In the Forests of the Night

There I was, in a town I didn't even know the name of, with no bike or luggage, wearing only my VC167 jersey, my 3/4 length shorts with the hole at the crotch which I've already repaired once but which had split again, and carrying only my camera, wallet, phone and passport. And there was no room at the inn. The night was warm, and I was eyeing up the benches as a decent place to sleep. I cracked a beer, lit a fag, and waited to see what the landlord would say.

I'd camped up quite happily in light jungle within sight of the highway, and my biggest concern was keeping the big spiders, beetles, fire ants, enormous moths and crickets out of my tent. I had no appetite so I didn't break out my stove. I had a beer which I'd only bought earlier in the day as the shop couldn't change a 500 rupee note, and after half a day in my pannier it was warm to the touch, and it wasn't going down well.

A local lad came past, and asked for some of my water. It's lucky that I didn't need any for cooking, as he drank a whole litre in one gulp. He warned me against camping, as he said there were tigers around, but they say that sort of thing everywhere. I think he was inviting me back to stay with his family, but I'd already put up my tent and I couldn't be bothered to strike camp when it was getting dark. I told him that I'd just sleep there, which he misinterpreted as a sign that he should take a nap, which he did, laying down in the brush with his back against the tree trunk.

About half an hour after he'd left, another couple of young locals came up the same way, walking towards the road. Again they asked for some water, though only the elder of the two drank any. I gave another bottle to the younger, who seemed grateful for it. He never spoke; only the elder did, in a mix of Nepali and English which I could hardly understand. I did understand the word "tiger" again, and he kept asking if I had any friends with me, even going to the extent of shining his phone light into my tent to confirm there was no one else with me, at which he gleefully said "no friend!" I chased them off, and sat uncomfortably in my tent, sweating gently in the heat and humidity.

I stepped out of my tent to get some fresher air, and to shoo away the wee beasties that were gathering around my tent.

I heard rustling in the trees to the east. I ignored it at first, as it was probably leaves and other debris falling from the trees. Back into the tent to concentrate on drinking and not being so paranoid.

However, the sound was drawing closer, and it was a big sound. I got back out, and shone my head torch in the direction of the noise. It was away from the path, into the heart of the jungle, but I shouted a couple of "hellos" and "namastes", in case it was a local gathering wood or taking a shortcut. It was getting slowly closer, and it was clearly something big. I shone my head torch in that direction again, and half-thought it was a pair of tiger's eyes reflecting the light, but I told myself not to be so daft as it was more likely to be a couple of the glowflies that were flitting about, or a spider in one of the trees.

However, I then heard a low but distinct growl coming from the same direction. I'll never forget that sound. It wasn't loud, but it contained such a promise of danger and menace that I didn't hesitate. It was long past the point where I could have struck camp; I went to grab my phone, realised I'd already put it into my jersey pocket, and retreated to the road, listening carefully for sounds of pursuit.

None came. The road was utterly deserted, though, and the traffic that did come along ignored my increasingly desperate arm signals. I was alert to every sound coming from the undergrowth, every falling leaf and crackle of dead branches.

After what felt like an age but was probably ten minutes, a bus stopped for me. I stood in the doorway and let the night breeze cool me down. The conductor and other passengers said there was a hotel 30 km away, and that was where I'd be getting off. While I was on the bus and my heart rate came down from a whine to a purr, I did wonder if it had been some elaborate hoax by the locals to scare me away and steal all my kit. I'd only find out in the morning. Luckily, I had my most nickable items (camera, phone, iPod, passport and wallet) on my person, and more importantly I'm not especially tied to my possessions. Other cycle tourists have commented on how relaxed I am about leaving my bike unlocked and not bothering to take my panniers off. I had made a conscious decision that I wouldn't be tied to my bike while on this trip, which made it very easy to leave it all behind rather than face the wrath of a tiger in its territory.

Realistically, it seemed that it was too over-elaborate to have been an attempt at theft when they could have just outnumbered me and intimidated me into handing over my possessions. And the approach of whatever it was had been too slow, too stealthy, and too focussed in one place to have been a gang of locals playing tricks. I did worry that the second local who'd come along had been very specific about checking that I was alone, but that's a question I get asked so often that to be paranoid about it as absurd. The other possibility was that it was a wild cow, rustling through the jungle and scavenging for food, but the cows around here are well domesticated, and there was that growl...

The landlord found a room for me, with a mattress about half an inch thick and a hard wooden board underneath. I didn't care, especially for the equivalent of less than two quid. I scrounged some pen and paper to record my thoughts, as I didn't want to waste my phone battery. I'd had the forethought to mark my position on the highway, and I was going to use my phone to find my way back there the next morning. I'd worry about my possessions then.

I slept straight through until 6 am and I was immediately awake, catching the world's slowest bus back. I did find out the name of the town where I slept (Lamki) and I explained - or tried to explain - to the bus driver that I wanted to go to a point about 5 km after Sukhad. They understood Sukhad.

I was too worried and nervous to get travel sick on those journeys, not to mention that it was in the cool parts of the day. Midday on those buses would be deeply unpleasant, but I was starting to think that I might have to catch buses, if my bike and tent and luggage had been stolen. I was preparing myself for the worst.
I had locked my bike, however, and wrapped one of the guy ropes around the lock, which I usually do when I'm camping, if only to give myself some reassurance. I am relaxed about the idea of theft, and most people are deserving of trust, but I'm not daft. I'd looped my locks around both wheels, so stealing the bike would have meant the thief snipping the guy rope, lifting the bike and carrying it away. I was hoping that, at worst, scavengers might have come along and nicked my panniers. I could live with that, and carry on, as long as my bike was still there.

The bus overshot my location, as the GPS function on my phone was struggling to find my location in the poor reception pocket between villages. I spotted a landmark I recognised and shouted at the driver to stop. I didn't really need my phone to find the spot, but it was reassuring to have that backup.

It was with some trepidation that I walked back down that track, my feet crackling over the dead leaves. I jumped at every sound as the leaves and catweasels (local equivalent, anyway: fist-sized stickles dropping from the trees made a frighteningly loud noise) fell to earth.

No tigers, and my tent and bike and all my possessions were there, just as I'd left them. I was so relieved. I'd been imagining that I'd come back to a bare campsite, and have to call the police, explain to them where I was, go through the rigmarole of filling in reports and insurance claims, as well as coming away feeling like a right idiot for having been gulled so easily.

I packed up quickly. I wasn't going to hang about. I rolled to the next town and booked into a cheap guest house to have a day off. Looking at the map, I'm only 20 kilometres from Bardia National Park, where there are wild tigers. Maybe I should have taken those locals seriously.

But was it a tiger? It could have been anything. A cow, or a nervous deer creeping through the undergrowth.
When I had dragged my bike back up to the road, I stopped for a drink, and in the loose sand by the road I saw fresh pawprints, which I recognised from Corbett National Park as being the prints of a tiger.

Another Fine Mess

I spent an evening re-packing my bike so that I could travel light on the road to Darchula. Everything I needed (including warm clothes for the higher altitudes I hoped to reach) went into two front panniers and a dry bag on the front, with my tent on the back.

Distant mountains greeted me at the other side of Dadeldhura, the peaks vanishing amongst the clouds. Naturally I paused to take a few photos, drawing much amusement from the locals.



A quick descent to a small village, then the climb started. I was in the granny ring almost from the first, and relieved that I had left my three biggest bags at the guest house.

The road was getting rougher after Dadeldhura, but it's still an astonishing feat of engineering. It rises as high as 2300 metres, cut into the sides of the valleys and switchbacking up the Shiwaliks. There are two feet-deep ditches along the side of the road, and drainage channels dug into the hillside to divert the monsoon rains. The traffic was light and usually well-behaved, apart from a bus driver who wasn't going to give me any room on a right-hander on a quick descent. I braked to let him pass - likely as not, his brakes weren't up to the job.

But mostly I was on my own. Huge black eagles soared above the trees, and a few goats trotted across the road.



After an eight or nine mile climb over the top to Anarkholi Bazaar (all the villages are suffixed "bazaar"), the road turned to shite. I looked at the surface, and how deep and steep into the valley the road went, and decided to turn back. If it had been a through road, I would probably have carried on, but I would have had to come back the same way, and I didn't fancy riding over that lot twice.

I had a distant view of the high Himalayas, but they were obscured by clouds, and I waited around, snacking on bourbon biscuits, to see if the cloud would lift. A local teacher came along for a chat, and invited me back to his house further up the valley, but his report of the state of the road didn't inspire me to go on, even though he did say that the views were much better after another 50 kilometres. It would have taken me another day just to ride that!

A few other locals passed, navvies with hand tools, donkey herders and one young lad who was transporting a huge roll of wire down the road like a kid with a hoop. This thing was six feet in diameter, and he was struggling to control it. Ever seen the Laurel and Hardy movie where they're trying to shift a piano up that hill in San Francisco? It ran away from him and into the ditch, and when he had manhandled it out, the loops started to unwind. I chased him down and helped him wrap it together with a few cable ties from my toolbag.



The clouds weren't shifting. In fact they were thickening and it was overcast for the rest of the day. I gave it up and rode back to Dadeldhura - and what a ride! Nine and a half of the twelve miles were downhill. My bike was much more manoeuvrable without all the weight on it, and despite the rough surface I was easily the fastest thing on the road. I did draw the line at overtaking other vehicles on such a narrow track, and I couldn't let it go owing to the surface and the bends, but still.

The guest house owner was surprised to see me back, as he'd expected me to be gone for four or five days. He seemed to think I'd given up as it was too hilly, and I don't think he believed me when I said I was riding on to Kathmandu. I shrugged and ordered some chips. I'm sick of dhal bat, which is one of the staples here and in north India. One day in India, I had dhal bat three times. Later on, I cooked myself some macaroni and cheese, to celebrate getting my appetite back.

There was no 6 am wake up for chai the next morning, thankfully, and I had a lie-in until 8.30. I hadn't bothered re-packing the night before - I know where everything belongs on my bike by now. Porridge and coffee, then I was off.

Astonishingly, the clouds had completely lifted overnight, and for the first time I had clear views of the Api range on the horizon. I hadn't realised how much the clouds had been covering the peaks, which were much closer than I had realised, and the expanse of jagged white stabbing at the sky was in my left eye until I crossed over into the valley where Budar nestled.



The ride back to the plains from Dadeldhura took me a day and a half, which is a day less than it took on the way up. I could have covered the distance in a day, but I liked the little guest house in Budar, so I broke the route up there, and had a chat with the other guests, who were a mixed bunch of Nepali tourists and UN aid workers. The food there was good as well, and cheap - an all you can eat platter for about 50p.

I didn't get a 6 am wake up there, either. It was 4.40 am. The people in the flat below had to get moving at that time, which is fair enough, but I did lose my rag a bit when the same phone alarm went off four times, and when they had very loud conversations while stomping up and down the stairs. I got back to sleep after another hour.

Then came the 6 am wake up. I decided to get up.

I haven't really adapted to local breakfasts, which are usually paratha (flat bread stuffed with spicy potato, peas or whatever) or spicy omelettes. The staff were good enough to bring me some hot water which I could use to make coffee and porridge. I've tried and failed to get milk here in Nepal, and eventually I gave up and bought some dried milk, which is better than nothing, and at least doesn't go off in the heat, as fresh milk tends to do.

The sunlit ride along the pine valley felt very different to the ride in the other direction, when low mists curled between the branches and it reminded me of cycling in Scotland. The landscape of the Shiwaliks is like nowhere else I've ridden. It's steep, and rich, and green, unlike barren Turkey or rocky, dry Iran, and the treeline goes further up than I would have believed. I paused to look up at the slopes, and tried to imagine the route the road was going to take up there. It seemed impossible.

It swept up somehow, and again the descent at the other side was a very different experience to the cloudy, moody landscape I'd ridden up. I stopped for provisions at a little village store and sat there for about an hour, chatting with the locals, one of whom insisted on buying me a beer. I refused at first, as it was only 11 in the morning and the climbing wasn't done yet. It went down well, though.

The massive descent down to the plains was tough. Not that I had to pedal, but it was getting hot in the midday sun, even at 30 mph I could feel the heat, and the tarmac was melting on the sharp corners. Again I thought how lucky I'd been that it was overcast and cool when I'd been going up.

Back at Ataria and on the Mahendra Highway (the main east-west road in Nepal) again, I took a break for a couple of hours to escape the heat. A succession of Nepali cyclists stopped to chat, and to drink my water. I didn't mind at first, but none of them were carrying even water bottles; if you're out in temperatures of 30+ degrees, why can't you carry your own water?

A westerly wind was picking up while I scoffed some biscuits and cheese puffs (actual crisps are quite hard to come by out here, except in nasty flavours like tomato and masala). A teenage girl and her sister had stopped to beg for some water, and they gave me a little race as I set off, the younger sitting sidesaddle on the rear rack. This sort of thing has happened all the time in Nepal and India, which annoyed me a lot when I was trying to ride 100 mile days on the plains, and wanted to find a rhythm that I could maintain all day. I'd overtake a cyclist, he'd (it's usually a he) take umbrage and race to overtake, then slow down immediately. It was easy enough to overhaul them, especially in India, and when I had the energy I'd play a cruel game by setting a pace which they struggled to maintain, then just as they were thinking they had the legs on me, I'd wave bye-bye, click it into the big ring and scarper over the horizon at 23 mph.

Nepali cyclists seem to have a bit more stamina than their Indian counterparts, though. I stayed behind these two lasses until I decided that I should make the most of the tailwind, and overtook them to admiring whoops from them, and with a quick wave from me.

I quickly rode twenty five miles, and stopped in a village for provisions for camping. Plenty of water, some beer and some snacks. I did ask about a guesthouse, which the guys at the beer shop assured me was just up the road, but I couldn't see it. I rode on until I'd cleared the village and the outlying houses, nipped down a footpath into the jungle, and pitched my tent. Only my second night of camping in Nepal.

Dadeldhura Nicely!

I had a day off in Mahendranagar, not unrelated to the previous night's drinking to celebrate Nepali New Year. When I did leave, I was up earlier than I'd planned as my hotel was opposite the bus stand, and for some reason the drivers sit for hours blaring their horns while their buses fill with passengers. This is not conducive to lying in.

I had planned to take a side road up the valley towards my destination. Well, I say destination. It was just that on my ridiculously large-scale map (1:1,000,000, which was the only map I could find) there are roads marked going north up the valley, which I thought I'd follow, hoping to see icy peaks and get some climbing into my legs. I tend to plan things on the go, which is just as well as I haven't been able to find any reports on the web of other touring cyclists coming this way.

I must have missed that side road, or more likely it was such an unprepossessing dirt road that I dismissed it. I did see the other end of it further up the valley, and I was relieved that I hadn't taken it, as it was a muddy track, and given how hilly the main road was, it would have been hell to ride with all the weight on my bike.

Actually, I wasn't even sure that I was on the main highway. There was so little traffic, especially compared to congested India - I blame it on the New Year festivities. However, locals assured me that I was going the right way, and it was an enjoyable plod through Sukla Phanta Wildlife Reserve, the road lined with trees and rolling pleasantly. Good surface, too.

Food for the day was mainly cream doughnuts, as I still have hardly any appetite and struggle to keep down anything richer than porridge. Sadly, the doughnuts were to become victims of ants later that day when I camped up.

There were no roadsigns and all of the kilometre posts were in Nepali, but I did find the turning I wanted, up to Dadeldhura. Locals were astonished when I said I was going to Dadeldhura - I think hardly any tourists come here, especially by bicycle. Western Nepal is the poorest region of an already-poor country. With this in mind, I stocked up on plenty of water and food and beer in Atariya.

This was where the road started to go up into the Shiwaliks, the lowest and newest range of the Himalayas. I was reminded of a couple of things on this climb - firstly, you do need food. I was stopping regularly on the climb (which was a biggie - the road ascends from about 200 metres above sea level on the plains to 2000 metres, and these are only the foothills), to let my legs rest and take a few photos of the impressive views. The escarpment rises almost directly out of the plains, and the contrast in altitudes made for some magnificent drop-offs.

Secondly, distance on the map doesn't necessarily reflect distance on the road. After crossing a rickety bridge over the Mohana River, the road switchbacked up the hillside, and instead of the 40 miles to Dadeldhura from Atariya which the map suggested, it was about 90 miles. No map at a usable scale would be able to show all these switchbacks.




I stopped early to camp at one of the few flat spots by the road and lazed about for a few hours until I pitched my tent and cooked my cordon bleu of noodles with Bovril. A few curious locals came past, and insisted on looking at my maps. It had taken me ages to fold the things at the right page, and within seconds they managed to mangle them out of kilter. I'm not sure they knew what they were looking at, as one girl spent ages looking at northern Tibet on the even-more-ridiculously large scale map I carry, which I've only kept as it has relief and spot heights on it, so I can see what I'm getting into.

Later, a few more wandered up, and one lad spoke a bit of English, but that didn't make conversation very much easier. Among other things he asked "what is your God?" and rather than trying to explain atheism to him (which is difficult enough with people who have a good grasp of English - most people subscribe to some sort of faith in Nepal and India), I told him I was a Christian.

Hypocrisy never pays. He pulled out a cross to show that he was a Christian too, and the next morning he came up at 6.30 am to shout at me: "Wake up, uncle! Praise the Lord!"

"Fuck off," I shouted back. I'm never at my best in the mornings and it was still raining. They did scarper, and I had another hour's sleep.

My sleep had been disturbed enough already; since a rat had chewed into my luggage and eaten a hole in my sleeping mat in a nasty hotel in Madhya Pradesh, I have tried to repair it, but it still keeps going down. I was awoken by a huge stone digging into my side at 1.30 am, and disconsolately I straddled the mat to pump a bit more air into it. At the same time a huge storm was clashing over the mountains, but in the next valley. I stepped outside my tent for a bit to watch the show.

More climbing the next day. I reckon it was 25 miles uphill from the plains to the top of the escarpment. My worries about buying provisions were completely unfounded. Villages were quite regular, even the smaller ones having little shops where you can buy biscuits and peanut brittle and instant noodles, and the larger ones have roadside dhabas (also selling bottled water and beer) where the meal is usually an all-you-can-eat platter of soup, rice and fried potatoes. I could only keep down the potatoes, and rather than leave my meal and appear to be a wasteful westerner I took it away with me in a plastic bag and fed it to some monkeys up the road.

I nearly turned back near the top of the climb, as the road turned to shite. At some point the monsoon rains had washed away the surface and all that was left was mud, gravel and huge rocks embedded in the mud. As this was also the steepest point of the route, I had to push my bike. Thankfully good tarmac returned after about 200 yards.



I'm really pleased I carried on. It wasn't just the road surface which was making me nervous, it was also the isolation. The New Year celebrations, and it being a Sunday, were obviously keeping people off the roads, but after congested India where houses and people lined the roadsides and I couldn't so much as stop without a crowd forming, it was unnerving to be on my own again.

Not to mention the storm that was brewing. While I was riding along the rim of the valley, I heard a few rumbles which seemed to come from different directions, so that I wasn't sure if I was riding towards the storm, or away from it. I should have known.

Over the top of the hill, and I finally lost the views of the plains as I descended into a green valley of pines and mist. The road was still greasy from rain which had obviously fallen recently. I took it easy on the switchbacks, and stopped at the next village for chai with a local elder, whom I pestered for advice about the next stretch. We didn't share a language, but I got the message across by making the universal sign for hilliness: hold your hand at a 45 degree angle and stab up with your fingers. His reply was that it's about twenty kilometres to Budar, where there was a guest house, and the road goes along the valley rather than up to the peaks.



I thanked him for the chai and left, just as the storm hit. I took shelter in another dhaba a hundred yards down the hill, where I was in good company as not only did a few swallows follow me in and perch on the trailing electrical wires, but a half dozen armed police were sat around eating their dinner. The torrential rain wasn't slackening, so I grabbed a beer and sat with the coppers. Beer and alcohol are available nearly everywhere. I don't think the half-drunk bottle of vodka on the table belonged to the coppers, and they didn't offer me any, though they were kind enough to share their dinner of...meat. They didn't understand what I meant when I asked what kind of meat it was - they just said it was meat. I did ask what kind of animal it came from, but the reply was "yes, animal." I suspect it was goat, as goats are the commonest livestock around here, but I've never had goat before and the meat was too well spiced for much flavour to linger. Texture-wise, it was more like pork scratchings than anything else.

I asked the lads the same question - how hilly is the road from here? I asked loads of questions about facilities and road conditions of the locals, as I didn't have any other information to go on, and I received lots of useful, reassuring information about the conditions and the traffic and the number of villages. One copper told me that the road to Budar was very hilly, at which point I wondered if I'd misunderstood the old man, and if having that beer had been a bad idea.

I reckon the old man had it about right. The road wound between low valleys, occasionally climbing a bit, but nothing to compare with that big climb away from the plains. The rain passed over and it was a wonderful beer-fuelled meander through the pine forests and lush valleys, with a rainbow far below me.
I checked into the guest house at Budar, planning to fix my mat, but I only had the energy to read a bit and wash my clothes. I couldn't even face proper food - I ate a few doughnuts and some crisps.



The rain and clouds cleared during the night - it was a bright, crisp morning. I'm pleased to be away from the sultry plains and into the mountains, where the air is rare. I'm even enjoying the rain, as until the last week I hadn't been rained on for 5,000 miles. No doubt the novelty will wear off soon.

Breakfast was more doughnuts, and an omelette from the guest house. I asked for a plain omelette, as they usually put far too many onions in for my taste. The correct amount of onion, by the way, is none.

It was another huge climb out of Budar. I was glad of that omelette. But with the clear air and high cloud base, I could see for miles. Looking back, there were hills and hills, which I'd already crossed. I was surprised to see how many lines of hills lay behind me. I was travelling slowly and I hadn't realised how much terrain I'd covered. And still no glacier-clad crags cresting the northern sky.




Again, I took plenty of stops, to watch the buzzards circling above the trees, and to spot shapes in the fluffy cumulous clouds which started to develop in mid-afternoon. Is there anything fluffier than a cloud?
Apart from a couple of brief downhills, it was an 18-mile climb to around 2500 metres from Budar. A couple of Nepali kids ran alongside me for a bit, and they probably could have overtaken me at times. I had a stop at Gaira Bazaar, about 12 miles from Budar, where I tried and failed to negotiate a plate of potatoes/alu.

I had to go carefully on the descent - the road surface was OK, but there were enough bumps and lumps and washouts to make me wary of letting it go. It was around this point that I realised I was making a one-way trip, and I could have left half my luggage at the guest house in Budar to collect on the way back. I'm unlikely to need my maps of India or the National Geographic Titanic Anniversary Edition on the road to Darchula.

The landscape since the plains had been typical of the Shiwaliks - broad, flat-topped hills covered in verdant forests, above well-kept farmland. The hillsides have fields stepped into them, and mountain goats roam while the herders doze in the sun. Locals walked the road from village to village carrying huge bundles of firewood or water - it was usually the women doing most of the carrying, while the men walked alongside and chatted.

But at the top of the climb the landscape started to change. I had my first view of the middle Himalayas, where bare slopes thrust above the treeline, and above those, in the hazy distance, a glimpse of crags and glaciers. The Upper Himalayas. I had a burst of joy at seeing them, finally. The view was occluded by trees and distance, but they were there, and I was getting closer.

I was so taken in that I took the wrong turning at a fork in the road, and it was only when I'd screamed down a steep descent for two miles that I looked at the road ahead and thought "Dadeldhura's not that low!" I checked with Google Maps on my phone, but that didn't know where Dadeldhura was, and I asked a passing local, and he confirmed that yup, it's back up that way. My only consolations were that I'd stopped before going all the way down, and that this alternative route did give me some damn good views. 45 minutes later, I winched myself back to where the road had forked. In my defence, the sign at the turn did say "Dadeldhura," but it actually meant that Dadeldhura was in the other direction. Obviously.

I found a cheap guest house in Dadeldhura and again, I was too tired to fix my mat. I ordered veg fried rice, but even that was too rich for my stomach. I decided to have a day off to look around the town, re-organise my kit so that I can travel light to Darchula, and finally, hopefully, fix my mat. I didn't get as much sleep as I'd hoped for - the dawn chorus of sniff-hawk-spit from adjoining rooms kiboshed that, as did the 6 am wake-up for yak butter tea.

I have been the main attraction in town as I don't think there are any other western tourists here at the moment, but Dadeldhura is well set-up to cater for visitors. It has a few hotels and ATMs and lots of little shops. I had a wander around and topped up my phone credit, but the level of attention was far less than in India: mainly, friendly people waving and saying Namastes. I didn't stay out for long as there isn't anything to see, and the alleged cyber cafe didn't materialise, so no photos yet.

I have (I think) fixed my mat, and I've set aside three bags to leave here for a few days while I travel up and up, to Darchula on the border with India. It feels a little bit like cheating, but I'll be able to ride faster, and reports of the road conditions suggest that the surface gets rocky, gravelly and muddy. I don't want to place that sort of stress on my bike when I don't need to. Of course, I'm hoping to have close views of the Api range and the high, high Himalayas. Why else did I come?

A few numbers:

14/04/2012, Day 217: from Mahendranagar, H01, Altaria, H14, campsite - 37.53 miles, 3:44:26, 18.4 mph max
15/04/2012, Day 218: from campsite, H14, Chhatiwan, Budar - 31.23 miles, 4:24:48, 31.4 mph max
16/04/2012, Day 219: from Budar, Gaira Bazaar, Dadeldhura - 39.09 miles, 5:15:03, 36.3 mph max, 8057.0 miles in total

India's Final Throw (and some friendly Aussies)

So I made it to Nepal! It's an open border between India and Nepal, but I was still surprised at how relaxed the border controls were. Many people stroll or cycle across the border, or take a ride on a cart, and I rode straight past the Nepali immigration control before I doubled back, a little sheepishly. I asked for and was given a three-month visa, handed over 102 US dollars, and while my man was organising the paperwork I wandered off to the Tourist Information office for a chat and to grab a free map. Even the Indian side was remarkably simple - only a single form to fill out and no searching questions about my reasons for being there.

I was relieved, to say the least, as my last few days in India compressed all the difficulties of travelling in India into a neat package.

I'd arrived in Ramnagar, planning to take a safari around Ronnie Corbett National Park (actually Jim Corbett National Park, but when Jonathan was here we'd started giving daft names to the Indian places, so Rishikesh was Little Chef or Ricky Lake, Dehra Dun was Desperate Dan, Khatima was Khatima Whitbread... you get the idea), where there be tigers, but when I saw the swell of activity and noise in Ramnagar, and thought of the administrative burden involved in getting into the park - and the expense, as I was on my own - I nearly carried on riding for the border. Luckily, I felt too knackered to do anything except stop.



Luckily, because the next morning I ran into a family of Australians who had a spare space in their safari, and though we didn't get into the park that day (and I had to get up at 5 am and bray on the door of the hotel to be let out), they suggested that I come out to the campsite where they were staying. It turned out to be a lovely couple of days, drinking and talking rubbish and drinking and exchanging travellers' tales. Steve and Sally (originally from Northern Ireland and York, respectively) had come out to India with their younger daughter Keira to meet their other daughter, Sorcha, who was travelling around India with a family friend, Paula. Best of all, they'd booked a safari the next afternoon, so at least I wouldn't have done all that shite cycling around the plains for nothing.

It was too easy. I should have known better.

The problems started when I approached the proprietor of the camp site and asked to stay. He didn't have a problem - I could stay in one of the tents for 400 rupees.

400 rupees! Not only had I been paying less than that at my hotel, not only was everyone else paying 250 rupees, but I had my own tent, which I said I'd pitch in the corner, and I offered him 100 rupees.

No no, government regulations. That was his answer to everything.

- Why is it 400 rupees?
- Government regulations.
- Why can't I pitch my own tent?
- Government regulations.
- But these guys are paying 250 rupees!
- Send them here.

I gave up. Paula (originally from Liverpool, which you can probably hear in her voice if you read her entertaining blog about her Indian travels) got the same answers when she went up to try, except for when she said that I'd be camping by the river instead, and the proprietor said that was too dangerous - tigers. We all laughed at that. Steve said we'd all sleep down by the river if there was a chance of seeing tigers.
I had meant to leave the campsite, but I drank far too much and ended up dossing in Steve and Sally's tent. I slept well.

The next morning, the proprietor collared me, smiling, and called me into his office. He invited me to sit down, perused my passport with excessive attention and told me quite seriously "what you have done is illegal."

I shrugged and took my punishment like a man. He made me fill out three forms. In India there are always two forms to complete - the hotel register and a form for foreign visitors. I was too hung over to register what the third form was. Probably a form for occasions when cyclists have their own tents, argue about pitching them, then stay anyway without paying or completing the forms in advance. There's a form for everything. I was reminded of the saying that the British introduced administration to India, so in revenge the Indians perfected it. It was nearly as bad as the time I had the police called out on me at the Caravan and Camping site in Keswick when I pitched my tent without booking in as it was late and the office was closed. I smiled my way through it, and nipped back into Ramnagar to post a parcel of old diaries and maps back to the UK, before our safari in the afternoon.



The safari was very good. I hadn't expected to see tigers, and sadly we didn't, but we came close. The guide pointed to fresh tiger prints in the track, and as we were leaving the park a black-faced monkey was putting out a warning call from the treetops to warn that a tiger was close. It was too dark by thencto see (despite the driver flashing his headlights through the trees), but the guide said that the tiger would have been laying low in the undergrowth, and as we drove by I commented that it was very easy to imagine a tiger stalking through the trees a hundred yards from the road.



What struck me most about the park was how well kept it was. Unlike the sad situation in much of the rest of India, there wasn't litter everywhere, and entry is closely controlled to ensure that the wildlife takes priority over tourism. We saw loads of deer, and oodles of birdlife. Paula said that it should be renamed Corbett Peacock Reserve, we saw so many peafowl, and heard so many of their evocative calls echoing between the trees. We saw an eagle perched on the rocks at the river's edge, and great hornbills cawing from branch to branch, making the trees shake as they shifted their huge weight. I should have been able to spot more - it's a shame, really, that I sent my guide to Indian birds back to the UK that morning.
I had been expecting lush, rich rainforests, but it's a dry deciduous forest, and the crackle of dead leaves announced the presence of animals creeping through the trees. I expect it's very different after the monsoon. Still, I really enjoyed the sense that I was interloping in these creature's habitat.

Back at the campsite, the proprietor and his mates were getting hammered on whisky, and invited me over. Aha, I thought, all is forgiven.

No. The next morning, after I'd said my farewells to Paula and the Douglas family, I went up to pay, and he made me fill out the forms again! Only two this time, at least, so perhaps his hangover wasn't as bad as it seemed to be.

Nor was India done with me - it was a pleasant enough ride along smooth quiet roads on the fringes of the national park, with lots of shelter from the encroaching trees, but I simply had no energy, and stopped at the next big town, Haldwani. Haldwani must rank (deliberate choice of word there) as one of the least pleasant places I have ever visited. It was just too busy, and I've had enough of random grinning loons staring at me when I pass by. The traffic was appalling - I had a slight sense of humour breakdown when I eventually summoned the will to leave the hotel at about 11.30, and shouted abuse at the drivers who left-hooked me while on their mobiles, at the tuk-tuk driver who thought that I'd welcome him riding alongside me and grinning inanely while I was trying to navigate the traffic and potholes, and at the beggar who grabbed my arm while I was stopping at a traffic light. Even when I got onto the open road, I missed the direct route I'd wanted to take and ended up going around the point of the triangle to the border. Only because I was given duff directions by the people I'd asked, who for some reason assumed that I'd prefer riding an extra 30 miles to my destination, rather than taking the direct road.

Ah well. At least the weather was playing its part - it was cool and overcast, and the blessed rain fell on me for the first time since Kayseri, in central Turkey. I've missed the rain. I did worry that it would become a storm and make the roads even more dangerous than in the dry, but it was a cooling rain which only lasted long enough to take the edge off the heat.

I am pleased to be out of India. The intensity of the attention is overwhelming at times, and even this nondescript border town instantly feels more relaxed. I have enjoyed India (mostly, for the same reasons I sometimes hate it), but the cycling on the plains was getting me down, and it's bound to be better here in Nepal, where there are fewer people, less traffic, and more mountains.

We Gotta Get Out Of These Plains

There's a streak of masochism in cycle tourists. At least, that's the outside view. I sometimes feel as though I'm constantly fielding questions from curious, if doubting, passers-by. Why are you doing that, why don't you take a flight, or a bus, or take a car? Why do you go to Scotland in winter, or ride through Iran? I was in cold, soğuk, eastern Turkey at the start of last winter, and when I stayed with Ercan in Sivas he and his friends tried to stop me from going east across the icy passes and up to the Erzurum plateau, and Ercan firmly believed that no more cyclists would be passing his way that winter. But while I was there he was contacted by a couple of British cyclists who were also heading east, and still they came. It was cold, but the mountains were beautiful, and possibly the hardest part was fending off kind-hearted truckers who wanted to give me a lift into Iran.

Still, there is some truth in the stereotype. I left Delhi about a week ago, and it has been some of the most unpleasant cycling I've ever experienced, for three reasons. First, I've been suffering from an underbubble of mild illness. Second, it's damn hot, and with me being a late riser, I don't often take advantage of the cool early mornings - the one time I had an early start was when a cockroach landing on my pillow woke me at 4.45, so I have to do most of my cycling in the hottest part of the day. Third, the plains are flat, and tedious. With all due respect to Panipat and Saharanpur and Kashipur, it's been a tour of shit towns. Panipat's defining feature was the concrete flyover of the Grand Trunk Road grumbling through the centre of town, and the only thing I remember about Saharanpur is that it had a very busy interchange near the railway station. Oh, and the roads around it were in an awful state. Loose hardcore and rocks embedded into concrete do not a happy cycling surface make. And the heat just saps my strength. I thought I was going to get a good ducking when I saw storm clouds on the horizon as I was riding towards Kashipur, and I would have been glad of a bit of rain to cool me off, but I missed the rain, and I only caught the winds at the edge of the storm system, which whipped the dust off the fields and sand-blasted my face and arms.

I'm sick of flat riding. I'm sick of pedalling all the time. I'm sick of seeing nothing on the horizon. Even my plan to get into the mountains for my route to Ramnagar was kiboshed by road closures, so after a day and a half in the Himalayan foothills around Dehra Dun and Rishikesh, enjoying the views and the cool air, I was sucked back into the clammy, smoggy, congested plains.

I should have just ridden straight to Ramnagar from Delhi, really. I never once considered taking a bus or a train, however, and not only because I get seriously travel sick on buses (especially the way they're driven here) and because I couldn't face once again the trauma of trying to navigate the administration requirements involved in getting a bike on a train in India. I set out to cycle, so cycle I shall. It isn't one of those times when I've fought my way through hardships to get to my destination and arrived with the glow of achievement, of a challenge overcome. It's just been bloody hard.

But, when I look back at this from happier days in cooler climes, these will be the times I've paid the price for the happy cycling. As I say, there is some truth in the stereotype. We push ourselves through the crap times, knowing or hoping that there are better roads and places over the next horizon, and that every day of shit roads and shit towns brings you closer to that.

Still. I need some inspiration, and I'll be immensely relieved when I leave behind the humidity, and the heat, and the plains.

Two Weeks Off

I like Delhi. Almost every other tourist I've met has hated or at least disliked the place, and I can see why. If you're on a tight schedule and you need to, say, organise a new sim card or onward travel in a morning, it can be immensely frustrating, as things tend to happen at their own pace in India, and trying to make things happen rarely works. The levels of attention you get as a tourist can be overwhelming at first, but they are as nothing compared to the attention I draw as a cyclist, so I enjoy the relative anonymity of being a tourist in Delhi. Not to mention that a lot of people seem amused at the tourists wandering in their midst. Unlike Agra, where it felt as though everyone is grasping for the tourist dollar, Delhi has a sense of purpose, of a country testing its muscles. India's the future, and you can see that growth and the push of modernity here.

I like the mix of modern, ancient and British Empire buildings which you get while wandering around, mixed in with typically Indian scenes such as the rows of cycle rickshaws and tiny shops selling only bearings, or fireworks, or chewing tobacco and cigarettes. The contrast between the riches and the poverty of some people is appalling, though. You can see beggars and street kids asking for food and handouts outside shops selling iPads for many more rupees than your average waiter gets in a year.

My sister Anita has flown out to meet me here in Delhi, which has given me some time off the bike, a chance to stay in some pleasant hotels (which she paid for) and do some properly touristy things (which she paid for) and show her around places I'd already been, especially Delhi. She thought I was testing her by taking her to Old Delhi on her first day, and maybe I was, a little, but it's the most typically Indian place you can get to, and despite the scrum of people and the crazy traffic, it's a very safe place. Chandni Chowk even has a Mcdonald's, with handcarts and rickshaws and cows pulling bales of cloth going past. It's hardly downtown Bogota.

I did experience some of the Delhi frustration when I tried to fix my bike, as the mechanic's I took it to actually tightened the bolt, which was the complete opposite of what I'd asked them to do. Having worsened the problem, they then refused to help and sent me up to the cycle market, which I hoped would be a nest of little workshops and spare parts, but instead it was an emporium of kids' bikes, and a couple of rickshaw workshops. One guy said he didn't have the tools, until I pointed out that he had a socket spanner right next to him. The only help I got was one affable chap who said it isn't a part you can get in India. Someone did this in India, said I. He said that they wouldn't have the tools there - he reckoned I'd be best off going to Chandni Chowk or Kashmere Gate in Old Delhi and getting my own tools. To be honest I prefer to do these jobs myself after my experiences of letting other people at my bike, so that's what I did once Anita had left, as I didn't want to waste our time in fixing my bike. I hated the feeling of being in limbo, and I had hoped that the gear Anita brought would fix it, but despite my speaking on the phone to the guy at Halford's, he still contrived to send different parts to the ones I'd asked for. It was a strangely Indian experience, in that I thought I was saying one thing, but he heard another. Still, it's now fixed, even if it's not to my compete satisfaction, and I'll be carrying an extra kilo of tools and spares with me into the mountains when I leave.

Anita enjoyed Delhi, I think. As well as Old Delhi and the Jami Masjid Mosque and Red Fort, we went for a walk around the wide boulevards of New Delhi, which was amazingly quiet on a Sunday, at least until we got to India Gate, the war memorial built by the British to commemorate the Indian dead of World War I. I had been there previously with Jonathan, when the whole area was fenced off for the Republic Day celebrations, and to be honest I thought it was better then, as there were armed soldiers to scare off the scamsters.

Connaught Place has a bad reputation for the amount of hassle you get as a tourist, but at least there you only get people telling you things you already know, such as This Is C! Block C! Saying that, we did get hounded by a few juvenile pen salesmen and there's one guy there who keeps offering to clean my ears.

But at least you don't get people grabbing your hands and painting you there, which happened to Anita at India Gate. I thought she'd agreed to it, so I didn't say anything, but I did snarl a bit when they tried to start on me. Anita had both hands henna'd and they also flogged her an awful bit of jewellery. The family of harridans then tried to charge her 1500 rupees. We argued and gave them 200 in the end. Then a small boy followed me around, trying to sell me some tat, then trying to drop it into my pocket when I was photographing the arch, then feigning injury to get money out of me. Needless to say, he got nowt except a lesson in picking his marks better. It was much better when it was fenced off and lined with soldiers.

It was worse than Old Delhi - I took Anita along Chandni Chowk and through the Spice Bazaar, where we got hardly any hassle, apart from when I stopped to check the map and some mad old bleeder came up and said "this is Lahori Gate", which I knew as it was in big letters above the gate. Later on, he was standing next to one of the spice stalls and said "this is spice market" when we walked past. He probably goes on holiday to Trafalgar Square and stands under Nelson's Column telling people "this is England".



On our last day in India, I took Anita to the Sikh temple, Bangla Sahib, which I've now visited three times. It's quite unlike other temples I'd visited in India, such as Jama Masjid, where entrance is theoretically free, but they charge you 200 rupees for a camera, then another 100 to go up to the minaret, then another fee to wear a shame robe if you're showing too much skin, and where I had Jonathan and I thrown out when I refused to pay the camera fee, or the beautiful Lotus Temple, where it felt as though we were being fed into a factory assembly line. Entrance is free, there's a tourist office where friendly Sikhs explain that you need to cover your hair and not to speak inside the temple, but otherwise you can wander about at will, and the lack of rules and restrictions is not only welcoming, it encourages people to show respect. I really like the place, for the beauty of the temple and the pool, the warm welcome (entry is open to everybody, and food is given out freely to anybody), and the freedom to sit in peace without, for example, having somebody blow a whistle at you for sitting too long (which happened to Jonathan and I at the Taj Mahal). Anita really enjoyed it too. Amongst the bustle of Delhi, it has a remarkable tranquility, atmospheric music pours out of the temple twenty four hours a day, and the Sikhs are keen to give a good impression of their religion, or way of life.

It made a fine ending to Anita's holiday in India. In some ways it had been a hectic week, with some long days of travelling, but we'd planned an itinerary which had enough flexibility to allow for things to go wrong, which can happen in India. The two things she wanted to do were the elephant ride at Amber Fort in Jaipur, and the mountain railway up to Shimla. I think Jonathan and I comprehensively put her off the Taj Mahal and Agra, and I thought that she'd have been doing it because that's what people expect you to do in India, rather than because she really wanted to see it for herself.

The drive down to Jaipur was...challenging. I only agreed to brave my car sickness as I knew that road from having cycled it, so I knew that it was a clear run on a three lane highway for most of the route, but the driver wasn't the best. Anita complained to the hotel about him, as he consistently drove too close to cars in front, had no sense of anticipation, became competitive with other traffic and in one town he actually steered towards a young lad who was trying to cross the road. He collared me in the street afterwards, as Anita's complaint had cost him business, but I simply told him that it was his own fault. We had tried to tell him to back off on umpteen occasions, but at best he didn't listen, and at worst he ignored us and tried to convince us that he was a really good driver, as he sailed between two wagons with a yard's clearance to either side. He wasn't as bad as some of the clowns out here, but he didn't comprehend how uncomfortable his driving made us.

The hotel in Jaipur was lovely, and Anita and I went for a walk around the decaying Pink City, and for sunset we had a beer at Tiger Fort, high above the city with no one else around. It was straight out of the guide books and it was great.



In the morning, the elephant ride up to Amber Fort was another tourist trap, but I felt that it made it more special, to troop through the huge gateways up to the fort with sixty other elephants. We had a very frisky ride - the mahout said that she was only young, and enthusiastic, and full of energy, and we were overtaking other elephants up to the fort.



I liked that mahout - he was surly, and quiet. Unlike our tour guide, who I would have fired if I'd been on my own, but Anita was paying attention so I held my tongue. He didn't like that, though - while he was wittering on about the fine jewelwork or something, I was staring out over the battlements to the other fort on top of the hill and trying to imagine myself back amongst the Maharajahs, and what it would have been like, as I try to do, and he interrupted my reverie to ask "aren't you interested in the fort?" He was deeply offended that I wasn't paying him much attention. He went and spoke to other tour guides as well - I can imagine him complaining about me. "Did you tell him about the textiles? And the painting in plaster? And did you tell your Bollywood joke?" "I've tried everything, man. He's just not interested."

There were some interesting tidbits in there, but mostly it was tedious, and I was looking at the other tour guides, and they were giving the exact same spiel, made them take the exact same photos and so on. I like the sense that I'm discovering a place for myself, which is quite egotistical and probably delusional, but I prefer to wander around and look at stuff rather than be shepherded around, to watch other people and stare out into space, rather than listen to a dull lecture on the riches of the palaces and the beauty of the wives. I said to Anita, it was all built on the blood of the workers. He wouldn't let us stop and take our time, he was always chivvying us along and asking us what we planned to do afterwards - because he was very keen to get us to go to the local jewel factory and the textile works and reap himself a fat profit. I took great delight in going slowly, letting Anita buy tat from the many (many many) tat sellers around the fort and having a leisurely toilet stop. It wasn't even as if he was very enthusiastic about the place - it was so perfunctory.

But these are all the experiences that make up India. It's not like going to Bognor Regis. Can you imagine, if you grabbed a taxi at Heathrow or Newcastle airport and asked to be taken to such-and-such hotel, but they told you they knew a much nicer one, and anyway that hotel's dirty, or it's burnt down. We didn't go to the jewel workshop, or the textile factory with Surinder. Driving back to Delhi was quite enough of an experience.

The other trip we'd organised was by train, and the Indian railways are amazing. They're slow by western standards, but every train we caught was within five minutes of the timetable. The trip up to Shimla wasn't without its quirks, however. I was full of cold and getting up at 4.30 am to catch the train from Sara Rohilla station wouldn't have put me in a good mood at the best of times. Since we weren't able to book the mountain railway from Kalka to Shimla, we had to try and get a bus, but the buses were shonky local buses and I felt ill at the mere thought of spending four hours on one of those up a twisty mountain road. I negotiated a taxi driver, which was much more civilised, even if the driver was a bit weird. He stopped to get fags, and took his hands off the steering wheel each time we passed a temple to put them together and bow his head in prayer. He also stopped halfway up to have lunch, then vanished. But he was a pretty good driver, cautious and slow, and on that road (we passed one accident where a wagon had sideswiped a scooter), safe and slow was fine by me. It took about four hours to get the 90 km to Shimla.

Shimla has a central drag, the Mall, which was laid down by the British when it was the summer capital of the Raj. Indians were banned from it at the time - now, cars and autos and motorised transport are banned from it (ish - you still get official vehicles and those with special permits), so we had to walk. I was knackered and a bit ill. I was falling asleep in the car, but the mad old sod wouldn't let me sleep. I've no idea why - he spoke hardly any English. And I was carrying a huge rucksack with our stuff for three days in Shimla.

We did have a hotel booked, as Anita's partner Ian had found a youth hostel in Shimla on the internet, and as Anita is a member of the YHA, likes youth hostels and was curious to see what an Indian YHA would be like, she'd booked us a family room (with a view) there. It was up on The Ridge. The clue's in the name - off we went tramping uphill. We asked at the tourist information (more on which later), and they'd never heard of it. They told us to check this hotel further up. We got so far, and gave them a ring, and they sent a tall Kashmiri-looking bloke down to guide us back. I only thought he was Kashmiri cos he had blue eyes and the air of mountains about him.

He was alright, but this place wasn't no youth hostel. I'd be amazed if Hostelling International were aware of its existence. It was a seedy ratbag budget hotel masquerading as a youth hostel. The guy at reception looked like an extra from Taxi Driver. We did go to see the room, way up on the top floor, but this weren't no family room and there weren't no view. It was dark and musty with a narrow, filthy double bed, and there wasn't even a shower. I thought Anita was going to have a breakdown there. She said it was the sort of room you only see when the blindfold comes off and Abdul peels back a blanket to reveal his tray of torture implements.

So, we trooped back down the hill. I was knackered and ill and frankly a bit useless. I was complaining a bit. We went back to the tourist information and asked for their advice on a nice hotel, nearby, with a view, for around 2,000 rupees.

No problem. The Holiday Home has all of that. And it's only ten minutes' walk. They booked us in, and Anita paid.

They gave us directions. This place really wasn't ten minutes away. It took us fifteen minutes just to get to the lift down from the Mall, then we had to walk for another fifteen minutes along this narrow road, with traffic, without any clear idea where we were going.

We did eventually get to the Horrible Home, though. The room was musty and carpeted, and you didn't really want to touch anything. It was really small, there wasn't a kettle so I had to break out my stove for coffee, and there was a marvellous view of the car park. If you craned your neck you could see a few mountains, and the sunset. Anita found it quite loud as well - some Indian kids were running out and back, banging doors. Someone turned up to change the sheets...for a different room. In the morning, I went down to reception to try to get some mineral water, but they asked me my room number. I said no, give it to me, cos Anita was asleep and I didn't want to wake her. She'd found the day very trying, shit hotel after shit hotel, Shimla not being what she'd hoped, and being bullshitted all the time. No water, though. I gave up, and went for a walk to try and find some, but this place was in the middle of nowhere, so I came back and got some from the restaurant, where the All Indian Surliness Champion (four years out of five) charged me 40 rupees! I pointed at the side of the bottle, where a maximum retail price of 15 rupees was printed, but he wasn't having it. We had breakfast there later, and the same guy took our order. Or so we thought. I never did get my juice. Wait, I did, but since it arrived ten minutes before anything else, I consider that to be part of a different meal. We had to call him back to the table for everything - he brought hot milk instead of cold milk for the cornflakes, hash browns instead of an omelette, and the tea and coffee only came when we'd finished everything else. At the end, he even refused to take the 500-rupee note cos it had a tear in it. He's going to clear the boards at this year's championships. After the breakfast farrago, they actually clagged somebody else's breakfast bill onto our room. Tried to, anyway.

The place was unbelievably overpriced. I did work out why the tourist information sent us there. Turns out, it's also owned by Himachal Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation. Mild conflict of interest there.

We left as soon as we could, and our first port of call was the tourist information, where I registered my complaint, for all the good it'll do. The hotel had the cheek to claim they'd given us the best view in the hotel. I was amused to note that the previous complaint was from someone who went on one of their tours, which was mainly a tour of hotels owned by HPTDC.

We'd checked the guide book, which suggested a couple of places behind the Ridge. The day before, we'd batted off touts, telling them that we had a hotel. Hah. We ended up at Hotel Dreamland, which was basic but clean and pleasant, with generally clued-up staff, and we were much happier once we'd settled in there. There was one woman who was really enthusiastic about Shimla and the walks around there.



