“The roof of the world” says rather a lot about the views.
Motueka’s Deborah Morris and Guy Trainor have recently returned from an epic cycle trip in northern India, which took them across some of the highest mountain passes in the world.
The 10-day, 581km journey started in Ladakh and finished in the Himalayan foothills, traversing six mountain passes along the way. At its peak, they climbed to an altitude of 5328m, which is on par with Everest’s base camp.
The retired couple are no stranger to this type of adventure – in fact, they met on a north-to-south cycle tour in England in 1984. They’ve mountain-biked in other remote terrains in recent years, sometimes solo and sometimes with a guide, and have ticked off the Mongolian Steppes, Morocco’s Atlas Mountains and the Taurus mountains in Turkey from their bucket list.
Their latest trip was “by far the most challenging and jaw-dropping”, Guy says – but he reckons it was a soft landing in some ways. Apart from the physical exertion, everything was taken care of, from the excellent meals to the comfortable accommodation, which ranged from glamping in a canvas tent to bunking down in a former maharajah’s palace.
Their guide, an English man named Mike who now lives in India, understood their preferences for “flush toilets and a bucket of hot water to wash in,” Guy says with a smile.
Deborah reports that the schedule went something like coffee at 7.30am, breakfast at eight, and on the road by nine. Mike also ensured that there was plenty of food to balance out the calories they were burning through – an average of 61km per day.
“First breakfast, second breakfast, third breakfast,” Deborah laughs.
An English couple were their fellow tour customers, and the group was accompanied by local Indian guides on bikes as well as vehicles to carry their gear.
The group members cycled at their own pace, stopping regularly to regroup and bask in the scenery.
“It’s a sub-continent, and it’s so varied,” Guy says. “From the south to the middle to the north, it’s just so different.”
The route was mostly on sealed roads, and “the biggest hazard was coming up to a couple of oxen pulling a cart”.
Although most of their local cycling is now on their e-bikes, they decided to let those gather dust for a while and pulled out their mountain bikes for their training, which largely took place on the Great Taste Tail, the Shaggery and the Marahau Hill.
“We took the attitude that the fitter we are, the more we’re going to enjoy it.”
Guy, the driving force behind the creation of the Kaiteriteri mountain bike park, and Deborah, a former Greenwood Health GP, are hoping that their trip can provide a little inspiration for others to carry on extending themselves in their latter years.
The couple say that although theirs was a more extreme tour, there are plenty of more moderate adventures out there. The cycle trail grading system is consistent across the world, which makes it easy to match tours to cycling abilities, especially if the company provides a similar wraparound service.
“Other than the sheer exhaustion, it was such an easy trip,” Deborah summarises.
