Bikepaking round Annapurna (Nepal)
Posted: Tue Nov 14, 2017 9:45 pm
ok so we have been back for a week and the bikes are still in boxes (my bike still in a slightly sad state still) but i have got round to writing this post about our trip round the Annapurna circuit from Besisahar to Beni via the 5400m thorung la pass. As far as the bikepacking purity of the trip we went for as self supported a trip as we could. we took all our own kit , we stayed at "tea houses" (treckers lodges) but we did share some equipment so not total ITT purity (it was a holiday!!!) but i was on my single speed !
now im not going to go in to tones of geeky detail of kit lists but we took as little as we could and we did manage to ware all the clothes we took with the exeption of eves waterproof trousers (so she technically over packed TOURER!!!! ) we had a small wash kit between us , a basik tool kit, one set of biking clothes ones set (ish) of non biking clothes and then a load of warm cloths for the day over the pass. eve took a 3 season Alpkit down bag, i had my custom down quilt. (both were warm enough). and we had stuff like go pros and batteries to weigh us down . one cool thing that we both had were my parents sawyer filters inline on our camelbacks !
as far as cost goes for any of you that want to do this we reccon the whole trip including chilling out in pokhara probably came to arround £1400 each. the daly cost trecking probably averaged out to £25 each a day (its cheep low down and gets more expensive )
We arived in the chaos of kathmanu at night and got a taxi to our hotell. the first day we went to the tourist office to get our permits ... this was easy enough we got a TIMS card and an ACAP permit. walking accross town was pretty hard work its chaos. at this point i was not a fan of Kathmandu. but we did get some good food well i did ! the local delicacy MOMOs ! lovely haha Eve had Piza that was less good
so early the next day we were collected at 7am by our privet mini buss (decided this was the best way to get to the start in one piece and start at a good time. we arrived at Besisahar at 1PM so decided to start peddling down the track. the first part of the rout follows a pretty big landrover track that has a good enough surface for the local busses to use after doing about 10 miles it was time to stop , the first night we stopped at Nadi, this is where allot of the walkers now start from as they can get the buss here. sadly this means the tea houses here are struggling a little with the decline in traffic we stopped at a lovely small lodge called roshani guest house.
so the second day this day we climbed about 500m over about 10 miles. to chyamce the riding was on a rough but good landrover track. after we had carried our bikes up a foot path back to the road (later to descover the easy way round) the landrover track had the odd vehicle but was mostly used by locals walking between villages , and lost trekkers (the trecking route still uses footpaths but lots of steps and no fun on bikes). the trail steadily climbed all day and we progressed reasonably well but the heat was the hardest part. during the mid day sun we stopped for a lesurly 2 hour lunch brake. as we approached Chyamce it was cooling down a little at around 4pm this seems to be the time that people stop and it is wize to start looking for a guest house as they can get full with gided groups however it wasn't too bussy this far down the route.
day 3 was a simmilar length day but this time with nearly 1000m of climbing taking us to Timang at 2270m by the end of this day we were definaly biing slowed down on the climbs by the altitude.
this was probably one of the hardest days taking in some fairly serious climbing , round some big zig zag climbs and was again very hot. at some point we were overtaken by a large group of mountain bikers on posh XC bikes with lots of lycra... oh and porters and a guide ... we stopped for a lunch before commencing the biggest and hjardest climb of the day (that would take us to the end of our day) and ate the stadard noodle based lunch. after the heat of the day had gone we set off up the climb this took several hours but the waterfalls were good and we witnessed some of the crazy local driving.... eventually we arrived in Timang, a hill top settlement with amazing veiws of the mountains , and the first cooler night. but a nice lodge and friendly french trekkers to chat to who had not encountered bikepakers and were impressed with how little we had hahaha. and we ate more of the standard local food Dal Bhat ... so like a wattery Dall with rice, curry and normally a popadom
day 4 started with a great descent down more of the wide track till at some point we over took some polish blokes with more kit on there bikes than people doing the LEGOG ! :
but with legs like tree trunks they were propelling their bikes forcefully allong the rough tracks with ease (sadly they were later defeated by the pass but pretty decent effort with that much stuff , TLS hasn't reached Europe yet apparently )
anyway we aimed for Dhikur Pokhari well we didnt but we got there ... after riding all the way to Chame and finnaly seeing big mountains in the distaince we were felling like we were getting somewhere but the altitude was slowing us down a fair bit. sadly at this point i absentmindedly fell off and some how mannaged so sevor my rear brake line meening that for the rest of the trip i was only able to use my front brake. !!! :( . so we keeped going as we were meant to be having a short day sadly where we thought we were going to stop there was no guest houses just a strange cider farm that had a caffe and the next place was up a masivve hill so fgeeling pissed off generally we stopped for lunch (presumably more noodles), finally at 2700m it wasnt too hot at mid day so we reduced lunch to 1 hour ... after this hour of miserable noodle eating we commenced another masive climb twards the manang vally eventually reaching Dhikur, a strange place with lots of half abandoned lodges.
so day 5 and finally a rest day for some aclimatisation, we road the 2 miles to lowerpissang. we then walked up to the monestary at upper pissange and had lunch at a guest house in this village. the vews of the mountains were verry good. and we managed to do some clothes washing so were less smelly !
day 6 was a fun day up a little in to the manag vally but then some seriously fun fast dusty ridding up to Braga where we planned to stay for a couple of days aclimatisation walks, when we arived we had lunch (yes noodles) then walked the 500m height gain to the merpas cave monistery and stayed there an hour to get some aclimatisation at that altitude.
the next day (7) we walked to the ice lake whitch gave us an extra 1000m acclimatisation , this is a nice walk and gives more amazing views on the mountains.
and after this we went for a wander around the berry good monastery at braga
noodles for lunch !
So day 8 and we are at the end of the landrover track , we descided to head for Yak Kharka a samll and pretty cold village at 4000m only a 7 mile ride but with some lovely single track and some hard pushing !
a stop for some yack chese and sea bukthorn juice !
the day after that day 9 we road the short distaince on more single track up and down to Throng Phedi the base camp for the pass ! this is a strange place basically just a masive lodge , quite pricy but posher than most other places in the canteen , but awefull cold drafty rooms. though it definatly wasnt that cold at night maybe -5 . we got an early night for a 5 am start the next day.
THE PASS day 10
so an early start in the dark and cold, around -5 so not that cold but ye the trekkers were wearing lots .... we set off following the string oh head torches up the first part of the pass. the initail climb is physically the hardest part climbing around 500m in about 1 km up steep zig zag track . lots of whitch required the bike to be carried on our backs . but we managed this part in a couple of hours and feeling good about our selves we stopped for a break and ate some boild eggs at the upper base camp.(we got these most days as snacks from where ever we stayed). so knowing the gradient was muh less for the next 500m of climbing we set off buit were soon hampered by the altitude bringing us to a hilariously slow pace. as we climbed and climbed over more and more faulse summits we got so slow that we must have been doing 4 steps then sitting down un able to move for several minuits... maybe bike packing was not the answer the trekkers even with 60l of kit were faster .... eventually there it was the top 8 hours 1000m higher and like 4km later ! the slowest bikepakers in the world made it to 5416m as eve was struggling with the altitude and wanted to get down we got a couple of snapps then started our descent!
it was a great descent but sadly we didnt get any photos but there is some video needing editing. but ye single track for miles and miles down to muktinath where we stayed the night. it was a hard descent with just one brake though!
day 11 to Tukuche so we were back to the "road " muktinath is a bit of a tourist destination for the nepali and indian locals, as it has various temples so busses regularly drive up the landrover track to this point. however we found that the first 4 miles was amazing tarmac hairpins , incredible road riding .... then back to verry bumpy landrover track. some trekkers take the buss back from here but its a 14hour bus ride to Pokhara and that sounds hideous... the biking however is verry good once you get use to the dust kicked up by the trucks on the landrover track! ... we rode to Jomsom fro lunch then keeped going shortly to be defeated by the crazy afternoon winds and stopping at an amazing tea house in Tukuche, the tea house "high planes inn" was owned by a dutch expat and had amazing soft white bread home made this was incredable after dal bhat and noodles !
so day 12 time to get down the valley and out of the wind this was about 25 miles to tatopani.
and a great day of descending on jeep track it was , miles of varied vews and terrain however descending with one brake does get hard, but we made it to tatopani where we bnumped in to the guided XC ridders again , all congratulated each other lots , and spent the night in a large tea house wherte we ate lots of food and drank plenty of beer and local wine !
SPAM !!!! yey
so the final day to Beni and the end of the ride day 13
this day was another long day of descending on landrover track but eventually the descent slowed and we pulled in to Beni , which is more or less just a buss park.... we were tired at this point so organised a tiket for a local buss the next day and went and got a room in a slightly rough hotel, that evening we did some more serious beer drinking this time in the tiny "bar" of the hostel we were staying at which was just full of nepali, we had the best food of the trip here , just ate what the locals were eating , basically just lots of tapas style small dishes of chicken and steamed dumplings etc with lots of beer (they like beer preferably 7% larger but its all good ) , the next day we woke up and took the bumpy ride back to pokhara where we would spend 4 days holidaying !
after chilling in Pokhara and floating about on the lake fishing , playing on the Pump track (Himalayan bike park) etc we got a tourist buss back to kathmandu , the bikes were on the roof , and i think we took out someones phone lines when it went under some low cables , this also damaged my brake leaver so both brakes are now broken .... bikes are still in the bags at the moment will look at some point !!!
all in all a good trip much harder than any uk bikepacking even if 250km ish took 13 days instead of 30 hours ! altitude is a bitch !
now im not going to go in to tones of geeky detail of kit lists but we took as little as we could and we did manage to ware all the clothes we took with the exeption of eves waterproof trousers (so she technically over packed TOURER!!!! ) we had a small wash kit between us , a basik tool kit, one set of biking clothes ones set (ish) of non biking clothes and then a load of warm cloths for the day over the pass. eve took a 3 season Alpkit down bag, i had my custom down quilt. (both were warm enough). and we had stuff like go pros and batteries to weigh us down . one cool thing that we both had were my parents sawyer filters inline on our camelbacks !
as far as cost goes for any of you that want to do this we reccon the whole trip including chilling out in pokhara probably came to arround £1400 each. the daly cost trecking probably averaged out to £25 each a day (its cheep low down and gets more expensive )
We arived in the chaos of kathmanu at night and got a taxi to our hotell. the first day we went to the tourist office to get our permits ... this was easy enough we got a TIMS card and an ACAP permit. walking accross town was pretty hard work its chaos. at this point i was not a fan of Kathmandu. but we did get some good food well i did ! the local delicacy MOMOs ! lovely haha Eve had Piza that was less good
so early the next day we were collected at 7am by our privet mini buss (decided this was the best way to get to the start in one piece and start at a good time. we arrived at Besisahar at 1PM so decided to start peddling down the track. the first part of the rout follows a pretty big landrover track that has a good enough surface for the local busses to use after doing about 10 miles it was time to stop , the first night we stopped at Nadi, this is where allot of the walkers now start from as they can get the buss here. sadly this means the tea houses here are struggling a little with the decline in traffic we stopped at a lovely small lodge called roshani guest house.
so the second day this day we climbed about 500m over about 10 miles. to chyamce the riding was on a rough but good landrover track. after we had carried our bikes up a foot path back to the road (later to descover the easy way round) the landrover track had the odd vehicle but was mostly used by locals walking between villages , and lost trekkers (the trecking route still uses footpaths but lots of steps and no fun on bikes). the trail steadily climbed all day and we progressed reasonably well but the heat was the hardest part. during the mid day sun we stopped for a lesurly 2 hour lunch brake. as we approached Chyamce it was cooling down a little at around 4pm this seems to be the time that people stop and it is wize to start looking for a guest house as they can get full with gided groups however it wasn't too bussy this far down the route.
day 3 was a simmilar length day but this time with nearly 1000m of climbing taking us to Timang at 2270m by the end of this day we were definaly biing slowed down on the climbs by the altitude.
this was probably one of the hardest days taking in some fairly serious climbing , round some big zig zag climbs and was again very hot. at some point we were overtaken by a large group of mountain bikers on posh XC bikes with lots of lycra... oh and porters and a guide ... we stopped for a lunch before commencing the biggest and hjardest climb of the day (that would take us to the end of our day) and ate the stadard noodle based lunch. after the heat of the day had gone we set off up the climb this took several hours but the waterfalls were good and we witnessed some of the crazy local driving.... eventually we arrived in Timang, a hill top settlement with amazing veiws of the mountains , and the first cooler night. but a nice lodge and friendly french trekkers to chat to who had not encountered bikepakers and were impressed with how little we had hahaha. and we ate more of the standard local food Dal Bhat ... so like a wattery Dall with rice, curry and normally a popadom
day 4 started with a great descent down more of the wide track till at some point we over took some polish blokes with more kit on there bikes than people doing the LEGOG ! :
but with legs like tree trunks they were propelling their bikes forcefully allong the rough tracks with ease (sadly they were later defeated by the pass but pretty decent effort with that much stuff , TLS hasn't reached Europe yet apparently )
anyway we aimed for Dhikur Pokhari well we didnt but we got there ... after riding all the way to Chame and finnaly seeing big mountains in the distaince we were felling like we were getting somewhere but the altitude was slowing us down a fair bit. sadly at this point i absentmindedly fell off and some how mannaged so sevor my rear brake line meening that for the rest of the trip i was only able to use my front brake. !!! :( . so we keeped going as we were meant to be having a short day sadly where we thought we were going to stop there was no guest houses just a strange cider farm that had a caffe and the next place was up a masivve hill so fgeeling pissed off generally we stopped for lunch (presumably more noodles), finally at 2700m it wasnt too hot at mid day so we reduced lunch to 1 hour ... after this hour of miserable noodle eating we commenced another masive climb twards the manang vally eventually reaching Dhikur, a strange place with lots of half abandoned lodges.
so day 5 and finally a rest day for some aclimatisation, we road the 2 miles to lowerpissang. we then walked up to the monestary at upper pissange and had lunch at a guest house in this village. the vews of the mountains were verry good. and we managed to do some clothes washing so were less smelly !
day 6 was a fun day up a little in to the manag vally but then some seriously fun fast dusty ridding up to Braga where we planned to stay for a couple of days aclimatisation walks, when we arived we had lunch (yes noodles) then walked the 500m height gain to the merpas cave monistery and stayed there an hour to get some aclimatisation at that altitude.
the next day (7) we walked to the ice lake whitch gave us an extra 1000m acclimatisation , this is a nice walk and gives more amazing views on the mountains.
and after this we went for a wander around the berry good monastery at braga
noodles for lunch !
So day 8 and we are at the end of the landrover track , we descided to head for Yak Kharka a samll and pretty cold village at 4000m only a 7 mile ride but with some lovely single track and some hard pushing !
a stop for some yack chese and sea bukthorn juice !
the day after that day 9 we road the short distaince on more single track up and down to Throng Phedi the base camp for the pass ! this is a strange place basically just a masive lodge , quite pricy but posher than most other places in the canteen , but awefull cold drafty rooms. though it definatly wasnt that cold at night maybe -5 . we got an early night for a 5 am start the next day.
THE PASS day 10
so an early start in the dark and cold, around -5 so not that cold but ye the trekkers were wearing lots .... we set off following the string oh head torches up the first part of the pass. the initail climb is physically the hardest part climbing around 500m in about 1 km up steep zig zag track . lots of whitch required the bike to be carried on our backs . but we managed this part in a couple of hours and feeling good about our selves we stopped for a break and ate some boild eggs at the upper base camp.(we got these most days as snacks from where ever we stayed). so knowing the gradient was muh less for the next 500m of climbing we set off buit were soon hampered by the altitude bringing us to a hilariously slow pace. as we climbed and climbed over more and more faulse summits we got so slow that we must have been doing 4 steps then sitting down un able to move for several minuits... maybe bike packing was not the answer the trekkers even with 60l of kit were faster .... eventually there it was the top 8 hours 1000m higher and like 4km later ! the slowest bikepakers in the world made it to 5416m as eve was struggling with the altitude and wanted to get down we got a couple of snapps then started our descent!
it was a great descent but sadly we didnt get any photos but there is some video needing editing. but ye single track for miles and miles down to muktinath where we stayed the night. it was a hard descent with just one brake though!
day 11 to Tukuche so we were back to the "road " muktinath is a bit of a tourist destination for the nepali and indian locals, as it has various temples so busses regularly drive up the landrover track to this point. however we found that the first 4 miles was amazing tarmac hairpins , incredible road riding .... then back to verry bumpy landrover track. some trekkers take the buss back from here but its a 14hour bus ride to Pokhara and that sounds hideous... the biking however is verry good once you get use to the dust kicked up by the trucks on the landrover track! ... we rode to Jomsom fro lunch then keeped going shortly to be defeated by the crazy afternoon winds and stopping at an amazing tea house in Tukuche, the tea house "high planes inn" was owned by a dutch expat and had amazing soft white bread home made this was incredable after dal bhat and noodles !
so day 12 time to get down the valley and out of the wind this was about 25 miles to tatopani.
and a great day of descending on jeep track it was , miles of varied vews and terrain however descending with one brake does get hard, but we made it to tatopani where we bnumped in to the guided XC ridders again , all congratulated each other lots , and spent the night in a large tea house wherte we ate lots of food and drank plenty of beer and local wine !
SPAM !!!! yey
so the final day to Beni and the end of the ride day 13
this day was another long day of descending on landrover track but eventually the descent slowed and we pulled in to Beni , which is more or less just a buss park.... we were tired at this point so organised a tiket for a local buss the next day and went and got a room in a slightly rough hotel, that evening we did some more serious beer drinking this time in the tiny "bar" of the hostel we were staying at which was just full of nepali, we had the best food of the trip here , just ate what the locals were eating , basically just lots of tapas style small dishes of chicken and steamed dumplings etc with lots of beer (they like beer preferably 7% larger but its all good ) , the next day we woke up and took the bumpy ride back to pokhara where we would spend 4 days holidaying !
after chilling in Pokhara and floating about on the lake fishing , playing on the Pump track (Himalayan bike park) etc we got a tourist buss back to kathmandu , the bikes were on the roof , and i think we took out someones phone lines when it went under some low cables , this also damaged my brake leaver so both brakes are now broken .... bikes are still in the bags at the moment will look at some point !!!
all in all a good trip much harder than any uk bikepacking even if 250km ish took 13 days instead of 30 hours ! altitude is a bitch !
enjoyed that, looks a fab trip. 
chapeau for doing it on a singlespeed 
I'm dying to ask what ratio you used? 
