If you are trying to sort out your rohtang pass permit before your Manali trip, this is the page that gives you every number you actually need without sending you to five different blogs.
Most travellers get stuck on three things. Which website is real, how much it costs, and what documents they need to keep ready.
Let us clear all three in the next two minutes.
You book the rohtang pass permit through the official government portal at https://rohtangpermits.hp.gov.in/.
For a car, jeep or MUV going up for normal sightseeing, you pay ₹550 in total. That is a ₹500 permit fee plus a ₹50 congestion charge.
The portal lists a valid ID proof, a valid PUC certificate and your vehicle registration date as mandatory information.
Right now you can apply only for the next two days.
The restriction sits on the vehicle, not on each person sitting inside it.
So if your car is entering the Rohtang tourism route, that car needs a permit. Your four friends in the back seat do not each buy one.
If you are driving your own car from Manali, you book the permit yourself. Nobody else will do it for you.
If you have hired a taxi, the operator usually books it. But ask them directly, before you pay any advance, whether the permit for your exact travel date is already secured.
We have seen travellers reach Gulaba barrier at 6 AM only to find their driver assumed someone else had booked it. That is a wasted morning and a wasted day.
If you are simply a passenger in a vehicle that already holds a valid permit, you are covered. Carry your own ID anyway.
One thing people miss. A permit does not beat the weather.
If snow, a landslide or a district administration order closes the road, your printed permit means nothing that day. The barrier stays shut.
Our Manali team plans around this every season. If you want a driver who already knows the barrier timings and the permit process, our Manali tour packages handle the whole thing.
Want to avoid the permit confusion altogether? Our Rohtang Pass tour packages can take care of the planning, permits and transport so you can focus on the journey.
The only official booking portal is https://rohtangpermits.hp.gov.in/.
The old site at rohtangpermits.nic.in has moved to this new HP government domain. If a blog still sends you to the .nic.in link, that page is outdated.
Check the URL before you enter your card details. Several unofficial sites take your booking and add a service fee on top of the government charge for no real reason.
The official portal also lets you check your permit status and reprint a permit if you lost the printout.
There is an official Rohtang Permit mobile app as well. Its Android listing was updated on 16 July 2026.
This is where most of the confusion starts. There are three separate things on the portal and they are not interchangeable.
This is the category for vehicles going up to Rohtang for sightseeing.
It is valid for one day, to and fro. You go up, you come back, that is it.
The daily tourism quota is 800 petrol vehicles and 400 diesel vehicles.
The official website describes this category as being for private vehicles only.
It runs on a separate daily quota of 60 petrol and 40 diesel vehicles.
Here is the catch that surprises people. The Special Permit is issued only once to the same vehicle during the entire season.
So if you use it in June, that same car cannot get another Special Permit in September. The application also asks for tourist address details.
This one is not for sightseeing at the top. It is for vehicles crossing beyond Rohtang and continuing onward.
LMVs and passenger vehicles pay ₹50. Goods vehicles pay ₹100.
The charge is valid for one day, to and fro, and you can currently pay it only for the next one day from the current date.
You can get only two Beyond Rohtang permits for one vehicle in a Tuesday-to-Monday week.
No, and mixing these two up ruins more trips than any other permit mistake.
e-Aagman is a separate system for vehicles entering Lahaul and Spiti district and for specified vehicle circuits.
If you are heading towards Lahaul, Spiti or Chandratal, check the live e-Aagman requirements on their own portal. A Rohtang sightseeing permit does not automatically cover district entry.
We tell every traveller doing the Spiti circuit to treat these as two separate jobs. Our Spiti Valley tour packages and Sissu tour packages both factor this in.
The whole rohtang pass permit online process takes about ten minutes if you have your documents next to you.
Go to https://rohtangpermits.hp.gov.in/ and pick the correct permit category.
Before you click anything, decide one thing. Is your trip only up to Rohtang and back, or are you continuing beyond it?
That single answer decides whether you need the tourism permit or the Beyond Rohtang slip. Then check availability for your intended date.
