Nepal bike odyssey

Riding from Pokhara to Kathmandu

Nepal has made a special place for itself in the hearts of all who have travelled there. There is an ineffable exoticism to the place. “The wildest dreams of Kew are the facts of Kathmandu” wrote Rudyard Kipling, and few first-time visitors can fail to feel their pulse quicken at the sight of the city’s pagoda-roofed temples and enormous Buddhist stupas rising above the maelstrom of rickshaws, pedestrians, weaving motorbikes, laden porters and buses way too large for the narrow streets. This frisson does not fade!

There seem to be temples everywhere in the capital. Ochre-daubed saddhus sit, lotus-legged, giving tikkhas to the faithful as bells clang and the powerful scent of incense fills the air. Pious Buddhist pilgrims chant for alms, their prayer wheels constantly turning, while above them the iconic eyes of the Buddha stare out in all four directions over the city and the valley beyond.

A Mecca for 60s hippies

The country became famous in the 1960s as a Mecca for hippies, with all manner of people descending on the place in search of one form of enlightenment or another. Bill Tilman was a member of the first group of Westerners ever permitted to explore the country outside the Kathmandu Valley in 1948, and he wryly observed that “Wise men traditionally come from the East, and it is probable that to them the West and its ways were suspect long before we ourselves began to have doubts.”

The history of Nepal has been chequered of late. For a decade between 1996 and 2006 the tourism industry upon which the country so heavily depends hung on in the face of a Maoist insurgency that verged on civil war. This ended with a ceasefire in 2006, and on 28 May 2008, Constitutional Assembly elections were finally held in which the Maoists participated.

On 29 May the newly elected assembly voted by a massive 560 to 4 to abolish the monarchy and declare a Federal Republic, and on 11 June the hugely unpopular King Gyanendra left his palace, bringing to an end a dynasty that had ruled the country since Prithvi Narayan Shah first unified it in 1768.

How mountaineers opened up Nepal

It was mountaineers and scientists that really opened the eyes of the wider world to the peerless realm of the Nepal Himalaya, making Everest and the sherpas living in its shadow into household names the world over. Twelve years after Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing returned from the summit of Everest having made the first ascent on 29 May 1953, Jimmy Roberts founded Mountain Travel Nepal and started what was to become Nepal’s most lucrative industry – trekking. Western preoccupations with celebrity and superlative have meant that the areas around the biggest peaks have seen the most of both the benefits and the side-effects of this booming trade, while the rest of the country remains relatively unknown.

Getting off the beaten track, even by a few hundred metres, still takes you into a country largely unaffected by the whirlwind of 21st century development, and no method of travel is as suited to exploring the middle-hills and villages as perfectly as mountain biking. This journey is an illustration in point. The country between Kathmandu and Pokhara is seen by most visitors today either from the window of a plane or a bus, and the real charms of Gorkha and the lower Marsyangdi and Trisuli rivers thus elude them.

The route from Pokhara

Arise before dawn in Pokhara and you will be treated to sunrise on one of the Himalaya’s most iconic vistas – that of Machhapuchhare and the Annapurnas reflected in the tranquil waters of Phewa Tal. Ride your mountain bike up onto the Kali Horseshoe and the view is even better. Descend to Begnas Tal and spend the next night there for an equally magical sunrise the next day, but one that very few others will have seen.

Three days of fantastic singletrack and unused jeep road through sleepy backwater villages then bring you to the elevated town of Gorkha, where you will find it difficult to resist a cool beer on the terrace as the sun sinks over the foothills into the Indian plains. This is the halfway point of the trip, and a pause here is well rewarded. The medieval durbar (‘palace’) of Prithvi Narayan Shah is a short walk up the ridge above the centre of town, and there are numerous possibilities for day rides also.

Perhaps the climax of this ride is saved for the last though, with a lung-busting 1,600 m (5,248 ft) climb on a quiet road out of the Trisuli Valley and up onto the Kathmandu Valley rim at Kakani. Given clear skies, the sunrise panorama from this spot is breathtaking, with the mighty peaks of the Nepal Himalaya, from Annapurna in the west to Gauri Shankar in the east, lined up along the northern skyline. All that then remains between you and a slap-up meal in a Kathmandu restaurant is a ballistic final downhill through the Nagarjun Forest Reserve.

Facts and figures

Description: A back-country off-road trip from Pokhara to Kathmandu in Nepal.

Route Length and Duration: 350 km (217 miles), 10 days riding.

When to Go: March–April or October–December.

Special Considerations: Mid-spec mountain bike required. Be aware that baggage limits on internal flights in Nepal will preclude flying to Pokhara with your bike.

Maps: Nepal 1:500,000, Reise Verlag, Nepal 1:750,000, GeoCentre.

Tour Operators: KE Adventure Travel (www.keadventure. com) and Dawn til Dusk (www.nepalbiking.com).

Permits/Restrictions: None.

Accommodation: Hotels in Pokhara, Gorkha and Kathmandu – otherwise camping.

Find out more

You can read about this route and more than 30 other beautiful and challenging bike adventures in the brilliant Great Cycle Journeys of the World (£24.99, www.newhollandpublishers.com).