Since as young as I can remember, Nepal had been on my list of places to visit. As a 20 year old, I still had fairly limited adventure travel experience, but in February of 2024 I had my fist taste, bike packing the length of Vietnam with two of my closest mates. Not long after this epic trip, the opportunity came up, Mountain Biking the Annapurna Circuit with a small group of like minded people from my home town, Adelaide. My Dad, Terry, was first to hear of the trip and quickly invited me along.
October came along and it was time to make our way to Nepal. After a quick layover in Kathmandu, we arrived in Pokhara, where we would meet our guides for the trip. I was fortunate enough to make an instant friendship with one of the guides of similar age to me, Anil.
After loading the Jeeps up with all our duffle bags, Anil lead us out of Pokhara. Leaving a major Nepalese city was a pretty hectic and somewhat scary experience. Coming from Australia, a country where traffic is very orderly and predictable, it was definitely an eye opener when we had scooters, trucks and jeeps weaving in and between us. All whilst watching out for street dogs as they cross the road with no warning.
After just one day, we had made our way out of the chaos and had begun our multi day ascent up to 5,416 meters. As none of our group had little to no experience at any sort of altitude, we had to make our days somewhat shorter to acclimatise. This is because any major jumps (e.g. going from 2000m to 4500m in one day) could increase the chance of AMS (acute mountain sickness). The riding for the next 3-4 days so was slow and steep. Climbing pretty much all day with little to no descent. Personally, from about 3500m I would start to feel the altitude, especially when I put in any sort of effort. Anil warned me to take it easy above 3000m, although sometimes I would get a little carried away.
Things started to get really tough when we reached 4,500m (Phedi basecamp). This was where we would stay the night before our final summit up to Tharong La Pass. Sleeping at this level was pretty hard. We were told to wake up at 3:45am in the morning ready to summit Tharong. Guides warned us of temperatures as low as -20C but lucky enough, when we woke on the morning of the summit it was a very mild 0C outside. The final push up the summit was only 9km or thereabouts. But it was 9km of pushing and suffering from the altitude. I found this to be a very strange feeling. Struggling to breathe and asking your body for energy when there wasn't much to give was a very unique experience. As much as I would of loved to try and hop on the bike and pedal, it was merely way to steep and technical. Regardless, it was a struggle to walk, far less ride. We had reached the summit by about 10am in the morning.
The following 3 days were spent descending the incredible Lupra trail and enjoying some smooth roads all the way to our finish location. A nice change after days and days on end spent climbing and a little too much hike a bike.
The Himalayas is a place I think I’ll remember forever. It was such an amazing experience to have with my dad and something the both of us will have stories of for a lifetime. One day, I’d love to go back to visit my friend Anil. We spoke about one day racing the Yak Attack together (a race of the route we just completed). Anil and I both stay in contact on the daily, updating each other about our very different lifestyles.
Words and images by
Sam Golding.
