On previous backpacking trips Nepal had been a haven. A place we could flee to and escape the stresses of travel in India. Once, our patience having snapped in rural Maharashtra, we’d jumped on a 40 hour train ride just to cross the border and bask in that “…aaaaand relax…” feeling. We loved the easy going nature and humour of the people and the stunning mountain scenery.
To our surprise our first few weeks this time were different.
Uttarakhand had presented no hassles, and few difficulties. The cycling was easy, though hilly; the people were friendly and trustworthy; the roads were quiet. West Nepal, we soon found out, was more trouble. Firstly, steep roads and bad surfaces made for challenging cycling, and hours of pushing. But this bothered us less than the second reason: that we could never get any peace.
The West is the poorest and most troubled part of a poor country, and family sizes are large. Having seven (invariably beautiful) brothers and sisters is nothing unusual. At every meal or drink stop we’d be surrounded and watched by twenty pairs of eyes. As we cycled into each village a cry of “Saikal! Saikal!” would go up, and from all directions kids would come running. And though they always came with big smiles it became irksome. Being chased by gangs of kids as you struggle uphill is funny for a while, but when you acquire a new band of followers every 15 minutes it’s hard keeping the “Namaste”s and smiles going. Especially when little hands start hanging onto your bike.
The West is the poorest and most troubled part of a poor country, and family sizes are large. Having seven (invariably beautiful) brothers and sisters is nothing unusual. At every meal or drink stop we’d be surrounded and watched by twenty pairs of eyes. As we cycled into each village a cry of “Saikal! Saikal!” would go up, and from all directions kids would come running. And though they always came with big smiles it became irksome. Being chased by gangs of kids as you struggle uphill is funny for a while, but when you acquire a new band of followers every 15 minutes it’s hard keeping the “Namaste”s and smiles going. Especially when little hands start hanging onto your bike.
Thirdly, the further into West Nepal we delved, the more it became apparent that alcoholism was a big problem in these parts. Each day we’d be pestered by people who’d had one raksi too many. Usually they’d be friendly enough, but we became weary of being asked for money and hearing drunken dreams of relocating to America: that Shangri-La, that utopia where all are happy and everyone is rich.
All this meant we could never truly relax until we locked our bedbug-ridden hotel room at night. Then, in the shabby roadside town of Ramghat our accommodation hit an all-time low. A filthy cave room with hard wooden bed which came with complimentary drunken idiot trying to break in during the night. Once we’d barricaded the flimsy door shut with panniers he sat outside for hours, muttering about America, Barack Obama, dollars we should give him, then occasionally (and the only time we were even slightly amused) he’d scream “Mikhail Gorbachev! Mikhail Gorbachev!”. The Fast Show‘s Rowley Birkin had nothing on this guy.
The next day on the Karnali Highway we didn’t set off in the best of moods, and they only grew worse. The ‘road’ was 5cm of dust concealing fist sized rocks beneath. The vehicle of choice was the tractor. At lunch the local kids wouldn’t stop fiddling with our bikes, and when we set off again neither of us could get our low gears to work on the steep climbs. A unanimous consensus was reached: “F–k this.”
We jumped on the roof of a bus to Surkhet.
Please click here for our full West Nepal photoset on Flickr.
Please click here for our full West Nepal photoset on Flickr.
P.S. Moan almost over. Of course it wasn’t all bad. There were great moments like having 2 kids flying kites run alongside us, giggling for half an hour with sheer unbridled joy. Or taking our bikes in a canoe across the Karnali, when we arrived on its banks to find no bridge. Chatting to the ex Congress MP for Mangalsen about his experiences during the Maoist war; the lovely dhaba owners who kept plying us with tasty food. But there was something about the atmosphere in a number of places that we just didn’t like, and we met more unpleasant individuals here than anywhere else we’ve ever travelled.
