Nagarjun Circuit

Its important that you start your cycling trip early. The first rays of the morning light make up for just the perfect timing. But we started a little late that day. Suraj was burning the midnight oil last friday doing god knows what!So we met at Balaju Bye-Pass at around 7:45 and off we rode. It was first day for Aswish, who I believed to pull us back a little, but little did I know - I would live to envy his stamina!

Reaching Mudku was no fancy no more. It was like reaching the bus-stop before you start off your journey. We sat for a cup of tea, some boiled eggs and marinated grams... and off we went inside the Nagarjun doors and up the hill. The hill was pretty steep on the beginning and had us demotivated already. Just up two corners and I jumped off my bike and started pushing it instead. The incline was pretty steep - trust me. But not for long.

Just as the 5 minute incline was over, the trip introduced us to some fantastic wodden trails with mystic sounds whistling through the tree leaves while the fresh air felt better than... well... anything!

It was not too steep, it was n

ot too hard. Nothing 'technical' really, and extremely good trail if you have a fling for the beatific nature-curves. Not to mention the occasional natural water springs that you would come across every once in a while and want to linger around for some cool pictures. The trail got better till we left the woods and did some serious down-hill riding while the seat post hurt my butt and the suspension was not good enough to cushion my wrist from the stony bumps.

As we came close to Lama Gaun (where we sat for

some food again, at around 10:30 AM), the massive uphill got the best of us and had poor Amit tired off the most. These are the times where it hurts the most to be on the heavier side...

What I would like to mention here is that the curving road had a shortcut but we miss

ed to see it as we were too busy climbing the track huffing and puffing. Had we taken the shortcut, it would have saved us some good 20 minutes climbing up. We should be more careful looking for uphill shortcuts in the future. Specially if we ain't riding and just climbing.

One more point to remember. DO NOT START OFF AFTER EATING. TA

KE SOME GOOD REST AFTER YOU EAT, BEFORE YOU START AGAIN. Boy, have I been hurt in previous occasions for starting t

o ride just a few minutes after food. From next time on, we're taking some nutri bars instead of having noodles and eggs.

The rest of the way till Dhading - Bhanjyang Pokhari was uphill. Painful, dusty and dominating uphill route. Amit was left behind big time, and had us panic as well, as the cell phone didn't work in that region, and the woods blocked our views to see if was close by or not. or if he was in trouble. Plan for next trip - we'll stray in a closed loop where the first and the last one will be conscious to keep all else within a loop. trouble in long routes could turn up to be a serious one if we get reckless.

All the while though, the route was off track, off the city chaos, and it never felt for once during the ride that we were not much far off the Kathmandu Metropolitan. The air was fresh and the ground was peaceful. All in all a perfe

ct route for a hike or a cycling trip of aprox. 5 hours (for us at least!

Preface

I've been thinking of being active on my blog for quite a while now, but I guess I've just been too lazy or have always been finding something better

to do than blogging. While I had been quite engrossed into documenting my personal journals during my college days. I somehow completely gave up on

that as well as I started to work.

I've termed this section of my blog as bicycle diaries as I shall focus only on my cycling experiences here and there.

Background:

I was first introduced to cycling when my dad got me a rented bicycle from a workshop in front of Shanti Vidya Griha (Lainchaur) and had me riding it

while he held the seat post tight with his right hand while he held the handle for me with his left. It sure like a superb cycling experience though.

Things got more interesting as one of my mom's friend rang the door bell and had a bicycle by his side. I was home alone, and he handed over the

bicycle saying it was mine. I was rather confused... and then extremely excited. So was my brother when he got home sometime later that day. I was

pretty angry with myself for not knwonig how to ride the bicycle. Took me over a few months to get a hang of it. It was further frustrating to see my

brother learning to ride it just in a week's time.

Getting a hang of it:

For me, cycling was a way of commuting since then... for a few years at least. After SLC, I do not remember holding the handles of the bicycle for a

long long time. I had graduated my interests to motorbikes. They were a treasure when dad let me ride his. And later when I got my own pulsar 150, I

felt like I was in love with a machine on rolling wheels. And one day, around 5 years after this love affair had begun, I met Suraj Dai - who invited

me to a cycle ride through some of the most remote districts of Nepal. I didn't care much about cycling, but was intrigued over the idea of visiting

places I had never been before. Especially when it meant going to north east districts of nepal from Dhankuta, Terhathum, Paanchthar and Taplejung

(especially Taplejung). While others were skeptical and warning me otherwise, I just needed to travel with Suraj Dai and the gang. He lent me his

Commencal Pasta (I'll explain later...) and necessary gears for cycling. And one fine Morning we set off...

KTM>>BRT on airplane

BRT>>Dhankuta on microbus

night hault @ Hiley.

It was a 10 day trip stretching over 350 Kilometers that had worn me off totally and educated me on basic cycling and got me pretty engorssed into

the whole idea. Its a rather long story I enjoy recalling everytime I put my feet on the pedals. But I'll talk about them later. For now, on my recent experiences:

With Amit and Suraj:

Though the event was fun, and I bought myself Commencal Premier from Epic Mountain Bikes right after the trip, I never really carried it forward from

thereon. Reason: I never had a partner to cycle along with, and in the begining days, you need to do it with a friend. And then Amit (friend from

work) bought a Trek G2 Geometry - Gary Fisher series. And Suraj (amit's friend) was an avid cyclist.

Amit and Suraj were on several trips together already, before I got to know of it, and I tagged along. Each of our trip will be put on as an

individual blog from hereon, to share our experience on our bikes. So far, we've made four trips (four weeks since we started). The latest one was

today, and I hope to complete about all four within this week. So can sit to write about my other experiences every once a week.