Over Shingo La

Shingo La is the pass that separates the isolated Zanskar Valley from the Lahaul Valley. The pass is at an estimated 5100 metres in altitude and is not considered very technically difficult for trekkers. Nevertheless, with our bicycles and it being so early in the season, we were happy to have Kesar and Tenzin with us and their ponies  transporting our bicycles and bulk of our gear.

From Palamo, the first campsite out of Darcha, we had what would have been a rough day of cycling had we been loaded down with equipment. But without heavy paniers, we had a somewhat pleasant day riding to the next campsite despite the laughably terrible road conditions.

(Below you can watch Yann and I taking different approaches to crossing the flooded road, note Jochen laughing at us in the background)

The campsite at the base of the trail leading to Shingo La Pass is called Zanskar Sumdo, Sumdo meaning "confluence". It is where Zanskar meets Lahaul (and the outside world). We got to the campsite at the same time as dozens of Zanskari villagers were stopping for a tea break on the way south to Manali, a journey that most were making on horseback and a few on foot. With Shingo La recently opened, this would be the first time in over 8 months that Zanskaris would have access to provisions. Most villagers were travelling with multiple horses that would be loaded with supplies in Manali. For many families, this would also mark the first time in months that they would be seeing their children, as Zanskari children must complete a majority of their schooling outside of Zanskar. The speed at which the villagers travelled really put us to shame. Having just completed the entire journey over Shingo La Pass in a half-day (a journey which would take us three days) we watched them ride off towards Keylong after the shortest of rests at the campsite tea house. The route over Shingo La Pass is well travelled, and in the busy trekking season, it is home to strategically located temporary tea tents. Each tea tent is operated by a Zanskari village and proceeds are distributed to its villagers. While most of the tea tents are situated in the villages themselves, the one at Zanskar Sumdo and along the trail over Shingo La are fairly isolated, and this early in the season staffing the tea tent seemed to be a lonely job. We were grateful for the comfort of a hot cup of tea and a place to warm up. We hoped that the other tents along the trek had already set up shop for the season like this one. From Zanskar Sumdo we planned to spend a day trekking to Chumik Nakpo, the last campsite on the south side of Shingo La Pass. We left early, well ahead of Kesar and Tenzin who nevertheless passed us in the early afternoon. The trail was easy to follow and seemed easy, but our pace slowed as we climbed higher. Jochen and I appeared to be experiencing the effects of the altitude we were anxious to reach our campsite. By late afternoon it was raining and the temperature had dropped in the absence of sun and at the increased altitude. By the time we reached the campsite we were freezing and exhausted. Jochen quickly fell asleep in the warmth of Kesar and Tenzin's tent and I could barely muster up enough energy to help put up our tent and prepare dinner. We decided that we needed an unplanned rest day at Chumik Nakpo to get used to the altitude before completing the last 500m climb to the top of Shingo La Pass. We spent the entire rest day sleeping. Kesar and Tenzin warned us that we should begin our climb to Shingo La before dawn, this way we would reach the pass while the snow was still firm. It was late June and we had read stories of trekkers unable to pass the sumit in mid-July due to snow storms. But our guides were completely unfazed by the day's itinerary. When another group of tourists arrived at Chumik Nakpo, led by a fellow Darcha villager the much emphasized early start time was pushed back as the friends socialized. We were happy to avoid a 4am departure, but we still worried that it would be a difficult day. We did not trust our guides for accurate walking times so we set out ahead ahead of everyone at the campsite in the hope of making it to our next destination, Lakang Sumdo, on the other side of the Shingo La Pass, before dark.

The first few hours of our climb were relatively easy; on a gradual include and a visible trail, but we could feel the air thinning (at least we thought we could feel it) and our steps slowing. By the time we spotted the summit to the time we actually reached it took several hours.

