Tag Archives: Pokhara

Bicycle Touring

Day 23: Back on the road again

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Distance: 77,63 km Time: 4:57 Total distance: 1146 km

Finally cycling again😀 My legs still hurt,  but as cycling is always the same movement for the legs,  it was okay, otherwise I just changed a gear down ☺️

Before I can continue explaining the day,  I need to tell the story of my new fleece jacket,  which I got on the trek to ABC. On first day on the way up there, I was constantly thinking that I cloth for the upper body weren’t warm enough to get all the way up. And than I found a fleece jacket on the  floor and nobody around,  so I hade a new jacket. Which was really great for the trek.

Until midday it was either foggy or cloudy.

Today the road out of Pokhara started with lots of downhill but sometimes there were holes or bumpers,  so that my whole bike was jumping. As my lock was fixed under a bungee cord, it flew out eventually and I didn’t realize it. So now it is gone🙁 So I “traded”  my lock against a jacket😂

After I realized that the lock was gone,  I searched for a bike shop to get a new one. In the city/village I was currently cycling, I found one quickly and got a lock for 250 NPR (2,15€). It’s totally unbreakable.

Today Tomaz and I didn’t knew which destination to take for today. Either Badipur,  a beautiful village on top of a mountain,  8 km away from main road. Bimalnagar,  where there is a cave not far away. Or Manakaman,  where there is a cable car 🚡  to a temple on top of the mountain. Tomaz came up with the plan: today Badipur,  then tomorrow cycle down to Bimalnagar (it’s nearly around the corner) and visit the cave,  to finish the day with going up to Manakaman and spend the night there. I found the plan was good. So we did. We continued on main road until the fork to Badipur and started to climb 600 meters of altitude over 8 km of distance. It was so steep, that there were some passages that I could not have gotten back on the saddle if I would have stopped. Normally I then didn’t stop, but this one moment there were two busses crossing each other in front of me and as the road is not width enough for them,  they stopped and so I needed to stop too. I tried to get back on the saddle,  but it was too steep. I needed to push my bike on foot till a more flat part of the road. It was really a gret experience to cycle up this hill,  often I was just moving with 4 or 5 km/h. In the upper part of the road I was rewarded with looks on mountains with snow on them. Beautiful. 

The village itself is also very beautiful and therefore lots of tourists. Tomaz and I walked a little bit around to get to different viewpoint to get views down from the mountain. Amazing. 

There was one special viewpoint, specially for the sunset. We did not expect it to be so high, so it took us long time to get there,  we were still able to see half of the sun when we arrived there. After the sun was gone, I saw the mountains like I have never saw them before,  endless chains of mountains,  in evening fog.

Now we are having dinner in a recommended restaurant and by chance Kim and Nathalie (2 Belgium’s,  I met in Pokhara)  were passing by. I am really amazed how often I see people again without planning it😂

Tomorrow Tomaz wants to stay here for relaxing, but I want to continue as I want to get to Chitwan National Park and then need to get to Kathmandu and prepare a little bit the rest of my journey.

EDIT: I’ve added pictures of the trek to the post of the last day on the trek,  here

Bicycle Touring

Day 22: another day of chilling

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no cycling, tomorrow for sure

Todays tasks were:

  1. get the bikes and panniers from the expensive hotel I stayed before the trekking.
  2. get a plane ticket to fly out from Kathmandu to Siem Reap in Cambodia. I decided not to cycle through Myanmar,  as I was told it is not the easiest to get through because of some restricted regions. So I will fly out on 9th of December😀
  3. clean the chain of my bicycle.
  4. get information about Chitwan National Park,  where I want to go next,  before I ride to Kathmandu. I want to watch the elephants there and do a little safari.
  5. getting my stuff ready for tomorrow, as I repacked everything for the trekking to Annapurna Base Camp.
  6. upload my pictures from the trekking to my cloud. Afterwards I will upload some to the blog😀

Everything is done expect for point 6, it is still in progress. Just with the ticket as I was not able to pay with my Visa-card,  due to some new security mechanism… Thanks to my father I was able to buy it😀

For the rest of the day I did not much but chilling in the hostel or walking a little bit around.

I like this guesthouse really a lot,  when you ever will come to Pokhara,  I can only recommend “Guesthouse Buddha” 😀

Wow that is a short post today,  but there was not so much happening today.

