There is a point in most plane rides when the engines ease off on the RPM, a mechanical sigh of relief as the plane goes from taking off to cruising. But it doesn’t happen on the flight from Pokhora to Jomsom. With the Himalayan landing strip two kilometres higher than Pokhara, the 20-minute flight never really leaves take-off mode.
The trip would be just 60 kilometres as the crow flies, if crows could fly over 8,000-metre mountains. Planes can’t either, which means the flight doglegs west to fly up the Khali Gandaki Gorge. You can see the seventh and tenth-highest peaks in the world to either side. You have to crouch low to the window and look up to see them, though. You’re flying along the bottom of the deepest valley in the world...
It is mid-morning by the time the bike boxes emerge out of the twin prop plane in Jomsom, but the Annapurna range still holds the tarmac in shadow. The colour palette doesn’t change much when the sun finally hits the valley floor. This is arid earth, no plant life livens the scene. A dozen donkeys push down the main street while we build our bikes in the courtyard of a guest house. They are heavily loaded, presumably the supply line for a town up in the mountains with no roads in or out. Finding these towns is the task Mandil Pradhan has set for himself. He’s Sacred Rides’ man in Nepal, the head guide for these pioneering trips grappling with the enormous amount of bikeable terrain and visit-worthy towns in Nepal. He’s particularly interested in the trails that have the right pitch, the most flow, the best scenery and the most comfortable guesthouses at the end of them.
I’m one of eight riders on the first Sacred Rides mountain bike tour of Nepal. The 11-day trip is split between steep singletrack footpaths in the populated hills around Kathmandu and a second half spent riding the higher-altitude trekking trails between more remote towns in the Himalaya near Tibet. Pradhan tells us we will spend most of the next three days following singletrack and rough dirt road for a 2,000-metre descent through towns like Marpha (whitewashed temples) and Tatiopani (natural hot springs). But before going down, we will go up, on an out-and-back up the Lower Mustang Valley.
Riding north out of town we parallel the silty Khali Gandaki river into a terrain of rock, dust and scrubby thornbushes. With Himalayan peaks as a backdrop in all directions, the sense of scale is massive. The valley walls anchor little vegetation, creating a landscape of unearthly emptiness. We pass trekkers coming toward us, their porters and backpacks a dozen steps behind. This region sees a constant flow of trekkers following the Annapurna circuit, but it has only begun to see bikers. One of Pradhan’s local guides, a man charged with the difficult task of getting our luggage to our next stop by van before we arrive by bike, tells me ours is one of only a handful of bike groups a year that makes it to this valley.
Along the east slope, a set of switchbacks descends down to the river. The lack of vegetation makes the exposure seem severe. Pradhan tells me that’s the trail leading from the Lupra Pass, a part of the Sacred Rides route we won’t be riding because we’re tight for time. I look up and wonder how far down the slope I would slide if I balked on one of the tight switchbacks and swung too far. We roll onto a 120-metre suspension bridge that’s swaying like a hammock and cross the Khali Gandaki to start our climb up the west side of the valley.
The trail falls in line with a metre-wide creek that has obviously convinced a few dozen people that the treeless drainage is habitable. Opposite the creek are stone walls that protect a few acres of crops and grazing land from the Mustang's scouring winds. Behind one wall a yak grazes on a tree that has more thorns than leaves. Coming out of a set of switchbacks we roll onto a gently sloping plain bordered on three sides by steep foothills. At the top of the plain the stone walls and flat roofs of Falyak come into view. To say the town blended into its surroundings wouldn’t be doing it justice. Made of the same stone and dirt on which it stands, it looks like it might have been there since India pushed these mountains up out of the sea. It turns out Falyak is only 600 years old, but it seems plenty ancient as I pedal through a tunnelled entrance into the cramped central square where four cows not much bigger than dogs drink at a central well.
A woman, who is probably half as old as she looks, watches as we wheel into the cramped central square. The woman pays us a smile but little mind as we poke down the narrow alleys that lead off the square and into a network of attached houses and alleys. We are taken by the place, forgetting our bikes until Dave finds a staircase leading down into the square and decides it is rideable. The group takes turns bouncing off the hard rock of Falyak. I imagine it must seem like an alien invasion to the woman, but she doesn’t seem agitated, just interested. I sit near her as she digs a sliver out of her hands. My trip mates, wearing tight, colourful clothing and riding full-suspension bikes, put on their own cultural exhibition for her. We don’t get very far in our conversation, the woman and I. From here we’ll begin three days of riding out of this mountainous realm, not stopping until we’ve flushed out the bottom of the deepest valley in the world and into the lowlands below.
If travelling is about doing new things in different places, and if mountain biking is about endless trails and mountains that reach to the sky, then Falyak seems like the right place to start...
Additional photos by Patrice Halley (
patricehalley.com), GauravMan Sherchan and Ritchie Williams.