The descent was possibly even slower than the climb. It took us almost two hours to descent a portion of the mountain that we watched our guides descent in 15 minutes (to be fair, we opted to follow the winding, boulder-strewn trail and not to walk across a glacier). From the time we reached Shingo La Pass until we arrived at our campsite I had a severe headache and was becoming increasingly paranoid that I was suffering from high altitude cerebral edema (which I wasn't of course). This made the descent rather unpleasant as I thought only about decreasing altitude and rarely stopped to look at anything around us. I also asked Yann to check the altitude on the GPS a gagillion times. With every metre we dropped I psychosomatically imagined a proportional drop in the severity of my headache. Mid-way through the descent we got our first glimpse of Zanskar, and I briefly stopped thinking about my headache as I admired the view of the desolate high altitude valley. We reached Lakang Sumdo a little bit before nightfall, after eating and drinking I had accepted the idea that my brain was not going to explode and was ready to start worrying about the fact that the next day we would be back on our bicycles and on our own again.

Homestay in Darcha

From a small tour office in Keylong we were able to secure four ponies and a guide to help us over Shingo La Pass. In retrospect we would have made our way to the tiny village of Darcha, where most of the pony owners live and negotiated there. Instead we paid a premium to the company subcontracting the services of the poor non-English speaking guides who are not as able to negotiate with foreigners.

We met our guide Kesar at the tour office in Keylong a few days before departure. We agreed on a price and the number of horses that would be necessary for transporting three bicycles and most of our gear over Shingo La Pass.  We settled on 10$/day per horse. Because Kesar didn't speak English we didn't have to pay the usual “guide” fee. We also agreed to pay for the days of return travel, as Kesar would accompany us only over Shingo La and then head back over the pass to his home. We agreed to meet in Darcha a few days later. We had Kesar's cell phone number and we were assured that we would not have any trouble finding each other in the 300 person village. We left Keylong with the plan was to cycle a few hours to Darcha, pick up our ponies and continue on towards Zanskar Sumdo the Shingo La “base camp” and entrance to Zanskar. This didn't quite work out. Despite the size of Darcha we weren't able to locate Kesar. We weren't actually able to locate anyone. In the early afternoon, most of the village's inhabitants were working the fields and the village was nearly deserted. We crossed one elderly man who directed us to Upper Darcha a steep 30 minute climb away. In Upper Darcha we were told that Kesar lived in Lower Darcha. Our search lasted the better part of the afternoon and even involved another villager trying to get us to hire him by undercutting Kesar's price. After giving up, he finally led us back to Kesar's home where his family members recognized us, having been warned that 3 cyclists were on their way from Keylong. We were asked into the family home, where we would attempt to figure out where Kesar and our ponies were. After much discussion we understood that Kesar was still in the high altitude pastures looking for his animals. We were his first clients of the season and the ponies had not yet been located. Without really having another option we spent the night with Kesar's family. We were generously hosted by his widowed mother, his older sister, his young wife his 1 year old son Tenzin (who when we first entered the home was tethered to a used car battery to prevent him from escaping). His wife had been in the pastures as well, but returned early to report on the still unsuccessful pony search. We spent the night socializing with the women of the house, who did their best to converse with us while preparing dinner and urging us to drink Chang (home made rice wine). They even called Kesar's brother, living in another city so that we could converse with someone in English. Little baby Tenzin seemed to get used to us, but would usually cry when his grandmother left the communal room where the family cooked and slept. The home was a hub of activity with neighbours and friends coming to visit including a local monk who came to lead evening prayers. We got a small glimpse of summer life of Darcha villagers. Women work the fields, take care of the house and children and men make money from the tourism industry. We understood that for most of the tourism season, local men would not be at home, accompanying tourists back and forth from Zanskar and Ladakh. Kesar did not return with the horses until the next morning. It had taken him over 24 hours to locate his two horses. He had slept in the pastures and found the horses early in the morning. As he only had two horses to provide he was accompanied by our second guide Tenzin who had also spent the night looking for his two horses. They both looked exhausted when they arrived for breakfast but did not object to heading out that same day. We left Darcha and Kesar's kind family cycling ahead to a campsite 9 km up the road. This would give the two men the chance to rest before following us with the horses and luggage. So our day was a leisurely one, with a short climb to Palamo, home of a desolate campsite and a tea tent that was not yet opened for the summer trekking season.