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| Having grown accustomed to India’s easy climbs and good surfaces left us unprepared for our first Nepali road. It climbed steeply on a poor surface to a pass before falling away completely into a mire of landslides. When we were able to take our eyes off the road, there was plenty of jungley scenery to admire. |
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| A last push to Jogbuddha. We were a bit fed up by this stage, having taken 3 hours to cover 5km. The monsoon had left behind a trail of destruction – there were landslides every few hundred metres that required unloading and carrying of gear and bikes. |
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| The West is Nepal’s poorest region. It receives few foreign visitors, and those who do visit are generally working for NGOs and handing out aid. As a result there are hardly any tourist restaurants or hotels, but quite a few (usually drunken) beggars. We didn’t mind the lack of restaurants as there were more than enough dhabas like this one serving delicious food. The lack of hotels was more of a problem – as we never felt comfortable enough to camp we stayed in some very basic, bedbug-ridden hovels. |
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| An easy and pretty stretch – descending to the Seti river. |
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| Until Mangalsen the roads had mostly been fine. After, they were frequently abysmal. Though we descended over 1,500m this day, we barely made it over 20kph. |
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| A first canoe journey for the bikes. The road bridge across the Karnali River that we thought we’d seen on Google Maps didn’t exist. |
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| Terracing by the Karnali. |
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| Roadhead settlement on the Karnali. |
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| This 1,000m climb up to Manma (at just 1,800m) was the hardest we found on our whole Himalayan trip. Steep gradients, and an awful surface made it hard work. There were lots of kids around, some of whom helped by pushing our bikes uphill, some of whom incurred our wrath by holding on to our panniers and dragging us to a halt. |
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| Climbing to Manma. A few young runners for company as usual. After a few days in West Nepal we became convinced that the average age in Nepal must be approximately eight. (We later checked, it’s 21.) |
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| Kalikot dust. 5-10cm deep on this hairpin. Almost as bad as Misiones clay in Argentina. |
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| Between us we’ve cycled over 50,000km on our Long Haul Truckers, and this was our first broken spoke. Karnali Highway: bike breaker. |
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| The scenery along Nepal’s biggest river was good though. A rare shot of tarmac on the Karnali Highway. |
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| There weren’t that many sections where the surface was like this, but still, there were more than enough, and they’re the ones that stick in our minds. Though there were more Nepali John Deere’s than anything else on the Karnali Highway, there’s a surprising lack of their tracks in this shot. |
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| On the bus after we’d deciding that cycling out to Surkhet just wasn’t worth the hassle. This is during a food stop. Both hands were needed at all times to cling on when we were on the move. The surface had us bumping and jumping all over the place. |
Great blog with some fabulous photos. Thanks so much for posting.
I am flying to Nepal with my rough road touring bicycle for a month of touring (that’s all my job will let me take now). I chose Nepal as I’ve ridden the high mountains of Central Asia on a number of riding trips in other neighbouring countries – and felt I could not miss Nepal. I have been investigating the west as I like remote and high and relatively sparsely populated. It sounds like the route you had to ride to get to and beyond Surkhet was more crowded and such.
My questions which I hope you might help out with:
* did you hear of any routes/areas in the west (or the east, for that matter) you’d recommend?
* wondered about flying into Jumla, but I’ve been reading about hard baggage weight limits which would make it impossible for me to bring my bike. Did you hear anything?
Thanks for any info you are able to share, Happy travels,
Gregg
Hi Gregg – thanks for the comment,
All depends on whether you want to stick to motorable roads, I think. We didn’t find any remote roads in the sense that you find in Central Asia/Ladakh/the Andes – I don’t know of any high roads in the country either. There are some nice trips you can do on quiet roads in the foothills north of the main east-west highway – they link up villages, but don’t get near the snowy peaks. If you’re happy to spend hours pushing your bike on trekking trails and are a really good mountain-biker then there are options to do things like the Annapurna Circuit, Dolpo, Manaslu, but you’d have to be prepared for as much hike a bike as bike ‘n hike. It seemed to us like there were some roads going up valleys towards the mountains, but the only way back would be to retrace steps or head out on trekking trails.
I think it’d be nicer flying into Jumla and riding out, than going both ways (or taking the bus!) – but the planes are small, so even if they do let bikes on, they might charge quite a bit of excess baggagge – we never looked into it.
Hope this helps and that you find some good stuff (let us know if you do) – we expected to find more good things to ride in the country, but after a while decided it was hiking country and just headed out on foot…
cheers
Neil