The idea of an Indian cycling adventure in the middle of a pandemic may sound a tad bold, but it can be a great break to beat the corona blues.
The coronavirus has upended our lives in more ways than one. We’ve been stuck in our homes for months, our social circle has been split down the middle, and our busy lives are wedged with constant worries of catching a possible infection. Life, as we once knew it, has shrunk to a claustrophobic existence of WFH and staying cooped up.
THIS NEEDN’T BE THE CASE ANYMORE
We at Cycling In India are pioneering what can be called the Covid-safe cycling tours of India so that you don’t have to suppress the adventurer in you. Never late to be off the block, we have worked out the blueprint for safe tours at several Indian biking trails and destinations.
Our new India biking tour plans involve much smaller groups and strict adherence to social distancing norms. Biking routes winding through busy streets, crowded towns, cities or districts are straightaway off the itinerary. Each guest gets his or her own bike, which is thoroughly disinfected every morning and evening, before and after the day’s biking. For accommodation, we choose only the trusted hotels or resorts with quality service and uncompromising safety measures. Likewise, restaurants and food courts are singled out after a close scrutiny of hygiene standards. No more than two people are allowed inside a cab, in case we need to commute by motor vehicles, and even on the bikes the group is spread out so that no two cyclists come close to each other on the road.
In short, we tick all the boxes in the long list of do’s and don’ts to ensure your safety on our India cycling tours.
The choice of trips, too, isn’t much cut down. Depending upon your preference for adventure and appetite for challenge, we have a whole host of tours lined up, from north to south and east to west.
Let’s say you want a cultural and rural experience of Rajasthan, the land of valiant royals in western India. Our Rajasthan cycling tours make for a perfect getaway. The reworked itinerary gives a wide berth to the crowded Rajasthan tourist hotspots in the cities of Udaipur, Jodhpur and Jaipur, and focusses more on the places that are off the beaten track – small towns, quiet villages, far-away forts and temples that are no less part of the rich royal heritage of Rajasthan. Cycling through these rural stretches reveals a rarely explored countryside and adds novelty to your Rajasthan cycling holiday.
We also throw in a dash of adventure with a daylong trip of Ranthambore National Park, home to the Bengal Tiger and other wildlife of fascinating variety. A tiger safari into the park is most likely to yield a glimpse of the striped predator. Later on, if things look favourable, we may round off the Rajasthan cycling adventure with a visit to the Taj Mahal in the neighbouring state of Uttar Pradesh.
Cycling in South India, by comparison, opens up a very different world for you. Instead of the arid hillocks of the Aravalli mountain range, you get to bike through the lush Cardamom Hills and spice plantations of Munnar, lounge around on a houseboat in Kerala’s backwaters, go on forest walks in Periyar National Park, watch birds at Thattekad Bird Sanctuary, explore the heritage town of Fort Kochi, or visit the famous temples of Madurai in Tamil Nadu. Social distancing shouldn’t be a problem at many of these places, and we keep our itinerary flexible to strike off any excursion that appears to, in any way, compromise your safety from the health point of view.
Owing to the undulating landscape of the Western Ghats, cycling in Kerala especially holds out a biking challenge you would happily want to take up.
Speaking of cycling challenges, there’s a lot of mountain biking to do in the eastern Himalayas on our Sikkim cycling tour. Winding through the wide lap of Kanchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world, the tour takes you to quaint villages, tea gardens, Buddhist monasteries and vantage points affording spectacular views of the Great Himalayas. We nix the Gangtok cycling tour purposely to avoid running into crowds, but we make up for the loss by putting more time into exploring the natural wonders of Sikkim, such as the Khecheopalri Lake, which is said to have wish-granting powers, or the Tiger Hill, which is located at the altitude of 2600 meters and provides panoramic and rare view of both Mount Everest and Kanchenjunga.
Kanchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world, the tour takes you to quaint villages, tea gardens, Buddhist monasteries and vantage points affording spectacular views of the Great Himalayas. We nix the Gangtok cycling tour purposely to avoid running into crowds, but we make up for the loss by putting more time into exploring the natural wonders of Sikkim, such as the Khecheopalri Lake, which is said to have wish-granting powers, or the Tiger Hill, which is located at the altitude of 2600 meters and provides panoramic and rare view of both Mount Everest and Kanchenjunga.
Again, we may scrap the ride on the narrow-gauge Toy Train of Darjeeling Himalayan Railway. In normal times, the train ride is the high point and a fitting climax to our Sikkim biking adventure, but whether or not we do it depends upon the possibility of maintaining social distancing during the ride.
For a more rigorous and intimate experience of biking in the Himalayas, we recommend our Ladakh Cycling Tour and Spiti Cycling Tour in north India. Pedalling over Himalayan passes upward of 4000 meters is par for the course on these tours. The setting, more often than not, is cold and arid high-altitude plateaus and mountains, and the Himalayan biking trails here wind through sharp hairpin bends, zig-zag loops, and switchbacks, enough to test your mettle as a cyclist. Sparse human population in Ladakh and Spiti make these tours safe, and we don’t let our guard down in the touristy towns of Leh, Kaza, Manali, Shimla etc.
Our initiative of Covid-safe India biking tours is a small but assured step in breaking the deadlock that the tourism industry has been facing since the spread of coronavirus. The benefits of this initiative will trickle down to the needy locals on the ground, to the tour guides, drivers, staff, hotels, and homestays that rely on tourism for sustenance. This step is taken in the spirit of upholding the sport of biking that we love so much. Not least, it is a call to your wanderlust that, we’re certain, no virus can curtail.
