From salt trail to Kailash gateway
Humla has always looked north as much as south. Its people traded with Purang, the Tibetan market town also called Taklakot, carrying grain up the Humla Karnali and bringing back salt and wool, and the trail through Simikot was part of this network. When the border became more tightly controlled after 1959 and Tibetan grazing was restricted, much of the old trade dried up, and Humla became one of the hardest-pressed districts in Nepal.
Simikot grew as the district headquarters, with an airstrip that remained the only practical link to the south for decades. The runway, just 549 m long at nearly 3,000 m, can only take short take-off and landing aircraft such as Twin Otters and Dorniers. The Nepal Trust, working in Humla since 1996, was among the first organisations to run health and development programmes here, including through the years of conflict.
In the last decade change has come fast. A road from the Tibetan border at Hilsa reached Simikot in 2019, and in July 2025 a Bailey bridge over the Chuwa Khola completed a rough road link south along the Karnali corridor. Kailash pilgrims pass through by the thousand each summer, most flying in and taking helicopters on to Hilsa, and Simikot's hotels and shops have multiplied.
