Google Maps shows Sach Pass as a yellow line connecting Bairagarh to Killar. This line is technically accurate and functionally meaningless – like saying a body contains water. Yes, true, but missing some important context about whether that body is alive, dead, or in the process of drowning.

The question “Is Sach Pass open?” is possibly the most philosophical inquiry in motorcycle touring. Open to whom? Open for what? Open in what sense? The road physically exists – you can see it on satellite imagery, trace its switchbacks up the mountain. But existence and usability are different concepts, and Sach Pass exploits this distinction ruthlessly.

The official opening date is sometime in June, depending on when the snow clears. The official closing date is sometime in September, depending on when the snow returns. These dates are suggestions provided by the Public Works Department, an organization that has optimistic ideas about both snow and their own effectiveness at clearing it.

But even when “open,” Sach Pass exists in a state of quantum superposition. The road is simultaneously there and not there until you actually attempt to ride it, at which point the waveform collapses into whichever reality most inconveniences you. Landslides erase sections overnight. Streams change course and create new water crossings where maps show solid ground. Rock falls restructure the path. The road you read about in someone’s blog from last year is literally not the same road you’ll encounter this year.

I once planned a trip over Sach Pass based on trip reports from the previous season. Multiple riders had successfully crossed. The road was challenging but manageable. The passes were clear. This information was three months old and completely worthless. When I arrived at Bairagarh, locals informed me that a landslide two weeks earlier had taken out a half-kilometer section. Could I get through? Maybe. On foot? Yes. With a motorcycle? “Try and see.”

This is the Sach Pass approach to certainty: empiricism with stakes.

The maps lie in other ways too. The distance from Bairagarh to Killar via Sach Pass is listed as approximately 130 kilometers. This is accurate if you measure distance in a straight line through the Earth’s crust like some kind of subterranean mole creature. For those of us confined to the surface, dealing with switchbacks and detours and the fact that the road doesn’t go where the line on the map says it goes, the actual distance is longer. How much longer? Depends on the landslides.

More importantly, the maps don’t convey time. They show 130 kilometers, and your brain thinks, “Maybe three hours on a motorcycle?” This is the thinking of someone who has never ridden Sach Pass. Three hours is what you spend on the first 40 kilometers before the real difficulty begins. The entire crossing takes eight to twelve hours depending on conditions, mechanical issues, your skill level, and how many times you need to stop to question your life choices.

The elevation profile on maps shows a climb to 4,420 meters and then a descent. Technically true. What it doesn’t show is that you’re climbing and descending constantly throughout the route, that there are dozens of smaller passes before the big one, that elevation is gained and lost and gained again in ways that turn “going uphill” into a philosophical state rather than a directional description.

Then there’s the issue of road classification. Sach Pass appears on maps as a “road” in the same category as, say, the highway from Manali to Leh. This is like classifying both tea and battery acid as “beverages” – technically accurate, functionally misleading. Sach Pass is a road in the sense that humans have declared intent for vehicles to travel this way. Whether that intent has been successfully implemented is a separate question.

What makes this tyranny of non-existence particularly cruel is that you don’t know the road’s status until you’re committed. You ride from Chamba to Bairagarh – several hours on decent roads. You’re invested. You’ve told people your plans. You’ve built a narrative about conquering Sach Pass. Backing out now means admitting defeat before you’ve actually tried.

So you go. And maybe the road is there, more or less. Or maybe you get 30 kilometers in and discover that “open” meant “open for jeeps with experienced local drivers who know which rocks are stable,” not “open for tourists on Royal Enfields with YouTube channel ambitions.”

The locals in the region have adapted to this uncertainty with a kind of pragmatic fatalism. They don’t say the pass is “open” or “closed.” They say things like “Some people are going” or “It’s possible” or “Depends on your courage,” which are all ways of saying “This is your problem now.”

I’ve learned to distrust maps in the Himalayas, but Sach Pass taught me a deeper lesson: distrust the concept of roads altogether. A road isn’t an object; it’s a negotiation between human intention and geological reality. Sometimes humans win. Sometimes the mountain wins. Sometimes you arrive at a section that’s technically passable and technically lethal and you have to decide which definition matters more.

The tyranny isn’t that the road doesn’t exist. It’s that it exists enough to tempt you, but not enough to deliver on the promise that maps make. It’s Schrödinger’s road – simultaneously open and closed, passable and impassable, there and not there until you actually attempt it and collapse the uncertainty into concrete reality.

Usually concrete reality involving concrete obstacles.

So when planning a trip over Sach Pass, ignore Google Maps. Ignore last year’s trip reports. Ignore official opening dates. Instead, arrive prepared for the road to not exist, and be pleasantly surprised if it does. Carry extra food, fuel, and spare parts. Have a backup plan that doesn’t involve Sach Pass. Accept that you might turn back.

And remember: the most accurate map of Sach Pass is the one that simply says “Good luck.”