We two friends decided to try something adventurous and crazy for our yearly long festival vacation. Hence, our plan was to cycle from Kathmandu to Lumbini, the birthplace of Gautam Buddha. It was really a nice experience.
And here I am going to write the daily details.
Oct 17 2015
We had started our journey from Imadol, Lalitpur at 6:00 am. I am planning to track all the way on MyTracks on my phone and hence i had started the GPS and started recording tracks. It was not so cold but we had to put jackets as the morning wind was chilled a bit. We started our paddling on a upward inclination from Kalanki upto Nagdhunga. The way after that was continuous downhill and was fun for cycling, we berely have to paddle on few places.
It was around 9:00 when we reached at Simle bazzar, Dhading, where we had breakfast. We get a tire flat on my friends bike near Gajuri, and we patched it with the patch kit we had.
Keep on paddling and reached Malakhu for our lunch of the day. Had lunch we keep on going. the whole day we to to cycle on mountanious road, there was enough climb and fall.
Finally at evening at around 6:00 pm we reached Muglin bazzar and decided to spend this night at this bazzar. As that bazzar is a junction of two highway, one upto Pokhara and another upto Narayangad we got lots hotels to stay.
Stayed on a thakali hotel as they are popular for good hygenic dish. Good night sleep beside being on road side hotel we heard vehicle horn n people’s noise.
Distance travelled: 102 km
TIME: 11:00 hour
Max Speed: 51 Km/hr
Oct 18 2015
at 6:00 we left from muglin bazaar. We were planning to reach near Bhaiarahawa that day. The war here after was a bit out of condition. At around 9:30am we reached narayangad bazaar where we had some breakfast.
As the way ahead is more plane I decided to tide my bad into my carriage because my shoulders were tired of carrying it and the sweats on back was excessive. That gave me a bit comfortable. We keeped on paddling.
At around 12:00 we were at Nawalparashi district and we decided to have a rest under a tree on a small bazaar area. There we find out about a hotel and we had lunch there. After 1 hour of rest we moved ahead as the long tarai road was ahead. It become hard for us to push continuously on the plane road where there is no ups and down. At one time we got to take mini rest on each 5 km or so.
The tougest ride was at Dauwane. It is 8 KM of continuous uphill along the the “Dange” sing of Department of road saying sharp bends and narrow way. It was evening when we started climbing it. The road was in middle of the jungle and we had no information of where could we find hotel for this night. It took us around 2 hour or so. We had to use our headlight for the first tiime here. We were tired, hungry and thrusty and all we had was few choclet and a bottel of water. The rest we took during this 8KM ride was just to drink water and sweets for energy and that was great help for us.
Finally we saw some residental lights and it was Dauwane bazaar. It on top of the hill and there after we had down hill for to go for another 8 km. We findout a hotel and slept our 2nd night there.
Distance travelled: 108 km
TIME: 11:51 hour
Max Speed: 52 Km/hr
Oct 19 2015
at 6am or so we started from Dauwane. It was downhill along with narrow road and sharp bends. But downhill is fun as always. We were expecting to reach Lumbini by eve that day. On the way we meet nepali London bridge, a tiny tample on middle of pond and beautiful lotus flowers on side of road.
We reached Bhairahawa by 11:00 am. After we find out that we could reach Sunauli from there which is not more then 4/5 km, we decided to touch india. We crossed the boarder and cycled upto 1 km there on indian soil. The environment there was not so welcoming. You could find out the clear difference between indian soil and nepali by the amount of crowd and the amount of garbage thrown on streets. As the informal blockade of india was in effect at that time, we had seen lots of trucks waiting on indian boarder waiting to supply goods to nepal.
We though about returning to nepal and going to Lumbini as we had plan to reach there by late afternoon. But unfortunitally the cassets of my friend’s bike broke. Due to which the paddle no longer push the bike as cassets started to rotate without rotating wheel. Damn it.
We got to fix that thing and after consulting with few locals we were suggested to goo to inidian side to fix it. We push our bike through that croud to find repairing shop. It was really hard to make way on such a crowd. Found a shop but we got no tools which could openup that cassets and to replace new one. It may be because nobody uses gared bike on this plain land. We decided to go by bus and hence rturned toNepal, had lunch. Soon idea comes into my mind about fixing it using some material so that we could at least paddle upto lumbini. used tiny rock to lock the cassets with wheel. That worked for few mins but it get loose soone after. Then i used a wood piece for the same purpose and that thing gave us company upto lumbani and back to butwal.
We were tired like hall that day. But when we approach lumbini we got excited. Excited because we were near to out destination. Way was in good condition and was supported by trees grown on both side of the road. It was dusk when we reached lumbini area and hence we decide to get a hotel and have rest and start lumbini visit from early morning the day after.
Distance travelled: 84 km
TIME: 11:05 hour
Max Speed: 59 Km/hr
Oct 20 2015
From early mornig we decided to visit vaious monastries and tamble inside lumbini development area. We passed through the golden tample, other monastry, eaternal lamp and to the Maya Devi temple. The location infront of the Maya Devi tample was soo good.Our final visit was on World Peace Pagoda. Another good place to visit. By then it was almost 12:00 noon and hence we returned to hotel have lunch and returned to Bhirahawa to catch bus. But when we arrived at Bhairahawa alocal man suggested us to go upto butwal (25KM to north) because there we could find frequent bus. It was almost 3:30 pm when we reached to Butwal. Catched a bus and we retured to Kathmandu on that night.
Last words
It was wonderful, adventurous and amazing. By nature we speak little but we enjoyed the trip to its fullest.
