Back from the Mountains!

Pictures from around Kathmandu and the bike trip. If you click on them they should get bigger(that's what she said)















Well I'm back from the very long mountain bike trip that was 3 days and 150km of riding over very hard terrain. It's relieving to know that I don't have to bike again tomorrow because I don't think I would make it. I went on the trip with Hari-the guide from the company I booked with Himalayan Mountain Bikes and with David. A guy from NY who was already going on the trip, I joined the group.

Day 1: Started biking at 9:30am, we left Thamel and headed west for the town of Nargakot which is 30km east of Kathmandu. Once you get out of the city the scenery is very nice and there isn't garbage everywhere. The trail is mostly a dirt road with lots of rocks that are in no way fun. The whole trip was in the Kathmandu Valley, biking is the best way to explore the valley and possibly the easiest. Even 25 minutes of the city it's a completely different lifestyle, all farming. These people grow potatoes, wheat, corn. Right now everything is planted for potatoes. This is where all their food comes from, what they don't eat they will sell for whatever then can at the local market and then stocked up on things like salt, sugar, soap, smokes. These Nepali people sure like to smoke, you can actually by individual cigarettes from the stores. What's very interesting is the altitude at which you can grow certain food. Rice is grown up to 2000m above sea level, corn and wheat up to 2800m and buckwheat and potatoes at 4000m which is astonishing considering them lack of oxygen in the air. Even at 2100m I can notice the difference, it makes everything harder, especially biking up the mountain. We got to the hotel around 3pm and just chilled out until supper. Nargakot is almost the same elevation as Darjeeling.

At supper the first night I had an experience with Dhaal Bhat, hopefully it was my last one as well but I doubt it. Dhaal Bhat is the main meal over here, it's rice, lentils and curried vegetables and they keep serving as long as your eating it. I tried curried vegetables for the first time and they weren't as bad as I thought they'd be. I still won't eat them again, once was enough.

Day 2: Breakfast was hard boiled eggs, which was a great surprise because you never know what it could be. We started climbing for 6km to a look out tower, it wasn't a gradual climb either, it was like straight up. At the top I'd like to say the views of the mountains were awesome-it's suppose to be one of the best places to view the Himalayan Range. Except the mountains were covered in fog, which is very common for this time of year. I use the term fog loosely because it's part that and pollution. There is very little wind around these parts of Nepal, which is a little odd. After the climb we went down the mountain, probably for about 15 km, there was several switch backs so you couldn't go that fast but it was still a good time. It was fairly scary because there are no guard rails( do you think there would be) and sometimes you are right on the edge of the cliff and there's like 2000 feet of open air 1 foot beside you. Day 2 was fun, although we did climb about 10 km straight at one point-this is after the tower climb and about 40km of riding.

Day 3. Back to Thamel, the home stretch. We rode about 35 kms today and I'm completely exhausted. More detail will be added tomorrow about this. I need to get some correct names of places to write it properly. I didn't proof read this so hopefully it's not too bad.

Well that's all I got for now because I'm very tired. Thanks for reading and feel free to comment or ask questions. Tomorrow I'm just going to take it easy, good thing I have like 5 weeks of vacation to recover from the bike ride. Thanks Dalton.

Andrew Rowaan