With just a few days left of my stay in Pokhara, I’ve took a day of rest to recuperate from endless Annapurna stair climbs and descents and lined up a bit of mountain biking for this morning in the nearby hills. Like all my other pursuits here, I’ve found myself with a personal guide to show me around. Or at least I did initially. An Australian guy from Victoria came and joined us at the last minute. It certainly seems a bit slow here this time of year, but that is good for me. Nepal seemed pretty busy with Chinese tourists when I first arrived, but that was due to the Chinese New Year holiday period in China – which is over now.
Hills? More like mountains! The mountain bike circuit, which was supposed to be their least hilly, kicked off with. 500 meter climb up to the top of a ridge overlooking the city of Pokhara and its neighboring lake. Too bad the place has become so hazy again – the views would have been quite spectacular otherwise. From the top it ran along a gentle roller-coaster ridge hugging track for a while before a quick descent down to a huge plateau of rice paddies next to the lake. From there the ride was fairly flat all the way back into town. About 700 meters of climbing in all and 30kms in length. Our guide offered to take us up the another mountain on the other side of the lake, but we both politely declined.
I don’t know what it is, but every time I have ever rented a bike overseas, I have always had a problem with the seat post continually sliding down until the bike becomes too hard to peddle and I have to stop and raise it again. This has happened to me in Fiji, Egypt, and now Nepal. Otherwise, it was a much nicer bike that I have been able to rent in the past.
The bike tour operator was actually a front for a local mountain bike club. Good mountain bikes are prohibitively expensive for many Nepalese, so the club would conduct tours for tourists and get the tourists to pay fees that were high enough to finance good bikes for the club members who would ride them the rest of the time.