In Keylong, Lahaul Valley

We spent the night in the back of a restaurant in the small village of Khoksar, the first stop after the Rohtang Pass. From Khoksar we had a 45km "flat" ride to Keylong. At the end of the day our GPS read an altitude gain of 700m, so it was not as easy as we had hoped, but the road was traffic-free and the weather lovely.

Midway through the day a jeep pulled over and our friend Jochen popped out! His bicycle was strapped to the roof and he was heading to Keylong to meet us. We hugged briefly and made plans to meet.

A few hours later we were still on the road and I was running out of steam. I was actually unloading my paniers to transfer onto Yann's bike again when Jochen appeared, on his bicycle, wearing flipflops, to join us. He strapped my bags onto his bike and lead us back to Keylong where he had already found us a nice, cheap, clean hotel room with hot showers.

We hadn't seen Jochen in almost 4 years and he looked pretty much the same. We spent the evening feasting at one of Keylong's many tourist-oriented restaurants. We agreed to catch up and to leave talk about onward trip preparation for the next day. We spent two days in Keylong, capital of the Lahaul Valley, the perfect place to relax. Considering the fact that Keylong it is closed to vehicular traffic for most of the year, it seemed busy and its shelves well stocked. The days were warm, the evenings cool and the number of tourists was miniscule compared to neighbouring Manali. Our two days passed quickly as we tried to make plans for the next leg of our trip. We would be attempting to get over the snow-covered, 5091m, Shingo La Pass in the last week of June. We were at the very beginning of the trekking season and we knew that snow storms were not unheard of at this time of year, however we had heard positive reports from travel agents that the pass was open. We arranged to hire pack horses and guides to get us over the pass. This would be the only supported portion of our trip. The trek over Shingo La is considered to be a relatively easy (as far as trekking goes) but we weren't sure that we would be strong enough to do it with our bicycles so early on in our trip. Especially when we were told that there was still multiple feed of snow at the summit.

We left Keylong with an arrangement to meet our guides in the neighbouring village of Darcha which sits close to the trailhead for Shingo La. We left with enough food and fuel for ten days without access to either. For Yann and I this included Maggi brand instant noodles and soups, dried nuts and fruits, and about 20 packages of chocolate "bourbon" cookies which we had purchased without tasting, due to their high calorie content, low cost and their attractive packaging (needless to say this was a strategic food-purchasing mistake).

Cycling up Rohtang Pass

Day One - Manali to Marhi (35 km)

Here is the satellite map of Rohtang Pass: Here is Yann heading getting ready to leave our guesthouse in Manali for our first official day of cycling: Now here I am, 3hours (including breaks) and 7km into the ride: Here are our bikes after a negotiated settlement between the two parties: Yann, still happy, with his fully-loaded bike: Our initial plan had been to cycle the 55km up to the top of Rohtang Pass and then another 20km or so to the next village. We set our first goal as Kothi, a town 6km away. We happened, miraculously, to be travelling on the day that the road is closed to tourist vehicles. At the village of Kothi a roadblock is set up to control traffic. When we arrived a queue of vehicles were lined up waiting to be let through (they would have to wait until late afternoon when the tourist-ban is lifted). We cycled through without asking any questions and the Indian soldiers didn't seem to mind. We plodded away, took lots of rests and counted the kilometres cycled and the metres climbed. We had the road mainly to ourselves until the evening when the queue of cars caught up to us. On this first day of cycling we rode for 14 hours, cycled 35km and climbed 1400 metres. We slept our first night in Marhi, basically a truck stop with a few make-shift tents and restaurants for Indian tourists breaking their trip up the pass. We overpaid for a tent with two cots, but we felt too exhausted to set up our own tent and make dinner.
 Day Two - Marhi to Khoksar (36 km)

