Since the early 2000’s I’ve explored the best cycling routes from London. I often found the city a little overwhelming. I just wanted to ride my bike through the clean air of green spaces.
There are a couple of simple rules that we follow when planning a cycle route from London for a fun and enjoyable bike ride.
A ten-day bicycle tour of Morocco This blog post about cycle touring in Morocco shares the story of our ten-day bike adventure from Marrakech, across the Atlas mountains to Agadir, along the coast to Essaouira then back to Marrakech. We travelled in the autumn of 2012, as far as I can remember. It was the … Read more
In this article on yoga stretches for cyclists I’m going to share my favourite daily yoga sequence that help support flexibility, strength and performance on the bike.
A motorcycle tour of India is one of those iconic journeys that you read about in glossy travel magazines: a hulk of a man with chiselled features and a thousand-yard stare straddling a shiny metal rocket in the high mountains of Ladakh. You know the one, the guy in the Belstaff jacket casually stroking his chin to flash the Submariner.
I’ll let you in on a little secret: there’s no finer way to see the world than on two wheels.
Well, here’s the bonus: you can do it too. With a little planning, a bit of common sense and a couple of grand in the bank, you, too, can take on an all-India motorcycle trip and live to tell the tale.
‘Don’t forget to look up!’ cheered Marina as I cycled away from her ancient tumbledown family home nestled among majestic maple trees on a hill above the medieval city of Telavi. I’d arrived in the principal town of Kakheti with the intention of visiting Tusheti and the Caucasus Mountains for a spot of hiking. Meeting Marina on a hot Friday afternoon had changed my mind.
We approached the Uzbek border, full of trepidation, in the knowledge that a full and detailed search would be made of our entire luggage. An ‘illegal’ item, such as codiene, or a topless snap of a girlfriend, would result in a ‘fine’, or more plainly, baksheesh, a bribe. I was in company with Jonas and Emma, having left Dushanbe together, early on Tuesday morning. We were already nervous, since an earlier mishap at the Tajik border post; I’d forgotten to get my GBAO permit extended, consequently, the guard threatened, several times, to send me back to Dushanbe to get the necessary stamp; a 160 kilometre round trip I was loathe to entertain. I repeatedly shouted and pointed at the dates in my passport until, some 20 minutes later, the guard relented, allowing me to join Jonas and Emma on the short cycle to the Uzbekistan border crossing.
”Well this is all about my problems to get out of drugs,
cause I had enough of that,
I’ve had the college,
I’ve had the earning the money,
and the material trip,
I just decided I was going to find a new way of life
And so I took off on my bicycle…”
MYLO, Sunworshipper
I was alone, one week out of Khorog, on the edge of madness through exertion and hunger, when this song came on my little portable sound system. It reminded me of university. The lyrics, the sentiment and the cheerful riff – the memory – made me smile at my immediate situation. I had indeed taken off on my bicycle; I was certainly finding a new way of life; eat, sleep, cycle, repeat. It was one of those moments that I’ll always remember. If you can, put that track on now, as you read all about the Pamir Highway Social Club.
Before I crossed the bustling, semi forested no mans land from Banbasa to the Nepalese border patrol office in Bhimdatta, I joined the masses of locals taking a dip in the Sharda Mahakali river. It was a sunny Sunday afternoon. It was nearly summertime. The fast flowing river felt deeply cleansing as it powered it’s way downstream. A fitting end to my four months in India. Nepali/Indian borders are porous which means both nationalities come and go, seemingly, as they please. This made the remote far western crossing a busy trade hub for the locals on both sides.
The cycle from Kalka to Rishikesh was hot, dusty and very hilly. My welcome back to the bike after six weeks of train hopping around India (Kolkota to Goa to Kalka) was exactly as anticipated; really hot and really hard. I tried to trick myself that it was good to be back on the bike but it was no use. The ride out of Kalka was a steep ascent headed for Shimla. I tried in vain to get my bike on the toy train, I stopped repeatedly for chai, hoping the bike might ride itself up the hill, it didn’t. The day grew hotter, my legs grew tired and the bike remained heavy and unwieldy. Fuck this! Just fuck it. I sat at the side of the road on a low wall and had a nice stretch and looked out over the wide valley. That’s when I met Dan. Dan was cheerfully pedalling up the road towards Shimla in the height of the day’s heat. He pulled over to chat.
India is a very big country. And I wanted to see a lot of it. For that reason I took a series of trains making a horseshoe shape around the country. Down the east coast alongside the Bay of Bengal, from Andra Pradesh across to Goa on the Arabic Sea with a stop over in Hampi before striking north to the end of the line in Himachal Pradesh.