We are Yann and Émilie, a couple who live and work in Montreal. We spend much of our free time on the road.
We began our travel adventures together in 2007 after graduation, a 14-month overland trip taking us through 12 Asian countries. Returning to Canada with no money or jobs we began a teaching career within three weeks of landing. Since then we have spent every summer traveling in an attempt to relive the adventure of our year on the road.
In 2011, we completed a difficult first cycling trip. We spent the summer in the Indian Himalayas, cycling through the remote Zanskar Valley and through Ladakh.
We are now planning for a year-long cycling trip which we will begin in June 2013.
We love to share travel stories and tips, so contact us with any questions!
7 comments:
Work life balance mastered!
Hi Yann and Emilie,
do you remember me, Cinderella from the Netherlands. Maybe the name Cindy rings a bell? We met on the road to/from Alaverdi...
Still no clue ; )
Here are some photo's of me at www.cyclingcindy.wordpress.com
Maybe I'll hear from you. Safe travels
Cindy
hi,
Yann & Emm
I am wallace a cyclist from Bagan , Myanmar . i would like to hear from you more stories. Nice to meet you two in Yangon and Bagan my Home land.
thanks and Regards,
wallace
Specialized Bagan Station Tour Guide & Cyclist Through Burma.
wallace.twt.bagan@gmail.com
Wonderful photos and stories. Miss you lots! Keep having epic travels. Professorfunky.
Hello,
Can you share your mail adress?
Thanks
Fatih
Wow your posts are inspirational. Thanks for sharing your experience and the lovely pictures with the world, i Salute you Yann and Emily. I do need some help with a zanskar trip i am doing next week (July 1st) to July 18th. I will ask my questions as a comment so that others could who are inspired can benefit from it also.
1) I am very confused about where to find Kesar or someone like him to hire ponies. Keylong? or just go to darcha and look for them? is it easy to find ponies and ponymen without spending a night at darcha?
2) We are fairly experienced travelers . is it possible to do Marhi to Keylong in a day? 80Kms of cycling.
3) is it possible to do Parkachik to Kargil in a day? 80Kms of cycling.
Cheers,
KINI
Hi Adithya
Here are some answers to your inquiries, I'm sorry we haven't completed our blog post for our Zanskar trip, we went all the way to Leh.
1- Many of the pony owners live in Darcha and should be fairly easy to hire from there. However, it is a very small village with virtually no facilities. The guide have limited English skills, so we had to wander around for quite a while before we actually found Kesar (who we had pre-arranged to meet in Keylong). By pre-hiring our guide from Keylong we basically ended up paying about 50% more because we had to pay a third party fee to the travel agency rather than negotiating directly with our guide in Darcha.
The only reason we spent the night in Darcha was because our guides had trouble locating their ponies in the pastures. The ponies were several hours away grazing in the high mountains, it took several hours for Kesar to track down his ponies and by the time they got back to Darcha it was getting too dark to head out.
I'm not sure how much of a guarantee that you can have of being able to leave immediately from Darcha. I would mention that in the 30 minutes we wandered around Darcha, we were approached by another guide ready to offer us his pony services, so I don't think you should have trouble finding someone if you head straight to Darcha. We thought Keylong was a very lovely place though.
2- Marhi to Keylong is definitely doable if you are in good shape and you leave early enough. We stopped at Khoksar and had an easy ride to Keylong the next day. Part of what may slow you down on Rohtang is the car traffic, once you are over the pass the road becomes all yours!
3- Parkachik to Kargil is also doable in one day. We stopped in Sankoo because we left Parkachik fairly late and we saw a nice Government-run hotel just outside of Sankoo. The ride from Sankoo to Kargil was very easy the next day. From our experience, unless you are camping, in which case it doesn't matter, you should try to arrive in Kargil as early as possible as once the buses start arriving in the evening it becomes difficult to find a good hotel room (in the budget category).
Have a great trip! Our trip through Zanskar remains one our best travel experiences ever, I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.
If you have any other questions let us know.
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