Tag Archives: cycling

Bicycle Touring

Day 29: valley of carrots

2 Comments

Distance 33,90 km Time: 4:32 Total distance: 1379km

Sadly the wifi is too slow and I have to leave the restaurant where the wifi is,  so I will add all pictures to a later moment In Kathmandu the internet was great, I uploaded and added the pictures☺️

The reason why it is only 33km is the climbing,  I started at 345 m in Hetauda and am now on the top of a hill at 1875m, so I climbed 1530 m,  which is an average steepness of 4,5%,  which wasn’t there at the beginning,  there it was nice to climb. 10 km after Hetauda then came the junction, where I had to choose between,  continuing on main road or take an alternative route with less traffic. I choose the one with less traffic,  so no more trucks,  no more busses (except 2 school buses). Just Jeeps transporting people. Later on ai understood why,  too steep. But in the beginning everything was okay.


This morning when I went for breakfast:

At 11 I met a british women with her land rover and telling me,  the road will get worse. Why do people always do that?😂


Shortly after I met her,  I came into a town with a toll booth or police check point and every car had to stop. I didn’t have to but I wanted to have lunch,  as I didn’t know, when the next place would come and I saw that the road would get steeper. So I asked a guy there,  where to get some food. He turned out to be a little crazy😂 the one with sunglasses:


We ate some chicken chowmein together and then went off. I ate a second plate, bought some more water,  as I had no clue where the next place for anything would be. The road started to get really steep afterwards. At the exit of the town,  I changed to granny-gear (the smallest gear there is) and started pedaling. Just 7 km and 800 meters of altitude ahead of me, but they were really taking everything off me. I even pushed my bike a little bit…

I am constantly complaining about how hard it is,  but the reason why I do this is simply the landscape,  it makes everything worth it😀 Sadly I couldn’t do a picture of every nice spot as I then would spend too much time taking pictures. On the other hand,  I can’t always stop in the hill as I have to somehow block my bike,  while I take out the camera and take the picture and sometimes the bike with the panniers are their own creature and move into directions you wouldn’t have guessed…  So here you can see a result of everything I got today.




me😀


After the last town where I ate for lunch,  people started selling carrots. I was a little bit irritated why suddenly,  but okay.

Still one of my favourite stuff being transported here are goats. The are just placed on top of a bus or a van. A rope to kind of fix them (?) and then they roll. It gets funny when the vehicle goes around a corner,  then they sometimes fall to the side and get up again😂 I always saw them passing by so I newer could take a picture. This time it was placed right in front of me😀

Arrived at the top I went into the first place I saw with “Hotel”  written on it to get a price. “No room here”. It was 4 o’clock,  it couldn’t be. Actually they don’t have rooms,  they are just a restaurant with “hotel”  in their name… But there was one place of the 6 houses up here which actually has rooms as is so a hotel😂 So currently I am here: 27°34′11.22″N 85°08′48.84″E

Tomorrow I will start with a nice ride down into the next valley,  from which I then will start climbing again to get over the last hill before I can see Kathmandu and hopefully arrive there. Alternatively I could stay another day on the road I don’t know yet.

Bicycle Touring

Day 28: into a non touristic city

2 Comments

Distance: 79,58 km Time: 4:05 Total distance:1345 km

I tried to leave early today,  but as every morning,  they only started preparing my breakfast when I came,  although I always ordered it the evening. So it took again longer,  bit I was not in a hurry,  I only had something like 75km in front of me.

First I needed to get back on main road, where there was a traffic jam due to construction.

After exiting the city the road got good again. In the beginning it went a little bit down and I spend some time in the wind shadow of a tractor, which was running with 30 km/h. Then the road got worse and I had to move further away to see the holes to be able to avoid them,  then I got slower because the wind shadow wasn’t that good anymore.

At 10 o’clock school begins,  so all the time before I could see children walking there





Around 12 o’clock I’ve met Detlef Engel. He is cycling for 20 months from germany out to the world. We were talking for more than an hour I think, I didn’t really looked at the watch. As we were travelling in opposite direction, we told each other the places we stayed in. He gave me a number of a guy living in Hetauda (my destination of today) , where he was sleeping. After the  third attempt we finally got to cycle again,  the other times,  one of us wanted to continue talking again😂

I felt a little bit sick, it could be a donut I had during a break in the morning or one of the bananas I ate. After having good Dalbat for lunch,  my stomach was again good☺️

5 km before arriving in Hetauda, I passed this local guy called “Tiger”. We cycled for a time next to each other and talked until we arrived in Hetauda. Then we separated. Before we separated we took some pictures and shared our Facebook accounts😀

Then the search for a sleeping place began. First I’ve called the number Detlef gave me. As far as I understood the guy,  he saw me like one hour ago on the road and he would be on the way to Chitwan,  so no sleeping place for me tonight at his place. So I started to look up places marked in my GPS as hotel. This is the way I do it when I don’t see/find a hotel,  lodge or guest house immediately. I went to the closest one. It kind of was doing a general cleaning and nobody was answering. The next place didn’t exist or at least people there didn’t know about it. The third hotel,  yeah was a ruin. So I started to get back to main road and look there again and ask around. On the way there I found a place where it was marked hotel outside,  but it was just a restaurant. Finally on main road I found one,  but it was full. The one on the other side finally had a room for me😀 I never had that much problems finding a hotel,  it took me like 4 km extra😂

As my GPS showed me temples in the city and a castle, I asked the guy in the reception, where to go. The temples he didn’t know and the castle is a military base. He wrote me down 3 other temples where I could go to with a tuk tuk. At one of them was even a fair.

After a quick shower,  I wanted to take a tuk tuk to get there but he priced me too high, so i wanted to take the next one,  while I was walking towards the fair. But no more free tuk tuk passed. So I walked until there. The entrance costed 30 NRP but the hard part was to find the place to pay, as it was just this little opening in the wall were there were actually people sitting behind

a guy at the entrance who was watching the helmets of the motordrivers visiting the fair wanted to get a picture

At the entrance,  there was a stage where all the people were standing, there was a part with attractions like rollercoasters and this thing where they drive with vehicles on the wall like in this video. At the back there were also selling cloth and toys. All over the place there were some food stands. All of them served the same food but the prices varied. I took a cheaper one. They even served the Mo:Mo’s on organic plates made out of leaves

I watched a little bit this pop star on the stage,  where everybody was freaking out. I don’t even think that she was singing everything,  there was some playback too😂. The girls in the crowed found it all the time funny to ask me to join them dancing,  but I didn’t really know how and they started laughing immediately. I’m not done for dancing hindi😂

Then I went back to the hotel by tuk tuk😀

I could even find work here: