Om Mani Padme Hum
- baliandbeyond
- 30 mrt 2020
- 4 minuten om te lezen
It was time to leave lovely Kyrgyzstan. After saying goodbye to Eef at Bishkek airport (she was going on her first ever solo bike trip to Japan) I spent the rest of the day waiting for my evening flight to Delhi. Very excited about going to India, a country that has been on my list for a very long time and my parents would arrive the next day as well. After a 10 hour layover in Almaty, I was actually the only one in the terminal, and I was surprised with a business upgrade. Yes, I had the same food as the rest, only I had a tablecloth and it was served on a plate with a glass of champagne.
Arriving in Delhi was pretty overwhelming. The heat, the crowd, the noise and the smell. There are so many things to see, you can only see half of it. Arriving just after Diwali and the time of the year when the farmers burn their crops meant that the always polluted air above Delhi rose to an unseen amount. Itās like smoking a package of cigarettes a day. With a new country also came new flavours. People who know me a bit know that I like spicy food, but I just couldnāt handle it. Asking for not spicy is still like eating a raw red pepper. You can imagine how I looked when I forgot to ask not spicy: I felt like a cartoon figure with steam coming out of my ears.
Due to a flat tire of the plane, my parents arrived a day later than expected. We spent 2 days in Delhi exploring the streets, visiting Red Fort and taking a lot of selfies. The day before we planned to leave I got the Delhi belly. After having a bad night and still not feeling well I took a taxi until Alwar, my parents conquered the Indian traffic on their own and arrived safely in Alwar that evening. When entering Alwar, they met a few cyclists from the Alwar cycling club - somehow they found out where we were staying and the next day a group of 10 showed up to meet us and drive for a few kmās out of town. These few kms became 5km and then 10km and in the end they joined us for 45km and a lot of cycling selfies along the way. After saying our goodbyes to them and one more selfie we were left alone and could cycle the rest of the day on, for Indian standards, the smaller quieter back roads.
We arrived that night in Amer, the beginning of the city of Jaipur and famous for its fort: Amber Palace. We visited it the next day. It is a masterpiece of architecture. Too bad they still use elephants to walk up the lazy tourists who canāt walk the 10 minutes to the entrance. We spent the next 2 days visiting Jaipur. A beautiful city, but as many cities in India it is hard to escape the hectic crowd and the honking of the tuktuks. The rest of our time was spent in the cities of Agra, visiting the Taj Mahal of course, and in Varanasi, the holy city along the Ganges. Varanasi must be the calmest Indian city weāve visited. Once away from the big and famous burning Ghat, Manikarnika, and the Dashashwamedh Ghat you could actually walk in peace along the river. Meeting lots of āspecialā people, the Sadhous, and watching people washing themselves in the holy river.
From Varanasi we took a final taxi towards the Nepali border. It went mainly over a very deteriorated road, making it a very hard taxi ride. We spent the night in the worst hotel of the trip so far, but the next day we crossed the border to Nepal. Our first stop was Lumbini, the birth place of Buddha. A place where every country has built their own buddhist temple, a place that was quiet compared to the outside world. A good thing about a tourist place is that there will always be at least one place with some decent coffee. Placing an Illy coffee machine well in sight for everybody sure attracts attention, as it was the only place with customers.
From Lumbini we were in for a treat. We rode one of the most scenic routes. It follows the valley from Butwal to Pokhara with a fair share of climbing to be done. I was a little bit afraid for my parents, they are still young in spirit and active, but in Belgium you canāt really prepare for uphill. Let me just say that they were amazing. Not a single time I had to wait on them, I even think they were holding back because I was slowing them down. We climbed the first day to Tansen, a small village on the mountain. We stayed at a lovely homestay and could rest in the afternoon with a view on the surrounding mountains. The next two days were again all about climbing and descending. Going from one valley to the other. Just 10km before we reached Pokhara, disaster struck. A flat tire for my father, but the reason was worse than a flat tire, his whole back wheel was falling apartā¦ Not possible to continue.
Our planned rest days were spent searching for a new wheel. This seemed harder than expected. We found a good bike shop in Pokhara and they managed to build a new wheel, not the correct size but it fitted and we could continue.
The traffic in Nepal is a little better than in India but still not comfortable for a cyclist. So, we were very surprised that on the day we left Pokhara there were no cars on the road. It was election day, and all traffic in or out of the towns was blocked. We cycled past lots of trucks along the road waiting to continue their ride. For us, it was just amazing. Best day of cycling in Nepal. With a final climb to Bandipur, which gave us an amazing view over the Annapurna mountain range, we finished the most calm day of cycling in these past 3 weeks. With a final climb out of the valley towards Kathmandu, we finished our cycling together.
Our days in Kathmandu were filled with walking around in Boudhanath, listening to Om mani padme hum on repeat echoing from the small tibetan shops around the stoupa. Enjoying our last days together in Kathmandu before we parted again for another 6 months.
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