Bicycle Touring

Day 21: Back to Pokhara 

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no cycling,  probably tomorrow again

I have never explained how much my legs are hurting. Every time I start walking again after a break or some sitting around,  it looks really funny because I can’t move my legs correctly as the muscles hurt so much. After some steps, everything looks normal again, until it goes down,  then everything hurts again more. Also normal walking hurts a little bit😂

To heal the pain,  Anil (nepaleas friend from the hot spring) gave me some oil yesterday evening, with which I massaged my muscles in the evening.

In the morning, Tomaz an Anil wanted to go to the hot spring again, so I joined them, as it should be good for my muscles. After 1,5 hours of hot spring and 2 times cooling off in the cold river, we went back up to the lodge to have breakfast. As we were waiting very long on our breakfast,  Anil tried to help me with some acupuncture he learned. He also showed it to Tomaz and other people around us got interested. Before we could leave the lodge, Anil needed to do some acupuncture on the old owners of the lodge. We started walking at 12 o’clock😂 But we had only some 5 km planned, to get to a place where vehicles could get us to Pokhara. The road was further away then expected, so it took us longer to get there. We arrived there at 15:30 and on the way we met a British guy,  who needed to get to Pokhara today, as he was run out of money. Perfect,  so we shared a taxi all together. These taxis here are really not that big and we are not that little persons😂 (picture will follow) The first part of the road was without asphalt and the driver had to move a lot to avoid the bigger holes. At one hole I could feel a stone through the floor of the car. After 2,5 hours in this little box, we arrived in Pokhara. We split up,  everybody went to his hotel. Expect Tomaz and I went for dinner, as we were told where to get the best Dalbat in Pokhara. We found a place,  but we are not sure if it really was that place.

Our bikes and other luggage is still at the hotel I slept before trekking, but as it is so expensive I decided to go to a cheaper guesthouse next door and get our stuff tomorrow. We will probably start cycling tomorrow again,  but just half if the day probably. I need to see how my legs are, whether the muscles needed for cycling hurt or don’t hurt.

As my cable to connect the camera to my phone is still in the hotel,  I can’t upload the pictures today,  so maybe tomorrow☺️

Edit: I simply add all the images from the trek here:












Arrived at the top:

with the french friends:








some fun on the road:







Me,  Tomaz and Anil (nepalease friend)




always now where your towel is:

hot spring:

hot spring can be deadly:

Anil can do some pretty good therapy:

our taxi back to Pokhara (4 passengers + 1 driver) :

Bicycle Touring

Day 14: Free like a bird

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No cycling today,  so no distance to note down.

After a good night of sleeping, I started my usual morning routine with stretching. My breakfast was extended by some potatoes and a banana. But most of all I liked the black coffee😀 For breakfast I joined two men from Ireland and India. They were going paragliding. As I wanted to do it too, I asked them where they’ve booked it. It was at the reception of the hotel. I asked there if I could also fly at the same time, but it was already full, but I got a spot at 11 o’clock for today, which I took.

As I had some time to kill, I decided to walk a little bit through the touristic center along the sea and took some pictures,  which will follow.

At 11 o’clock I was back in the hotel and got picked up by motorcycle to get to the office of the paragliding company. As the flights before me were delayed due to no wind to start, I needed to wait one hour for them to come back, as all the material and pilots was in use. After the van arrived,  the guests, the guys from the breakfast, got out and I got in. The road to get up to the mountain, where we started was normal at the beginning as it went through the city. Then when it started to climb, the road got smaller. On the way up one bus and two truck came the opposite direction. It was really interesting to see how they manage to pass each other,  as they pass each other with less than 5 cm of distance between them. The drivers start to knock on the other vehicle to tell the driver that there is still place to move,  as soon as the knockings stops,  they know that it is too close. At least is that the impression I got of it. After some more time the road lost the asphalt and was only made of sand and stones. I heard many times rocks scratching the bottom of the van. After around 15 to 20 minutes, we arrived at the starting point for paragliding. Arrived there,  we got all out and got to a free starting place. It was an amazing view over Pokhara and around 10 to 20 paragliders flying around. Everyone of us got a pilot assigned. I’ve got a guy called Milan. A guy chilling on the floor with his back baseball cap. But when I got there he got up and everything ready, totally professional. He put me my harness on and explained everything to me: “When I say walk, then walk, after that we will stop shortly until the paraglide is above me, then I will say run and you should simply run until you don’t touch the ground anymore,  then I will tell you to sit back in your harness”. Everything is totally easy and I executed it as told. Up in the air, it was beautiful, you have to try it yourself. They even gave me a GoPro to film everything. Sadly it is on a CD-ROM and I have to ask in the reception if I can use the computer to get the pictures and movie to my phone, as I don’t think that the cd will survive the rest of my trip… The flight should last between 15 and 30 minutes, depending on weather, height and passenger. After some what 20 minutes I started to feel my stomach a little bit and I asked to start going down slowly. So we did. When we got closer to the landing spot, my pilot asked me if I wanted to do some acrobatics and I was like “yeah sure why not”. So he did. Wow,  it ended in us going down in kind of free fall. AMAZING. After the landing I was close to vomiting but I didn’t 😀 We waited until everyone had arrived and went back with the van into the city, where we got the CD-ROM with our pictures.




