My insatiable greed for biking adventures in India has taken me places I won’t and can’t forget no matter how much brainwashing this life gives me.
Rumour has it that the first thing I did as a new-born baby was not crying or giggling or shaking my little head in disbelief over the world I was hurled into. Rather, what I did was pedal my baby legs up in the air. Swoosh, swoosh, and swoosh! Yes, that was reportedly my first ever act as a sentient being. My mother, who is the reliable source of the rumour, took that debut performance of mine as a sign of the things to come. Over the years, she came to realize, and resign to the fact, that no matter what course in life I took and however much the corporate life was drilled into my head, I, in the heart of my hearts, would be wedded to my bike, and, given half a chance, would cut loose from my chores to hit the road on a biking trip across India.
Her misgivings, I’m happy to say, have come to pass. I have done extensive cycling in India over time and can say without gloating that I’m a diehard biker for life and well beyond any reform or conversion. What I can’t claim to is being the natural-born biker my mom tries to pass me off with that much-publicized rumor of hers. You see, my mom has the usual maternal habit of praising me to the skies in public, and chiding me back to the ground in private.
The truth is that I am not a natural born biker, much though I like the title. I have had my testing moments, my doubts, and my failings. The best I can say is that I have learned along the way on the many cycling tours of India that I have done. And I am still learning.
My first biking lesson came pretty early on when the zeal to bike in trying conditions got the better of me and put me on the cycling tour from Manali to Leh. I guess I wanted to make a point, straight off, to myself and others that I was equal to the challenge of high-altitude biking in Ladakh, that I could tame the highest passes in the world on the Himalayan biking trails. Well, if anything, it was I who was tamed and humbled. Altitude sickness and the physical toll of biking in the Himalayas cut me down to size. I knew I had made a false start to my India biking travels.
A seasoned biker I had met on the Ladakh cycling tour gave me commonsensical advice: start with easy cycling trails of India and gradually upgrade to the tougher ones. At once, I saw my folly. I was trying to knock Goliath out with the first punch. Doesn’t happen that way. I had to work my way up to the big biking challenges.
Once bitten, I started off all over again, this time with a packaged Rajasthan cycling tour. I did have my doubts and preconceptions about Rajasthan being too touristy a place to be novel, interesting, and adventurous, but I was proved wrong at once. Biking from Udaipur, the city of lakes, to the hilltop fortress of Kumbhalgarh and then pushing deeper into the rural countryside before coming on the historical cities of Jodhpur and Jaipur, I experienced up-close the vibrant culture of Rajasthan, met its friendly people, heard their tales, listened to their music, saw age-old works of art and architecture, and came to learn that cycling is not just about the road and the bike. It is a leisurely journey into newer places, an acquaintance with unknown people, an encounter with strange cultures. That is how travel should be. That is what I came to love the most about cycling.
But there was a great deal more to learn. The year after my Rajasthan biking trip, I turned my gaze southwards to Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
Kerala revealed to me an entire new world. Ancient churches and buildings betraying the colonial influences of the Portuguese, Dutch and British settlers, the rolling mountains of the Western Ghats, the spice plantations and Cardamom Hills of Munnar, and the famed backwaters of Kuttanad and Kollam – the Kerala biking tour was chockfull of revelations and, best of all, it introduced me to the fun of birding while cycling.
If Kerala made me appreciate natural beauty better, Tamil Nadu unveiled in its many exquisitely carved temples the wonderful artistry of man. The stone and chisel, I came to realize, were the primary obsession of the artisans of ancient India. You see it in the Taj Mahal in the north, in the temples of Khajuraho in the mid-west, and in the rock carvings of Hampi and Mahabalipuram in the south. You don’t get to see stonemasonry that much in the northeast India, which boasts a different kind of art altogether.
The Sikkim cycling tour in the northeast introduced me to the riotously colourful thangka paintings displayed in the Buddhist monasteries that dot the Himalayan landscape so generously. It always felt serene to come upon these quiet monasteries while cycling in Himalayas. As an added bonus, biking in the foothills of the third highest mountain in the world, namely Kanchenjunga, prepared me for the tougher challenges of biking in north India.
To north India I eventually did return, coming full circle to where I had started from. This time I was wiser and humble. To test my biking grit, I first did a cycling tour of Himachal Pradesh, starting out from Shimla, cutting through the apple orchards of Kumaon, and pushing into the high-altitude desert of Spiti before winding my way to the hill station of Manali. I fared quite well, to be frank, save for a few niggles.
Inspired, I set out on the Himalayan biking adventure in Ladakh the year following. Gone was my rustiness of yore, and in was a newfound confidence and self-belief. I, along with a team of bikers, cycled to the far flung lakes of Ladakh and also crossed the Khardung La, the highest motorable pass in the world, to enter the Nubra and Shyok valleys on the northernmost edge of India. The deeper I biked into the Himalayas, the more smitten I was with the landscape.
Every few years now, I keep returning to the Himalayas. I don’t think I will ever tire of those heavenly mountains and peaks. Every time I come away the wiser.