The official tourism-permit page lists three things as mandatory. A valid ID proof, a valid Pollution Under Control certificate, and your vehicle registration date.
Keep the RC and driving licence physically in front of you while filling the form. It is much easier to copy the registration date correctly than to fix it later.
Match the registration number, fuel type and registration date exactly with what the documents say.
The portal uses the registration date to check the vehicle age rule.
If the entered information does not match your valid documents, the staff at the barrier can refuse entry. That is a long drive back to Manali for nothing.
Pay according to your vehicle class. Cars, jeeps and MUVs are ₹550, buses and HMVs are ₹600, and Beyond Rohtang slips are ₹50 or ₹100.
Save the bank transaction ID and the payment confirmation screenshot. You will need both if something goes wrong.
The current official portal says a printout is compulsory.
Download it the moment payment goes through and keep one printed copy folded with your vehicle documents. Phone batteries die at altitude and the network near Gulaba is unreliable.
You can also use the portal or the official app to check status or reprint a permit later.
The official portal currently releases tourism permits in two windows every day.
At 10:00, it releases 400 petrol and 200 diesel permits.
At 16:00, it releases another 400 petrol and 200 diesel permits.
So if you missed the morning batch, do not give up. Come back at 4 PM the same day.
Applications can currently be made only for the next two days from the current date. There is no booking three weeks in advance.
One vehicle can receive only three tourism permits during a week counted from Tuesday to Monday.
Popular dates do fill up, especially weekends and school holiday weeks. We will not tell you it sells out in exactly seven minutes, because that number changes constantly.
What we always tell our travellers is simple. Keep two possible Rohtang days in your Manali itinerary instead of one. If day one fails, day two usually works.
The rohtang pass permit fee is straightforward once you know your vehicle class.
For cars and jeeps, the permit fee is ₹500 and the congestion charge is ₹50. That makes ₹550 total.
For MUVs, it is the same. ₹500 permit fee plus ₹50 congestion charge, so ₹550 total.
For buses and HMVs, the permit fee is ₹500 and the congestion charge is ₹100, making ₹600 total.
For Beyond Rohtang travel, LMVs and passenger vehicles pay ₹50 while goods vehicles pay ₹100.
These are vehicle charges. There is no separate per-passenger fee, so a family of five in one car still pays ₹550.
The portal lists a valid ID proof, a valid PUC certificate and the vehicle registration date.
Check one thing carefully. Both the PUC and the ID must be valid on your travel date, not just on your booking date.
An Aadhaar card, passport, voter ID and driving licence are commonly accepted as valid identity documents. However, the official permit portal only specifies that you must carry a valid ID proof, so ensure whichever document you use is valid on your travel date.
The vehicle must not be more than 10 years old, counted from its registration date.
This trips up people renting older cars in Manali. Every other document can be perfect and the vehicle still will not qualify.
If you are hiring a car, ask for the registration year before you book it.
Carry the vehicle RC, driving licence, vehicle insurance, the printed permit and your payment confirmation.
These are practical things to have in the glovebox, not necessarily all listed as mandatory application fields on the official tourism-permit information page.
Checks at the barrier move faster when you hand over a clean folder instead of scrolling through your phone.
The standard tourism-permit quota is 800 petrol vehicles and 400 diesel vehicles per day.
That total splits across the 10:00 and 16:00 release windows, with half going out in each.
The Special Permit runs on its own separate limit of 60 petrol and 40 diesel vehicles per day.
Notice how the diesel quota is exactly half the petrol quota. That is why entering your fuel type correctly matters more than people realise.
Pick the wrong fuel type and you are competing in a smaller pool, or worse, you carry a permit that does not match your vehicle at the barrier.
The quota also does not guarantee anything about the road itself. On a bad weather day, a valid permit and 800 slots mean nothing.
You will read on plenty of older travel guides that Tuesday is permanently closed for maintenance.
The current official permit pages display "NONE" in the no-vehicle maintenance-day field.
But temporary Tuesday closures can still come through a District Kullu order for snow clearance, road surfacing or maintenance work.
So do not assume every Tuesday is open, and do not assume every Tuesday is shut. Check the live official portal and the current district order for your exact date.
