cycling himalayas
10.07 – 10.13, 2018 | 16 YO | FUJI X-T2
While attending Woodstock — an international school in the Himalayas that my grandmother ran for a bit and where my uncle taught for a year — a school trip came along called Activity Week, where students choose a one week trip somewhere in northern India. Initially, I chose the Gangotri hike, but I soon found that I could switch to a Senior cycling trip that went a little past Manali, and that I could also go with my roommate Will. The majority of the trip was driving, and we couldn’t camp as much as we planned, but the little bit of cycling we did do was incredible; where I was in the world was just so beautiful.
Travel There
At 4 A.M., Woodstock students walked out of their dorms and got into their various busses headed to various destinations. Our group began our trip from Woodstock to Manali, where we would stop for a night and move on towards Rohtang Pass and beyond. The ride to Manali, typically a 13-hour drive, was an 18-hour drive due to the fact that we traveled by bus.
This week-long trip was full of odd sensations. The bus rides were full of recurring wake-ups to a dead silent bus filled with lifeless air, and I eventually couldn’t care less about my body after not showering for a week.
Manali
After an 18-hour ride, we arrived in Manali at around eleven at night, and settled into the Keylinga Inn Hotel where we enjoyed some rice and dal for supper. When we woke up, Will and I roamed the surrounding town before the group left Manali for Rohtang Pass.
We swapped vehicles from the large bus that we took to Manali, to a compact Traveller that would better fit the narrow roads of the mountains. We were also joined in Manali by a Himalayas camping guide company that supplied us with mountain bikes, food, and camping gear, along with a whole crew to help us out along the way.
Rohtang Pass
Rohtang Pass was the gateway to the true Himalayas, and once crossed, everything that I previously knew about India changed. Streets weren’t littered, farms were neat and concise, and the presence of the locals were wonderfully different with a refreshing aura of calm.
First Hostel - 32.6332, 77.1725
The plan was to drive out to a certain point along the road to Leh, where we would then bike as far as we could back to Manali, with our bus and trucks trailing us. But the plan fell apart on the first night when we arrived at the spot we were meant to camp out. The weather was colder than expected, and due to there being snow on the grounds, the plan to camp was scrapped, and we instead settled into an abandoned hostel that was off to the side. That night was the first time we ate a meal served by the crew, and it was a delight. The abandoned hostel didn’t have any electricity, but we made do with headlights.
First Ride
The following morning, we got onto our bikes for the first time. The skies were blanketed in a gorgeous mist of snow, and with daylight, we could now see a river that paralleled our path.
Second Hostel - Nordaling Guest House, Keylong
But soon after we began biking, the temperature dropped, the snow got harsh, and many of us were damp and miserable. After reaching the top of a slope that we took some time to climb, we stopped for some chai, and the crew and our teachers decided that it would be better if we stopped biking for the day. We settled into another hostel, one directly across the place where we stopped for chai, and in no time, the crew whipped up a delicious lunch. Cycling, though, was finished for the day.
Second Ride
The following day was the best day of the week. We cycled for the entire day, and the weather stayed perfect throughout. The rice and dal for lunch felt incredible after being exhausted, and the winding roads, and especially the downhills, were just so charming. That evening, we diverged from the main road and set up camp for the first and only time during our trip at 32.7308, 76.6500.
Falling Rock
The next morning, my classmates and I woke up to the sound and rumble of something beatings our tent. It had snowed a good amount overnight, and the crew had to beat the ice off of the tents. The falling snow meant that we couldn’t have a proper breakfast, and that we couldn’t just begin the day by biking out of camp — we needed to dock the bikes to the trucks and drive out of camp.
After an hour or so, we arrived at a truck stop of sorts, and now that the roads were, for the most part, cleared of snow, we took out the bikes and we began biking. The road from the truck stop onward was wider than before, and it was also better paved, but we were also now biking along a cliff. Within 15 minutes after starting, we were all biking in a line, and that was when a rock fell from the top of the cliff and hit my wrist. It knocked me off my bike, and I hit the ground face first. Looking back at the moment, it felt as if my head was a GoPro camera flinging through space until it crashed into the ground. And so from that point on, I stayed on the bus with my arm in a sling, unable to bike anymore.
Last Hostel - Wood Villa Homestay, Sissu
That evening, after my arm having been hit by a rock, we settled into another hostel in the small town of Sissu, once again unable to camp because of the snow. After getting into the hostel, I went with one of my teachers to the local hospital, where a grandmother leaped out of her house that stood across the hospital to help me. She cleaned my arm, properly wrapped it up, and insisted that I didn’t have a fractured wrist and that I would be okay.
Travel Back
The following morning, we left Sissu for Rohtang Pass, unsure if we were going to be able to cross the mountain since there was a backlog of cars and trucks for the past two days or so. In the end, we made it across, through stop-and-go traffic and sometimes even complete pauses. By the time we got back to Manali, it was evening already, and once we all dropped our luggage off at the same Keylinga Inn Hotel, everyone went into the main shopping avenue in Manali for dinner and shopping. Meanwhile, I went with one of the crew members and a teacher to the local hospital for an X-ray just to make sure. The town wasn’t as charming as I was hoping it to be — Manali being known for marijuana, that’s all I ended up seeing.
Back at the hotel, our group rested until around 3 A.M., when we eventually left Manali back for Woodstock. It being in the middle of the night, the drive at the beginning was freezing, and we sat through another 18-hour drive that quickly began to feel timeless.
There was a moment while riding in the Himalayas that felt reminiscent of the terrain in California. And even after a rock smashed into me, I felt incredibly protected and cared for by nature. There were barely any people living beyond Rohtang Pass, and the few who did were profoundly different from the people who lived anywhere else across India. The path to Ladakh was something deeply special, and it could only be described as magical and otherworldly. The nature that surrounded me was just so calm and beautiful, and I was incredibly lucky to be able to be there.
