Today started with cycling out of Kathmandu after a nice quiet breakfast with a freshly made omelette in the courtyard beside the hotel. I slept better last night for a variety of reasons; not a very long sleep, but very peaceful while asleep; well, and also because it seemed that the dog convention somehow had taken a rest for several hours during the night.

However I have already noticed on arrival here at tonight’s hotel that the reach of the Kathmandu travel bureau dog barking sponsorship program has a very extensive reach. While in the city, there are multiple dogs who don’t need to really bark all that emphatically, probably the more senior dogs end up in town because they don’t have to work as hard. But out here, I think it’s the newer less senior dogs who have to really prove themselves by barking incessantly and emphatically for absolutely no reason at all in order to prove themselves so they can eventually bid the more cushy assignments in the city. Not to mention, in the city I’m sure there are more social opportunities for the dogs, if you know what I mean. Anyway, if there was a means to rate the dogs for irritation factor, I would give this guy not far from my room very very high marks!

As I’ve mentioned on my prior trips, Asia in general seems like such an assault on the senses compared to the organized rule following and reasonable quiet of the Western world were normally accustomed to. Here it seems, 24 hours a day, things are happening, cars are honking their horns, dogs are barking, people are talking, it seems to never stop. And when you’re on a bicycle trying to travel out of Kathmandu it just seems amplified, all the noises, sounds, and smells.

Cycling out of Kathmandu for at least an hour through very narrow alley streets, eventually getting out to main thoroughfare, but still completely and absolutely packed with vehicles of all kinds. Further beyond Kathmandu the traffic continued, but seemed there were more buses, motorbikes, trucks, and everything else you can imagine on wheels.

But at some point this morning, it dawned on me again why I love doing these trips. despite the incredibly long flights, the discomfort of long distance travel, the TimeZone exhaustion that overtakes you, I do realize why I truly do have a passion for this kind of cycling. The roareid shared by vehicles of all kinds, bicycles, motorbikes, with chickens, goats, cows, and every other imaginable animal on a bike, you not only see all those things, but you smell and hear all of the pieces and parts associated with them. It just doesn’t happen in a carcar, nor does it happen if you’re reading a book about a place. So to have two wheels on the ground and have all the inputs for so many senses, I really think that is why I find these kinds of trips truly rewarding. There’s a certain peacefulness that comes with traveling on a bike that is hard to describe unless you actually do it. But that feeling for me is real, and I guess it’s the reason I keep coming back and doing these trips; and at times, seeing how so many people seem to find happiness with so little material wealth somehow provides me with a better sense of life balance.

Eventually we got out of the country into farmland, came across some canola fields where the yellow flower is processed or pressed for oil. Near to that, we saw these half circle shaped long huts that we weren’t really sure what they were so we all stopped. Ox talked to the folks there, and amazingly they were mushroom farms. Cow dung is mixed with straw and dirt to make a very rich medium, placed in rows under these straw covered greenhouses which keeps them moist, warm, and dark. We walked into them and saw these white mushrooms growing in there. It was an amazing thing to see, since I had never considered how mushrooms are produced.

Basically today, from Kathmandu, we crossed a huge valley and went up the other side; so the second half of the day involved a lot of elevation. In fact, today was a mixture of some really bumpy up and downhill singletrack kind of stuff that I really don’t like all that much, but towards the end of the day we are back on pavement sharing the road yet again with buses, trucks and motorbikes.

We crossed steel suspension cable bridge today that was extraordinary! We rode down this bridge that was slightly wider than the handlebars of your bike, and I really had to suspend my sense of fear and avoid looking down at the chasm and river below we were crossing. It was really exciting actually!

Towards the end of the day we were at about 5000 feet, and coming up to hills you could definitely feel the elevation in the cardiovascular response and especially how hard you needed to breathe to keep enough oxygen coming in.

We did stop at some point for lunch at a small restaurant was built on a hill overlooking the valley that was really spectacular.

We ended the day biking up a small valley where there are several monasteries and staying at small hotel kind of place with a couple of buildings with rooms. The first room they gave me seemed nice with a safari style bed cover and al, but then when I actually looked before I started doing my laundry chores, there was an infestation of some sort of a termite like bug all over the floor and many on the bed as well. So they were kind enough to relocate me to a different room that while very spartan and no leopard bedspread, certainly nice enough and all that really matters is there’s hot water!

The haze over Nepal seems to have gotten worse, it is apparently common for this haze to overtake most of the region in advance of the monsoon season. So it’s difficult for us to see on more than a few miles into the distance.

The group is reasonably well matched, we all stayed pretty close together today, and nobody’s a complainer at all. Definitely a nice group of people to be cycling with.

Will have some sort of dinner here at the hotel up in hills next to the New Azom monastery, a very large and grand monastery just beside our hotel that is still being built but it’s really giant!

The hotel we’re at actually has a pool, but one of the group went down to consider taking a swim and saw a dead mouse in the pool, so that was enough to eliminate the possibility of anybody swimming down there. At this elevation, it’s not really all that warm, though I’m in short sleeves but by dinnertime it would be much cooler.

That’s it for today. Dinner shortly, then hopefully a solid sleep!