BIKEPACKING NEPAL

THE EARTHQUAKE HIT COUNTRY NEEDS MORE THAN AID IT NEEDS CYCLE TOURISTS LIKE US.

WORDS BY MIRANDA MURPHY

PICTURES BY STEVE SHANNON & TODD WESALAKE

The most striking part of travelling is the connection you can find with another place that makes it feel like home. When Kathryn had the idea to do a bike trip, I don’t think we realised how much of our feeling of home was linked to our bikes. Here we are in the middle of the Himalayas, a mountain range that is three times as high as our peaks back in Revelstoke, British Columbia, and we are leaning into the corners and pumping the features in these trekking trails like they were made for riding bikes. Being in Nepal is breathtaking, but riding the terrain takes it to another level.

Kathryn and I planned a month-long bikepacking trip in Nepal – our first foray into self-suffcient bike travel. Our goal was to complete the Annapurna Circuit and venture into the restricted Upper Mustang region. After plenty of research we decided the route would result in some physically challenging days, but would be doable. We ride our bikes a lot. With professional jobs and planned vacations we have to be creative in order to make the most of our time off, so did we ever think we were smart when we thought of taking our bikes on holiday with us!

Not quite as planned.

Like most adventures, things didn’t go exactly as planned. We booked our flights in April 2015, one week before earthquakes hit the region. After the initial panic, it seemed our planned routes were not hit very hard. Only two of the 35 trekking routes were actually affected. For us, this would mean pristine singletrack for as far as the eye could see up the valleys and over the next high pass without the usual numbers of tourists that trek during October each year.