early morning MTB in Nepal

It was early December, 6:30am, and a slightly overcast, cool but mild morning as Becs, Craig and I made it to the Himalayan Single Track bike shop to join their regular morning shop ride. We were in Kathmandu, Nepal , and were joining a local mountain bike tour business for their morning ride up into the hills to the north of Kathmandu.
From what we had become used to, the roads were contrastingly quiet as the valley began to fill with daylight. Kitted with good level hardtails, the three of us were being enthusiastically guided by locals, Santosh and Rajan, and I was starting to understand why I hadn’t noticed any road bikes in Nepal. It wasn’t so much the odd pothole, it was more like potholes with the odd patch of bitumen between them. The “sealed” road veered left, turned to dirt, and started to climb. One thing Nepal doesn’t do gently is hills, they seem to jutt out of nowhere, and this was no exception. The road narrowed as we gave way to a couple of oncoming mini buses and approached the first village. Santosh did a quick head check to make sure we were all somewhere within visual range then ducked left alongside a house to pick up a roughly cobbled, rhythm destroying foot track that steepened and linked us to the next road.

Soon we made it to the first stop, a hill-top café. It was more so a shack the owner/resident had setup to sell passers-by their choice of fresh brewed tea or coffee. It had also become a local destination for any a.m. cyclist. The shack was located opposite a police check point, About four others stopped here (everyone and our guides seemed to know each other), and several others were using the check point as a turn-around point for their morning hill repeat session.

Once our teas had been downed we headed for some local rustic trails which served as walking trails between villages. The first 500 metres or so saw us descend into a wet, steep and slippery set of off-camber stairs that levelled out to some great fun trails cut into the side of the hill. We linked village to village, at one point stopping to regroup and watch some young boys battle out their village title of marble champion. Meandering our way between rice paddies, donkeys and fruit carts we came to a shallow stream with a typical Nepali bridge that was no more than two round poles loosely bound together. Fortunately it was not very high above the water as Craig had to bail out mid-crossing. With wet feet he went back to conquer it.

We then followed the stream for a few kilometres before climbing out of the valley back towards Kathmandu’s outer suburbs. Once back on the main roads it was only a short burst to our next stop where Santosh excitedly showed us into a local high-end bike shop. While we enjoyed a look around the shop our guides organised us another tea from the shop next door.

Santosh excited to show off a local bike shop

The post-ride coffee stop

By this time Kathmandu was well-and-truly in full swing and it was time for us to take the plunge into the next discipline; Kathmandu traffic. From the passenger seat of a taxi or even as a pedestrian the traffic seems like chaos with a couple of loose guidelines, but once amongst it there appeared to be a little more of a system to it. The idea was to find a spot you wanted to be in and commit to it, and as long as you did this in full view of anybody behind you the gaps would open and you were set. We had about 5 kilometres to negotiate before arriving back at the Himalayan Single Track home base. What a great ride, what a great way to start the day in Kathmandu! The guides were fantastic and the trails gave us some more views of the Kathmandu countryside that otherwise we wouldn’t have experienced.

Becs & Rajan