A temporary closure period in May 2026 is not a full-season rule. Treat each date on its own.
If you want the month-by-month picture of what the pass actually looks like, we covered it in Rohtang Pass in August, Rohtang Pass in September and Rohtang Pass in October.
If you are driving your own vehicle, look at the Special Rohtang Pass Permit category first.
Remember it is issued only once to the same vehicle during the entire season. Use it wisely.
Check the live availability and read the category description on the portal before you pay. The descriptions do get updated.
A taxi operator normally handles the vehicle permit. But confirm it before you finalise the booking, not on the morning of travel.
Ask two direct questions. Which permit category did you book, and is it valid for my exact date?
Not every taxi operator has a guaranteed permit quota sitting in their pocket. Some book the same portal you would.
Motorcycle permit rules and charges can differ from those for cars, jeeps and MUVs, and online information is often inconsistent.
Do not assume that the motorcycle permit is free or that the standard ₹550 vehicle charge automatically applies. Check the live Rohtang permit portal or contact the Manali SDM office before finalising your travel plans.
The portal issues a permit only after it receives a payment-confirmation response from the bank.
Fees paid for a successful transaction are non-refundable. So book the date you are actually going.
For a failed transaction, the official refund policy asks you to allow up to 72 hours for the money to come back.
If it has not arrived after 72 hours, email rohtangrefunds@gmail.com.
Your email should include the bank transaction ID, the transaction date, the date you booked the permit for, your vehicle registration number, the mobile number used for booking and the transaction mode.
Before you pay a second time, check your permit status on the portal. In our experience, half the "failed" payments actually went through and the permit is already sitting there.
First, wait for the second release window. If the 10 AM allocation finished, the 4 PM batch opens the same day.
Second, keep an alternative sightseeing day inside your Manali plan. This is the single biggest thing that saves trips.
Solang Valley, the Atal Tunnel and Sissu all work as strong plan-B days. Just remember to check whether the Lahaul-Spiti entry needs a separate e-Aagman clearance before you head that way.
Solang alone can fill a full day if you like activities. We listed what is actually worth doing in top adventure activities in Manali.
Hiring a local taxi can simplify the permit side of things, but availability on peak dates is never guaranteed.
Check the official portal for permit availability, permit status and any notices posted there.
Then review the current District Kullu orders, and confirm locally on the evening before you travel.
Snow, landslides, road work, traffic restrictions or plain unsafe weather can close the route temporarily even well after the season has opened.
We are deliberately not giving you a confirmed 2026 opening date here, because current sources conflict between 15 May and 17 May. Neither is settled.
In our experience, choosing the wrong permit category creates more confusion than the payment itself. People book a tourism permit and then try to cross beyond Rohtang, or the other way round.
Entering the wrong fuel type is the second most common error. Petrol and diesel run on separate quotas and separate counts.
An expired PUC certificate is a quiet trip-killer. Nobody checks it until the barrier, and by then you are already three hours into your morning.
Getting the registration date wrong looks harmless while typing, but the portal uses that date for the 10-year age check.
Speaking of which, people still try with vehicles older than 10 years. Perfect papers, wrong car, no entry.
Booking the wrong date happens more than you would think, especially when you can only book two days ahead and you are counting from today.
Forgetting the printout is avoidable. The portal says a printed copy is compulsory. Print it the night before.
Assuming every Tuesday is closed makes people skip a perfectly open day. Assuming every Tuesday is open makes them lose one. Check the live order instead.
And finally, confusing a Rohtang sightseeing permit with entry into Lahaul-Spiti. Different systems, different portals, different rules.
The rohtang pass permit part of your trip is honestly the easy bit. Right portal, right category, right fuel type, printed copy in the car.
What changes without warning is the road, not the paperwork.
Check the official portal one last time in the evening before you travel, and ask someone local in Manali what the barrier situation looks like that morning.
Do that, and you will not be one of the cars turning back at Gulaba.
Planning your Rohtang Pass trip from Manali? Explore our Rohtang Pass tour packages for help with permits, transport and the practical details that can make your day easier.
