180 Days and Counting

“I travel a lot; I hate having my life disrupted by routine.”

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My tent has turned into my home, my bike into my best friend, and the world into my playground. I have no deadlines to keep or appointments to make. No stress or frustration to deal with. And my hardest daily decision typically involves picking what type of noodles I feel like making. I am living in an alternate universe, in a world where nothing can take me by surprise. I live in a world where seeing an enormous yak meander down the street, sleeping in a small stone hut with a tarp for a roof, and showering in a river seems perfectly normal… because it is. For the last 180 days I have been living the life of my dreams, cycling through the unknown on a quest to live and experience life around the world.

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What Cyclist Discuss

“Once in a while it really hits people that they don’t have to experience the world in the way they have been told to.”

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During my few weeks in Pokhara I was lucky enough to meet other cyclists, who, like me, are doing world tours. There were two couples (both Swiss) and a single Swiss man, all in their thirties, who have been on the road for varying amounts of time (one and a half to three years). The six of us hung out on multiple occasions, and even celebrated Christmas together. There seems to be an automatic bond between us cyclists as we are living the same lifestyle and can compare stories and anecdotes that “normal” people just wouldn’t understand. After the third or fourth evening together I realized that our conversations were quite different than those I have with other people, so I decided to share what an outing between cyclists looks like.

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A Little Bit of Camping

“Travel is not really about leaving our homes, but leaving our habits.”

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After a week off I was itching to get back on my bike. As the Swiss cycling couple I had been hanging out with had invited me for Christmas dinner in Pokhara, and I still had three weeks to go, I decided to set off with absolutely no plan through what I hoped were small mountain roads. I wanted to just get out, hopefully gain a bit of elevation and bring myself closer to the snow covered peaks, and most importantly, camp. Though lately I have been opting for the cheap guest houses rather than pitching my tent, I have missed the tranquility of camping and could not wait to curl up in my sleeping bag everyday.

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Cyclists Unite

“Life will just not wait for us to live it: We are in it, now, and now is the time to live.”

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By far the best part about my week long vacation in Pokhara, a very touristy town in central Nepal, was the fact that I met other cyclists like myself. My favorite cyclists, who I quickly befriended and spent every day and evening with, are a Swiss couple in their thirties who have been on the road for a year and a half from Switzerland to here. They are now taking a two month break (in which time their families will come join them), before they set out again to a still unknown destination. Talking with them about different places they have cycled through, including some of their favorites, the Balkans, Turkey, and Iran, has made me change my route as well (though that is a whole other story for a post later on). Another part that I enjoyed, and probably needed, was to meet someone else who understood. They know what it is like to be living out of your tent, camping wherever there is flat ground. They too have done home stays thought their journey. And most importantly, they understood just how difficult India was. After my frustration with India, with the men, but also just with the constant attention, it was great to hear how they too experienced the same thing, and how it drove them insane as well. No matter how well I explain the feeling, no one else will understand these things unless they too have lived through it, which they have.

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The Nepali Valley: 5,000km

“You go, you explore, you see, you do, you get, you experience. But still whatever it is, isn’t enough. Every new day, you go, you explore, you see, you do, you get.. you experience.”

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After staying with a family for one night in one of the small farming villages — I asked to use their water pump and got invited in — I made my way up and down the hills to where I would begin my climb into the mountains. I spent a few days riding through a national park which meant my only companions were monkeys, as almost no one lives in the area. In fact, I would often go over an hour without seeing another person or car. When I did come to a village, it consisted of small mud houses with thatched roofs, and lots of goats, cows, and ox. It was the kind of place where little five year old girls could climb up a tree with no branches in order to cut limbs off of a tree fifty feet up for her goats. I thoroughly enjoyed the area, and stopped off whenever I could to buy a chocolate bar or a cup of tea in order to hang around for a bit.

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Flat, Easy, But Oh So Hot: 4800km

“…It’s to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it.”

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I love Nepal. I am finally able to camp again, I am no longer followed by young sleazy adolescents, and I can live off of bananas, juicy oranges, and of course, rice, dal, and samosas, for only three dollars a day. Though I am still anxious to get to the mountains (I can see the start of them to my left at all times, talk about tantalizing!), I am enjoying all the small farming villages I have been passing through these last few days. Nepal is obviously poor, even more so than India, but the people are beautiful and smiling which is what counts. Hundreds of children wave and follow me daily (no joke, I swear every child has a “white cyclist radar” and is able to sense me coming from kilometers away), and most of the women smile and wave as well. Even the old wrinkled grandmas hobbling slowly down the road carrying who knows what in a giant basket on their head stop to smile and wave, something that never happened in India. Though it is still impossible to do anything without a crowd, at least it is always a friendly one.

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A Great Introduction: 4550km

“Life is about the people you meet, and the things you create with them, so go out and start creating.”

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“We have a small house, but very big hearts,” the enthusiastic twelve year boy told me moments after his sister (who I had stopped to buy bananas from) brought me home to my first Nepali family. And he couldn’t have been more right. The family was poor, farmers with little more than a roadside stand and a small country house (the kind I have been eyeing longingly) to their name, but I have yet to meet someone anywhere in the world happier than Lokraj, my new little brother for the next few days. His sister, the one who invited me here, is a beautiful laughing girl herself, and the family quickly became my favorite one I have stayed with so far. The children’s mother and father are old, old enough to be their grandparents (I wonder if maybe that is the case), and absolutely wonderful people as well.

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Crossing Over: 4510km

“To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.”

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As I crossed the border into Nepal I was elated. I was finally in Nepal, a country I had dreamed about visiting for years, and one of the countries I am most looking forward to getting to know. It was time for me to get out of India as well. Though I had a mostly wonderful experience, the last week has been taxing and has unfortunately left me with a somewhat sour taste of the area. (Besides my issues with the men and the constant unfriendly stares, I was also ripped off by rich business men every night for hotel rooms since they knew I had no other choice.) Nevertheless, I will be returning once again to India next summer (after about five months in Nepal), notably to the mountainous regions of Spiti, Ladakh, and Kashmir. But more about that another time, for now, I am in Nepal.

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