Blog

I love biking. That’s no secret, but it made quite a difference in Nepal. One of the first things on the list was to rent a mountain bike. Răzvan and Alina already had bikes and after I rented one for myself we decided to go on a 2 day tour around Kathmandu valley. Our route was Kathmandu – Dashinkhali Temple – Kulekhani Lake – Thankot – Kathmandu and the scheduled time was 2 days. We prepared some things to take with us (my backpack included 1 camera and 3 large lenses) and were ready to hit the road.

Woke up not so early in the morning and got on our bikes. Kathmandu is extremely (and I do mean extremely) polluted. Even though the weather was hot we had our masks on, because of the heavy smoke. We got past the city’s Ring Road and the air was a lot better.

When you think about „a tour around Katmandu Valley” you can easily underestimate the valleys features. To get from A to B might seem easy at first, but once you start biking you have to pass numerous 2-3 km climbs and their associated descents (which I can only love). All day long we went up and down and up and down at a pretty constant pace. That’s until we hit one „up” that never seemed to end. My pace was a little faster than Razvan’s and Alina’s and usually I climbed a bit faster and waited on the top. It was quite nice since fatigue was not an issue with the constant breaks. Before that last neverending climb, when I said „I’m going ahead, meet you in the top” I never thought that it’s going to be a couple of hours later. I went on ahead with a steady pace, I even started to increase the pace just for the fun of it. I was very happy to bike considering that after my accident in July I didn’t get too much biking. So I was pedaling and pedaling and expecting to get to the top after every turn.

After a while this fun mode change and I was in survival mode. Survival beacuse my heart was pumping and my feet kept telling me to stop, but I had other plans. It was extremely hot and the cars that passed left behind a huge cloud of smoke and breathing was a pain. At last I could see the top of the hill after a large and open turn. The top of the hill being at the horizon line in the previous photo. I looked for a shaded place and waited for Răzvan and Alina.

The 45 minute waiting break gave me a chance to take some photos and at the same time made me realize that taking all that gear was not so smart considering the amount of time we would be on the bike. We were already behind schedule by a lot and it was pretty clear that our 2 day journey will be stretched to 3. No hurry.

After a banana stop in a small village we got to Dashinkhali. The temple was located about 100m alt. below the city. Since what goes down must come up again in order to get a warm place to sleep we knew what we have to climb back again.

We stayed there for a couple of hours, then visited another temple at the top of a nearby hill. Small temple with a family that lived there. One of the girls was hiding after that red curtain and kept looking out in to see if I was still there. Children, I think, would be a great therapy for most stress related diseases. The kids here were like a warehouse of energy.

This is me surrounded by the kids. Thanks Alina for the picture.

By the way did you notice the new Facebook and Twitter sharing buttons on this page? You can click here to share it on Facebook and here to tweet about this blog post.

Also if you like my posts make sure you subscribe to my RSS Feed using your favourite feed reader.

Over and out.