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Six days of serious mountain cycling on rough rocky roads has left me exhausted.  Having entered Nepal on the far east side from Siliguri, India, we spent 5 days making serious distance on Nepal’s low-lands Hwy 1.  90km days were becoming routine, and we were fortunate to meet a number of great people in the low lands, including a nice village stay we’ll write more about later. 

But 90km / day on a flat road was too easy.  I mean, how could we come to Nepal and not go into the Himalayas?  So we turned north in our ignorance of what we were beginning, in our ignorance from our low quality map.  It looked like a shorter way to Kathmandu.  We turned north on a reasonable looking secondary road (one of the few besides the 3 main highways in all of Nepal) towards a town typed in bigger print than the thousands of villages dotting our map connected only by mountain “tracks,” called Sindhulimadi.  Riding straight into the Himalayan foothills which quickly became mountains, without snow mind you but mountains none the less, we made it to Sindhulimadi which turned out to be more like a village anyway. 

The pavement quickly gave way to dirt and rock.  After Sindhulimadi though, the gravel miraculously turned into brandnew Japanese pavement and one heck of an incredible uphill switchback road and drainage system climbing up over a tall pass.  But the people told us time and time again, the road’s not finished, its only a walking path.  But we pushed on. 

We camped near the top of the pass the Japanese road conquered, and biked down through the construction of the road on the otherside.  Foremen told us the way ahead was difficult, but after some coaxing they would admit it was possible.  They were right in both.

Lucky for us, the steep walking path only lasted 1km, after a narrow cable bridge, and that 2 local boys were eager to help us carry the band wagon over this most difficult stretch.  After the Japanese road ended though, the roads were all rock roads, not small gravel rock, but big rocks that greatly threatened the integrity of our already burdened wheels.

Slowness.  30km days that felt like 100km days.  Sweating even in the cool air and often pushing bikes up up up.  Yet beauty and silence and peace, among sparsely populated mountain communities scattered about.  Though physically difficult, it was well worth it. 

Now, we rest.  After 11 tough days.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 25th, 2008 at 4:58 am and is filed under Pete's Posts, Group Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.