The next morning, the sounds of cars heading up the pass began at 3am. By the time we woke up, every restaurant in Marhi was packed with tourists, having breakfast, renting snowsuit, buying mittens and toques. We didn't feel bad about oversleeping our 5am departure time by 3 hours ... we wouldn't have beat the traffic anyways. The climb from Marhi to the top of Rohtang Pass was much what we had expected, switchbacks on a mostly unpaved, often muddy narrow road. A toppled truck and landslide had caused a serious traffic jam, so we managed to ride a few hours without too many honking assaults. The cars eventually caught and usually passed us closely and dangerously. But we were never too angry because they would shout cries of encouragement as they did "God Bless you!", "keep going", "you can do it", "you are so strong".
Near the last series of switchbacks we caught up to the accidents that had backed up cars for kilometres. It took us hours to weave our way through stopped traffic. We got lots of attention and were photographed by nearly everyone we passed. We did as much as we could cycling but spent a lot of our time pushing our bikes through the mud wondering if anyone would ever get off the mountain. Tourists queue on dangerous mountain roads for hours, for the opportunity to visit Rohtang Pass and play in the snow.  In the summer, over 6,000 tourist vehicles travel to the top of the pass every day. They are clad in full snow suits (we considered it t-shirt weather) overpaying for a range of snow-related activities: skiing, snowmobiling, yak riding, snow-ball fighting. A majority of the tourists never continue onward into the Lahaul Valley that begins on the other side of the pass.

It is a strange and disorganized place. A few weeks after our trip over the pass, thousands of tourists were stranded there for days:

(Article appearing in the Times of India) 

I reinherited my paniers for the way down to Khoksar. We left the thousands of tourists behind and descended into the pristine Lahaul Valley. The road was ours again and we felt that the worst riding would be behind us.

In Manali - Waiting to Start Cycling

We stayed in Manali for 8 days before setting off. There were a few reasons for this:

1- We were tired
2- We didn't feel ready
3- We were waiting for our friend Jochen to join us from Germany

We met Jochen in 6 years ago in Srinagar Kashmir and travelled with him for over a month through Ladakh. We had since kept in touch quite regularly and had asked him to join us on for this trip. Jochen had seemed interested but we hadn't heard from him for a few months until receiving an e-mail from him 4 days before departure confirming that he was coming. It would take him a while to secure visas and plane tickets, we agreed to wait for him in Manali.

Manali is not a very attractive place (although apparently it once was). It is overdeveloped, overcrowded and pretty filthy. We made our way to the nicer Old Manali, where we found a family-run guesthouse set amongst apple orchards. We spent most of our eight days lounging there eating home-cooked meals and sitting out on our balcony overlooking the surrounding mountains. After a few nights we realised that by ordering dinner we were determining our host family's meal as well. We had been ordering chicken until the old grandfather informed us "my family really likes mutton. Chicken ... not so much". He also informed us that "you really like mixed vegetables". So we began requesting mutton and mixed vegetables, much to our host's delight, whose eyes would light up every time we placed our evening order. Other than a crazy American evangelist who would pop by to preach to us every other day, we had an extremely peaceful stay.


We cycled most days along back-roads through surrounding villages which had yet managed to escape the madness of Manali (with a new road being built, this will soon no longer be the case). We passed women heading to-and-from their fields, setting out wheat on the road to dry, and weaving famed Kullu-Manali textiles on their balconies.
On days we didn't ride we ventured out to some of Manali and its surrounding areas' sights. 
Despite riding without our saddle bags the cycling was exhausting. On our first day we rode 6km before turning back to our guesthouse. Was it the high altitude or my lack of training? I argued the former, but it was becoming fairly clear that we had rough ride ahead of us. We did build confidence with every day as we lengthened our rides, but many of our discussions centred around the first official day of riding: 54km from Manali to the top of Rohtang Pass, a 2,000 metre altitude gain. Yann was as excited to set out as I was scared. 

Following multiple e-mail exchanges with Jochen we agreed that we would begin cycling without him, over Rohtang Pass, to the next major town of Keylong where he would meet us. His visa woes had forced him to postpone his flight and we were getting bored with Manali. Despite our nervousness we were ready to start.


