Slipping in to the Forbidden Land of the Gods
Day 11 of climb; Unmapped border area of Kashmir; GPS blinks – I’m at the start of ‘the‘ valley
It’s 5,100m, dark and super cold. I’m into the second week of a tough climb; pulling, pushing and throwing my bike on ice – a lot of ice – a dirty great glacier. I’m looking for [...]
Almost at an end..
Last week something monumental happened, I turned to the last crumpled page of
my Himalayan map! After 12 months and goodness knows how many kilometres I’ve
finally reached the north western most point I’m crossing in to Ladakh and
Kashmir, following a river of ice.
Turning pages, for the last time
Last week, I turned to the last crumpled page [...]
..but there should be a track here, where is it?
“Sir, it is in the river down there sir” Tshering, a local herder says, pointing to a gushing river 1km below with no bridge to the connecting mountain.
Brilliant. Another dead end after 3 weeks of riding. But all is not lost, it’s only a three day detour to get me to the other side of [...]
Snow joke – from 15 below to 40 above!
In the past three weeks, Grub and I have downhilled it from 5500m to 100m above sea level and covered 1500km across Nepal and in to Uttarakhand in India – back in the foothills of the Himalaya.
This will be my 10th ascent of the Himalayas and in three weeks time I have the biggest [...]
Lhasa to Kathmandu Cycle Expedition 2011
With it’s ancient monasteries and breathtaking natural Himalayan backdrop, the Lhasa to Kathmandu ride has deservedly been on the list of most iconic cycle tours for years.
In September I’m leading a World Expeditions cycling adventure from Lhasa in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) to the colourful city of Kathmandu in Nepal and I can’t wait!
This [...]
Shambhala; The Dark Side
Over the past two months, there have been many twists in the Shambhala ride. Each time a new piece of information is uncovered, more and more questions seem to crop up. What has become clear is that there is a disturbingly dark side to this mythical paradise in the Himalayas.
When I started this trip, I [...]
“Mr David, shine your candle over here; I’ve found something!”
A moment really can change everything.
I’m writing this in in my tent. It’s six o’clock in the evening, the sun has just set and I’ve downed my last coconut biscuit washed down with Himalayan chilled water from a nearby stream, it might be a simple meal but at this moment I couldn’t think of a [...]
Bhutan; Putting the Adventure back in to Adventure Cycling
Back in the 8th century, Guru Rinpoche had a fleet of Tigresses to ride all over the Himalayas subduing demons as he went. In 2010 we’ve got a sweet bunch of Konas to ride at a secret location 4000m above the Paro Valley.
Bhutan’s mountain bike scene is still very young but it’s a growing sport [...]
Chasing clues in the land of the Thunder Dragon
The dark barrier which separates Bhutan from India could be from the set of Lord of The Rings, it’s dark, it’s big and what lies beyond are tales of Gurus, magical Dakinis, treasure laden Beyuls and dragons of thunder – oh, and some of the best mountain biking on the planet!
Bhutan’s southern facing mountains loom [...]
Shambhala on the AG Blog
Australian Geographic have published the first of the Searching for Shambhala stories on their Outdoor website. I will write more updates in the new year but for now this gives a nice little intro about the project.
Here’s the link;
http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/outdoor/searching-for-shambhala-.htm
Himalayan India – jungles, mountains & a dead Lama
China certainly provided an impressive geoligical backdrop for what they claim is Shangri-La but now I want to delve deeper in to the story which started it all off; Shambhala.
For this, I need to head west, north west to be more precise, to where Buddhism began and flourished with tales of dragons, crazed demonesses [...]
8kmph Police chases & border security heading west
Slowest police chase ever
You’d think riding to a border crossing would be fairly straightforward. Well, in order to save some time I thought it would be a good idea to jump onto the express way from Dali – big mistake. I was clocking along at a good 27kmph for two hours when I heard a [...]
STOP! The road’s sliding!
Those were the words I shouted at 4000m up on a freshly collapsed road heading to Deqin on the Tibetan border. Five minutes before hand Chen, Mark, Lan and I were watching the freshly fallen rocks for signs of further movement.
The rain was beating down, but at least the mist had cleared enough to see [...]
Music in the mountains
This is the ride I’ve been looking forward to the most in China, the ride to Shangri-La. Confusingly Shangri-La is a county, a city, an old town and appears not only in Yunnan, but also Sichuan so it’s a little confusing to know where to head to. The city of Zhongdian (or to give it [...]
You must see “The Governor”
I just met with Xuan Ke again, the larger than life character from Lijiang who was instrumental in the name change of Zhongdian to Shangri-La back in the late 1990s after reading a copy of Lost Horizon by James Hilton. Xuan is half Tibetan and half Naxi (pronounced Na-Khi) and is something of a local [...]
Sichuan – the best way to see it, is to ride it.
Check out the state of my front disk brake pads. Two massive descents on the way to Daocheng at 3750 m altitude did this. Amazingly the pads just kept on going, and going for three agonising days right up until my approach to the town of Daocheng. I couldn’t believe it, it [...]
You got rocks on your head
All is not quiet in one monastery hidden from view high up in the forested mountains of Yunnan. The sound of cracking can be heard as spines are stretched, legs & arms are contorted and the constant hum of chanting above the patter of monsoon rains send me adrift. There is no electricity here, my [...]
“You won’t find Shambhala on any map”
And so I set off to find more clues on my quest to learn more about Shambhala. I ride north west from Lijiang and make my way to the beautiful Lugu lake before crossing over to Sichuan province. After two days riding in heavy rain I find a sign which says “Welcome to Shangri-La”! I [...]
Arrived in Lijiang – time to go!
It seems that no sooner I have arrived, it’s time to go again – that’s life on the road I guess.
Lijiang is a total shock to the senses. Busy alley ways, hoards of Chinese tourists buying everything from cowboy hats to Yak meat and all manner of trinkets. Just finding my way through the old [...]
A hidden valley – but for how long?
It’s not often I feel sad to leave a place when riding my bike. Usually I’m super excited to get cracking but last week I left a beautiful tea horse road node village and felt, well, sad.
I intend to go back in 5 weeks and will write more about it then. I was lucky enough [...]
Beat Heim in Australian Mountain Bike magazine
For anyone who is thinking of packing their bike up in a box and heading off on holiday with their pride & joy, check out my Beat Heim interview in this month’s AMB magazine, on the shelves now!
The guys did a great job (nice work Jordan) on the layout as always. Hopefully some of Beat’s [...]
How do we get across those mountains then?
Tim was worried that if we were left out here for the night, we would surely perish, Andy was pretty quiet and I began to really feel the cold. 45 minutes went by and still nothing. I was starting to shiver now and I was beginning to come around to Tim’s thinking.
Nu Jiang Shan pass on You Tube
Facebook and You Tube are blocked on main land China and the proxy service is painfully slow so I waited to get to Hong Kong before I updated. I’ll pop some stills and a short back ground on the trip so far later on today but here is a short clip I uploaded yesterday.
All packed!
Oh my goodness, I can’t believe it’s all come around so quickly. I’ve had a mad week finishing immunisations, bike preps, packing and re-packing. Singapore Airways have been awesome, allowing me an additional 10KG but I have a sneaking suspicion I’ll be over that!
Thanks to Brad & Ingrid at Gear Corp for all their great [...]