I liked Shimla. It had loads of downbeat charm and I really enjoyed seeing British-style buildings in such an odd setting. Anita said it reminded her of Torquay, or Scarborough. It was cleaner and quieter than anywhere else I've been in India. One guy, Anil, said that it wasn't like anywhere else in India. We walked up to the monkey temple, which swarmed with monkeys. They nicked one girl's scarf and the lass had to feed the monkeys peanuts to get it back. We'd been forewarned and had hired sticks. It's the highest point in Shimla at the top of Jakhu Hill, but it was too hazy to see the distant snow-capped high Himalayas. We also had a walk up to Chadwick Falls, a lovely spot apart from the litter.

And the hill railway back from Shimla was incredible. At first, it felt a bit cramped as I was banging knees with the guy opposite and the train was full of kids making a right racket, and the family next to us made such a palaver of taking their seats. But everything changed once the train got going. We got talking to people and it was easy to move around, and it's such an astonishing journey that I forgot about minor discomforts. Mountains everywhere. I loved leaning out of the door and watching the mountains proceed past, and looking at the train taking the curves. Lots of curves, at some points the train was switchbacking on itself down the mountains, and loads of bridges and tunnels. 102 tunnels, I think, and something preposterous like 888 bridges. It's an amazing feat of engineering, and as a World Heritage Site it's about a million times better than the Taj Mahal.




It was like a holiday for me, to have my sister here and take trips which would have been difficult for me, with my bike. And it was interesting to see places through my sister's eyes. Reading this back, it sounds as though I may have become slightly irritated at times, and not having fixed my bike was preying on my mind more than I admitted, but India is like that - infuriating one moment and brilliant the next. Now my bike is fixed, so I've been wandering out and about to do some last minute jobs before I leave, and I've been able to look into all the little shops without wondering if my magic fix lay in there. The holiday's over now, and it's back to cycling. It's like an even better holiday!

Spring into the Himalayas

I always imagined that my trip, my grand adventure, would be a silvery ribbon of pure cycling across the globe, unbroken except where seas and oceans have to be crossed. I'd ride triumphantly to Australia in time for the solar eclipse in November 2012.

I've made two mistakes which broke this thread: I decided to come to India, and I didn't get a visa for Pakistan while I was in the UK.

I had read about the difficulties of getting a Pakistan visa (they're only issued to residents, without exception, as the officials at the Pakistan High Commission in Delhi have reiterated to me despite my protests and carefully-worded letter to the High Commissioner, which confirms what I was told in Istanbul and Dubai), but I trusted to the road and my optimism, chose to believe second- and third-hand reports of travellers being given visas in dusty foreign embassies.

India, likewise, is a notorious cul-de-sac for overland travellers. Nico, the French cyclist riding home from Japan, winced when I said I was coming here, as it's "impossible to get into, and impossible to leave". So it has proved.

The overland routes out of India are as follows:

Bangladesh. Easy entry, but the only other land border is with Myanmar/Burma, and no border crossings are open to foreigners.

Myanmar/Burma. Border crossings are open to foreigners, but travel is only then permitted within 10 km of the border, and you're obliged to leave at the same border by which you entered, which prohibits transiting the country. Also, the Northeastern Hill States of India such as Manipur and Nagaland have an unsavoury reputation for lawlessness and banditry. Special permits from the Indian government are required to travel there, and independent travel is difficult.

China. No land borders are open to foreigners, unsurprisingly. A couple of the high Himalayan passes are open to local herders, but I doubt I could pass for a Tibetan in any light.

Pakistan. One land border is open at Wagah, between Amritsar and Lahore in divided Punjab, where the changing of the guards and lowering of the flags takes place every day at sunset. Without a Pakistan visa, though, this is closed to me.

Bhutan. Easy to enter from India, but although the mountain kingdom shares a border with China/Tibet, no crossings are open to foreigners.

Nepal. This may be my only opion, as it is very easy to enter from India, and there is an official crossing into China/Tibet where foreigners may enter, on the Friendship Highway between Kathmandu and Lhasa. However, as independent travel in Tibet is prohibited by the Chinese authorities, you are officially required to travel with a tour guide. As a cyclist, this is possible, but I'd have to hire a man-with-a-van to trail me around, or tag along with another group of cyclists to share the cost, but I would either be shelling out my meagre funds, or letting myself be tied into somebody else's itinerary. Finally, onward travel from Tibet into China appears to be impossible. There are plenty of tales of travellers who have travelled independently from China into Tibet, then into Nepal, but going the other way (as I would be) seems highly unlikely.

So political reality interferes with my cycling adventure. I feel childishly resentful about this.

I've already broken my duck and taken one flight from Dubai to get into India. I don't regret it. I was aware that I was laying a trap for myself, but India has been intoxicating and infuriating and glorious, I've had experiences I couldn't have had anywhere else, spending the night with a family of ganga farmers, trading insults with stoned tuk-tuk drivers, fixing my bike with nothing but my own ingenuity, then entertaining village kids while the local hammer swinger performed percussive repairs on my bike, or watching the moon rise and blot out the endless stars while camping in the desert.

If I was to take a flight out of here, it would be a temptation to return to Iran and pick up the thread of my original route, treating India as a side trip and pretending that I'd cycled it all, but I know this is one breakage that I can't repair on the road.

So I return to the beginning, to my reasons for going a-wandering. My friend David had, when I was a kid, travelled all over India and returned with stories and sketches and paintings which inspired me to see it, one day. I also wanted to travel by bicycle, which is such a natural, satisfying way to travel, and saves the hassles of other forms of transport. Finally, I wanted to see mountains, like Bilbo Baggins.

Without a Pakistan visa, where I could cycle over the Karakoram Highway and into China at the world's highest border crossing, then over the Pamir Ranges in bleak, beautiful Tajikistan, I could fly out to Uzbekistan, where Alexander the Great once trod, and follow the ancient Silk Road through Tashkent and Samarkand. The route to Australia would then take me over the snow-capped Pamirs and into the green valleys of Kyrgyzstan, through the remote provinces of China and down to South East Asia.

But Australia, to me, was only ever a destination. It was the places on the route which inspired me. It was easy, to say "I'm going to Australia" to people at home in the UK, as Australia is a tropical dreamland of sunshine and beaches and beer. If I'd said I was going to Tajikistan, people would have needed a map.

It's the mountains that I want to experience, the changing vistas of peaks and valleys, hauling myself and my luggage up colossal passes, gasping for air at the top and being rewarded with the freefalling descent at the other side. A question has been asked of me a few times, "where was your favourite place?" and one answer is obvious - the best cycling was eastern Turkey in early winter, with its sterile, frozen summits and skies of infinite blue.

So the answer to my current dilemma is also obvious. I've trapped myself in India, so I'll stay in India. There are mountains here in India, after all. My visa expires on 28th April, and before that I'll go to Nepal (which, I hear, also has mountains) and explore its mix of ancient cultures and modern adventurers. I can also renew my Indian visa while in Nepal, and return to India to roam the distant valleys by the Tibetan border, and ride the famous Manali-Leh highway when it opens in early summer. Security permitting, I may also ride to ill-fated, divided Kashmir, which is as close as I seem likely to get to Pakistan.

I am simply putting off the problem, but it seems that I now have six months in India and Nepal to ponder it. I'll call in at Corbett National Park and go tiger-spotting on my way to Nepal, and in Nepal I might just visit Everest base camp. By bicycle, naturally. I hope my non-cycling adventures are over.