Arrived at the hotel,  Tomaz wrote me that he had arrived in Pokhara, as we was staying one more day in Tansen and was one day behind me. We had lunch and figured then out how one could do the Annapurna Base Camp (ABC) Trek. So the current plan is to do it together, get the permits, rent the stuff we need to get up to over 4000 metres of altitude and yeah will then be gone for 7 to 10 days. We don’t know how long we will need. For the rest of the day we were looking for stuff for the tour and chilling around.

EDIT: The ABC trek will be done by foot so no cycling, only hiking.

After Tomaz and I separated, as we are staying in different places, I’ve met the irish guy called Marc at the hotel. After some time everybody I knew from the hotel,  the indian guy, Vicky from Australia and the two Belgium’s Kim and Nathalie,   were joining us. it was a lovely ending of the evening.

As Tomaz always makes fun of me as I am from Luxembourg with too much money as I am not that good at negotiating as him,  I need to tell this: I cut my beard myself:

He on the other side gets it cut:

Bicycle Touring

Day 13: Final road to Pokhara

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Distance: 65,40 km Time: 4:02 Total distance: 1069 km

When I woke up this morning,  it was the first time I felt that my legs hurt a little bit. I was like: “this will be a horrible day”. I got up,  as I had to move anyway.

As every morning my routine:

  1. stretching
  2. packing panniers
  3. eating omelet on toast
  4. drinking coffee with too much sugar (black instant coffee doesn’t taste anything like normal black coffee)
  5. packing bicycle
  6. GO!

As Waling is next to a river at the bottom of a valley,  it was foggy in the morning. It was cold,  wet and the view was not great. But my legs were fine again,  so I could start through. As soon as I stopped for whatever reason,  my glasses got foggy too.  After 2 hours of riding up and down, I finally came over the fog or it simply disappeared. I don’t know,  but i got off my long arms and it was nice to feel the sun☺️

From now on, I always got glances to the snowy mountains behind Pokhara. Really nice.

I was really impressed how fast and good I was coming forward. After 2 hours I’ve already did half of todays distance. It constantly went up for a while and then down again. The problem when going down is that my legs got cold again and it always hurt a little bit when I needed to start pedal again,  so I tried to keeps my legs moving while going down,  that helped.

Around 12 o’clock I got the first glance of Pokhara. I decided to skip lunch for now and ride right into the city. So I did. First I wanted to get into a cheap hostel or guest house,  but then decided to go into a hotel,  for 1 or 2 days.

After eating chaomin as lunch, I went into the city center of the locals to get a cheap backpack. I didn’t have one, which was really annoying when walking in a city, as my handlebar-bag is not that useful to take with me. And the next days will be lots of different activities than cycling,  like hiking, paragliding or riding a motorcycle 😀

When I came back from the city center, which was a 45 min walk, it was already dark, so I went up to the roof of the hotel,  as Tomaz told me that the full moon will be very close and big,  which does not happen that often (so check out the moon tonight). On the roof I met another guest of the hotel,  Kim. He was also taking pictures. We chatted a little bit and found out that he is from belgium and worked in Luxembourg before he went travelling with his girlfriend Nathalie, who joined us soon on the roof. As no one of us had dinner yet, we went all together into the tourist part of Pokahra to eat. Along came another guest, Vicky from Australia. Arrived at OA2K a vegetarian (very good) restaurant, Carlos, the spanish cyclist I met 2 days ago on the road,  wrote me to meet up, so he joined us too. It was a lovely evening where we were all talking about our experiences of our travels. (That is actually the moon)

I am not yet sure what I will do tomorrow.

Few days ago, I met some people who told me,  that traffic here would be horrible. That was a lie,  traffic is higher than on the land but not unusual much,  after all it is a city. I am more annoyed fir all the tourists. But I will get used to them.