 

Delhi to Manali (with Two Bike Boxes)

Manali is the gateway town for onward travel to Ladakh but mostly and popular vacation destination for domestic tourists and backpackers, especially in the summertime to escape the heat of the Indian plains. It was the starting point of our cycling trip and we planned to get there as quickly as possible from Delhi where we did not want to linger. From the Delhi airport we would catch a taxi, with our bicycles still in boxes, to the long-distance bus station where we would board the overnight bus to Manali. This was our ambitious plan - by the time we landed in Delhi we'd have been awake for well over 24 hours and by the time we would reach Manali we'd have been awake for more than 48. 

This plan fell through when my paniers didn't arrive at the airport (we blamed this on our premature high-fiving upon seeing our bike boxes unharmed and waiting for us before the luggage turnstile had even started operating). The airport staff had no trouble locating the missing bags in the system: "two bicycle bags at Helsinki airport with hand written luggage tags and no onward connection information".

The bags wouldn't be arriving until the next day's flight so we had no choice but to find a guesthouse and wait for our bags to be delivered.  A taxi got us to the Tibetan Colony in the north of the city. A rickshaw driver spotted us on the side of the highway near the entrance to the colony unloading our stuff and promptly loaded our bikes and luggage onto his bicycle. We led him through the narrow lanes of the colony finding the hotel where we had stayed two years earlier. The area had not changed much since our last visit, including our hotel which posted the exact same room rates.

The next day, we got our bags at 4pm (after confirmation of arrival for 11:30am, 1pm and 3pm). We raced to the long-distance bus station hoping to leave the city that night. The bus station was in rough shape. We had remembered it as being hectic but it seriously looked like it had been bombed. Most of the 30 some bus platforms had been ripped out and passengers navigated through rubble in an unusually (even for Delhi) disorganized way. After multiple enquiries we managed to secure two tickets to Manali on that evening's bus. 

We raced back to the hotel, found two rickshaw drivers willing to transport us along with our bike boxes and paniers and set off. The rickshaw drivers were brilliant! They navigated through rush-hour traffic (often riding against it). They even offered to add a considerable amount to the trip (for the same price) to get us to the front of the station when they realised how difficult it would be for us to get our things over the highway pedestrian overpass (we turned them down and instead raced across six lanes of traffic with a bike and our four heavy paniers). 

Yann actually carried all four of our paniers, we hung them around his neck with straps leaving his hands free for his bike. I managed to handle my bike, we drew many stares as we made our way through the huge station. 

Only one challenge left, finding our bus. With the station in ruins and no signs anywhere we had to rely on the hand-written P6 on our bus ticket to tell us where we would be finding catching the bus. Platform six was a pile of concrete debris with a constant stream of identical unidentified buses pulling up next to it. Yann spent the hour and a half leading up to departure showing our tickets to every single bus driver in the vicinity of platform six. Eventually, in the now darkness of the poorly lit station we identified our bus and loaded our bikes into the baggage compartment. We put up a small fight when we were asked to pay an additional fare for the transport of our bikes, but we were so happy to be on a bus to Manali that we agreed to the negotiated price of a "half-ticket".

Seventeen hours, a broken drive shaft, a flat tire and a flooded baggage compartment later we were in Manali with all of our luggage and two soggy bike boxes. 

So easy...

Stopover in Helsinki

At the time we were booking flights, the cheapest flight to India from Eastern Canada was with Finnair; so we ended up with a 6-hour stopover in Helsinki.

With amazing efficiency, we check most of our things into Helsinki airport lockers and got onto a bus heading to downtown Helsinki.

We used a city map that we picked up at the airport to navigate the city centre's main attractions: Senate Square and the Lutheran Cathedral, the Orthodox Cathedral and the Harbour Front Market.

Our afternoon provided us with a nice distraction from the fact that we would soon be unloading our 80kg of luggage into the Delhi heat.