuinely worth a photo stop. Kharapathar itself is a small market town, named, according to legend, for a massive stone Bhim is said to have thrown here, standing upright ever since, though the stone itself is nowhere to be found today. From here, a single-track road runs 7km to Giri Ganga temple, and it’s exactly as tight as it sounds, two cars genuinely cannot pass each other, and whichever one is closer to a wider spot has to reverse. I met an oncoming car partway through and it worked out fine, but budget real patience for this stretch. Deodar trees start dominating the higher you climb, replacing the pine that’s more common around Shimla and Manali at lower elevation.

Two genuinely ancient temples sit at Giri Ganga, the Giri Ganga Mata temple, built on the order of the King of Jubbal, and an adjoining Lord Shiva temple whose actual age nobody seems to know. The River Giri Ganga itself originates right here, a tributary of the Yamuna that eventually joins it at Paonta Sahib, and it’s considered auspicious enough that devotees take a holy dip and carry water home with them.

From the temple, it’s a 2 to 2.5 hour trek up to Kuppar, and there are no signboards marking the way. I got lucky here, meeting Abhishek, a subscriber who happened to be doing the same trek that day, and having someone who actually knew the unmarked path made a real difference, I’d likely have turned back without him. The route means walking largely through snow regardless of which line you pick, sinking half a foot to begin with and considerably more higher up. Reaching Kuppar itself is a genuine payout, dome-shaped snow-covered peaks in every direction, and the actual source pond of the Giri Ganga sits up here too, according to local legend, a saint resting here while carrying Ganga water is how the spring first came to be. The descent took 45 to 50 minutes, and moving too fast through snow at that grade felt genuinely risky, slowing down was the right call.

Without Abhishek, a subscriber I happened to meet at the trailhead, I don’t think I’d have found my way to Kuppar at all.

Jubbal Palace genuinely stopped me from a distance, cream-coloured, sandstone below and deodar wood above, easily one of the more striking buildings on this whole route. I arrived to a locked gate, on a Sunday specifically, and locals told me it usually runs until 6pm otherwise. Worth flagging honestly: most published sources list Jubbal Palace as open daily, 6am to 6pm, no entry fee, so my own Sunday closure may have been a one-off rather than the norm, but I’d still call ahead if a Sunday visit is your only option, since my own experience didn’t match what’s generally published. I only got the exterior from a few angles, and even that was worth the stop, though I’d have loved to see the antique guns and the library inside.

Hatkoti, 20 to 25 minutes on, more than made up for it. Hateshwari Mata Temple dates to the 8th century, the idol a form of Goddess Jagdamba as Mahishasura Mardini, cast in Ashtadhatu, eight metals, and said to have been brought here by Adi Guru Shankaracharya himself. An equally old, undated Lord Shiva temple sits alongside it, along with five smaller shrines connected to the Pandavas. None of this history is written down, it’s carried entirely through oral tradition. One detail genuinely stayed with me, a sacred pitcher outside the temple is kept chained to the goddess’s feet, because legend holds it would otherwise flow off on its own into the nearby River Pabbar. I stayed for the evening prayer, and the whole place has a settled, unhurried calm to it that’s hard to manufacture.

After a night in Rohru, on the bank of the River Pabbar with Karamchand ji, the same driver from an earlier Spiti trip of mine, joining for this leg, Larot village became an early lunch stop, purely on a hunch we might not get another chance later in the day. Legacy by Kewal Ram, a homestay charging around ₹2,000 a room, put in our order and set us up with raw local honey while we waited, solidified from the cold, extracted from bees feeding on apple nectar specifically, with a flavour that genuinely shifts by season. Nothing like the filtered honey I’m used to.

Lunch turned into one of the better meals of the whole trip. Baadi, a wheat-flour dough cooked in water and shaped, salted lightly, tastes only alright with ghee alone but genuinely comes alive with raw honey instead, filling enough that two pieces is a full meal on its own. Alongside it, local Rajma and Gucchi ki Sabzi, Gucchi being a wild morel that grows naturally in the Himalayas during monsoon and sells for around ₹30,000 a kilo, a taste closer to soyabean than to any mushroom I know, genuinely something to eat sparingly given the price, more like a delicacy than a regular ingredient. Ogal ki Roti, gluten-free buckwheat bread, rounded the meal out, the same buckwheat I grew up having twice a year during fasting days back home.

Chanshal Pass sits 19km from Larot, though muddy, poorly finished roads stretched that into an hour and a half. Snow shows up 7 to 8km before the pass itself, and I stopped 3km short just to take in the contrast, brown mountains, dark green forest, and a slope of snow that genuinely looked like a bedsheet pulled over the landscape. It reminded me of Chumi Gyatse near Tawang, on the way to the China border in Arunachal Pradesh, a similar quality of light and openness despite being on opposite sides of the country.

Reaching the pass itself delivered a genuine 360-degree view, easily one of the high points of the whole route. Two honest regrets: I arrived too late in the day to properly sit with it, ideally you’d want to be here by noon and stay till 4, and I hadn’t brought a foldable chair, which would have made all the difference for actually settling in rather than just standing around for two hours. From here, the road continues 22km further, crossing Dodra village along the way, to Kwar, where I stayed the night at Ice Homestay, a wooden building with 6 to 7 rooms, most with attached bathrooms. Dodra and Kwar themselves, the actual destination this whole road leads to, get their own full write-up: Kwar and Dodra: A Triple-Locked Grain Store, Apricot Oil, and a Peak Google Has Never Measured.

Jubbal Palace	Published hours: daily, 6am–6pm, no entry fee. Call ahead for a Sunday visit given a real reported closure
Kuppar trek	2–2.5 hours up from Giri Ganga temple; unmarked path, a local guide genuinely helps
Larot homestay	~₹2,000/room at Legacy by Kewal Ram
Best Chanshal Pass timing	Arrive by noon for a full afternoon at the pass; bring a foldable chair