4.30 a.m. The sun is an hour away from lighting the sky and
in this country of early risers we are surprised to be the first on the road.
We cycle in silence, three mountain bikers climbing gently in the cool pre dawn
air to the village of Song and the trails to Kaphne and Pindari Glacier. With
work commitments and late snowfalls delaying the start date we are full of
enthusiasm (even at 4.30 a.m) hoping that recent sunshine will clear the trails
and let us make the first ever descent from Kaphne Glacier.
With two of India’s best young riders with
me, one from the Hindi speaking north and one from the Malayalam speaking southern
state of Kerala we speak in the only language we all understand, English, about
what lies ahead. Climbing. Kaphne and its neighbour Pindari Glacier lie in the remote Indian Himalayan state of Uttaranchal over 400km northeast of the
capital Delhi. The state is the home of India’s highest mountains the near
8000m giants peaks of Nanda Devi, Trishul and Maktoli. We need to reach half
that height.
The trail starts in Song with a tough 6 km
climb gaining over 600 meters in height to the trekking huts in Loharkhet. From
here the path becomes narrow, steep and rocky as we ascend through forests of
Rhodedendrum. The carry is a tough, sweaty and breathless affair punctuated by
a few tea shops that serve the donkey caravans that come this way. Everyone in the tea shops and on the
trail are more used to trekkers carrying backpacks than mountain bikers carrying
mountain bikes. Everyone including the seen it all before donkeys think we are
mad.
We climb and climb until we reach a stone carved memorial to a trekker
who died on this spot of a heart attack. We pause, reflect on our own mortality
and conclude that if you had to die anywhere it’s a good spot to breathe your
last. One km on and we reach the
Dhakuri Pass at 3000 meters, an 1800 meter height gain for the day. In the
distance we can see the snow capped peaks whilst below us the path winds its
way down through the forests. It is steep and super tech with rock after rock
and super tight switchbacks. It is brutal. We batter our way down the near
1000m drop descent to the
almost indescribably beautiful village of Khatti. Bodies and minds numb but elated
after nine hours on the bikes.
In Khatti we settle round the fire. The
talk is about our failure to bring some booze to make a night of it and the
record snow falls over the winter, which will make for some testing riding
conditions on the trails above 3400m. The few trekkers who have made it so far
this year have found things eventful. We meet an American trekker who had
slipped off the path catching his head on a rock resulting in a nasty gash.
Another walker appears with an iodine smeared broken nose, a result of a fall
in an earthquake the previous day.
No one else sat round the fire had felt the tremor and a conflicting
account emerges, the man, they say, smashed his nose after demolishing 3
bottles of rum the previous night. Another man we encountered was covered in
dirt and mud which he said was a result of coming face to face with a Himalayan
black bear on the trail, a tale, I would not have believed had I not seen one
myself a few months before and almost fallen off my bike in a manic escape
effort.
From Khatti we ride high above the Pindari
river along a path straight out of Tolkien novel. Branches of huge towering
trees overhang the thin ribbon of trail that hugs the side of the valley. The
Himalayan peaks appear then disappear as the track drops down to the glacial
water and then up and up through to the tiny settlement of Malyador and on to
Dwali at 2700 meters in height.
From Dwali the trail splits. The right track climbs 14 km to
Kaphne Glacier whilst the well worn trail to the left leads to Pindari. With
the Kaphne valley being more exposed to the sunshine we head right hoping that
the extra day would be enough to melt a bit more of the snow that remained on
the Pindari trail. We climb towards Kaphne, riding the smoother sections and
pushing up the tech bits which gives us a chance to weigh up the lines for the
return ride. 4 hours of stunning scenery follow and we reach a ridge of rocks
that give us a view of the glacier and the huge snowbound peaks. We pause for a while to watch a small avalanche
then ready ourselves for what promises to be an hour of magical
descending. The top section is all
flowing singletrack carving through the grassy meadows with the odd patch of
recalcitrant snow keeping us hovering over the brakes. We start to descend more
steeply and the switchbacks, tech sections and rock gardens build up as we drop
over 1200 and 14km of breathless trail to Dwali. Riding trail amongst massive
peaks at near 4000-meter altitude is a surreal experience. Your oxygen starved
brain makes you feel fluid and loose like having had a couple of pints, great,
but your lungs feel like its had the accompanying 20 cigarettes, you are
breathless, pushing your bodies limits, another part of your mind is politely
asking you to stop and just take in the view.
To make sure we had great fun on the descents we traveled
light with just a small day bag each. Our luggage was transfered by donkeys and
porters, which were in short supply as most of the areas men folk had headed to
the Bugyals, the high altitude meadows, some near 5000m in height to collect
Lawa a caterpillar fungus worth some
£6000 a kilo. The month long Lawa season is a dangerous and
painstakingly slow work, involving crawling on the ground for hours on end
hoping to sight the dirt encrusted little finger sized fungus. Each one, worth
near £3 is collected and then sold
on to middle men on the Indo-Chinese border before making its way to Tibet and
on to China were it is used as an aphrodisiac. Not only do the pickers risk
their lives on the remote and exposed slopes but the trade is more lucrative if
government officials are by passed but in doing this arrests are common with
pickers facing prison sentences and massive fines. The absence of porters was a
boon for government employed trail builders, tea boys and anyone else who was
heading in our direction. Each day our bags where packed early, men came and
men went, weighing the bags in their hands before deciding it was worth the
effort and cash reward to cart them to the next village.
From Dwali it is 7km to Phukiya at around
3200m and a further 6 km to Pindari making it the best place to overnight for
an early start to reach the Glacier. The climb up is quite gentle but demanding
on legs and lungs as the altitude kicks in. The trail is breathtaking, the
peaks of Maktoli, Trishul and Nainda Devi are all visible. Waterfalls cascade
down into the valley as the sun melts the snow that sits like a blanket on the
higher ground. Phukiya itself is best described as an ice-cold hut in the
shadow of a 7200-meter peak. We move to the soot-black walled kitchen a result
of the smoke of countless wood fires. The caretaker screws up his eyes up as he
rolls out mountains of chapattis before toasting them on the fire in
preparation for an evening meal of vegetable curry.
From Phukiya the 6 km early morning ride is
beautiful, patches of snow and ice pack the gullies and riverbeds. We crest ridge after ridge before the
valley opens up onto a vast Bugyal with the trail leading to a stone temple
that houses both a cave and the holy man Pindari Baba who is famed for his
hospitality. With the holy man away on a pilgrimage we ride the last km of the
trail up to Zero Point without the benefit of a cup of tea inside us. We take a few pics then descend
what could be 25km of the best trail on earth. 1600 meters of vert and
seemingly endless singletrack to play with. An hour of continuous descent and
we are back in Dwali insanely giggly and euphoric from endorphins and
oxygenated air and a simply cracking trail.
In Dwali we meet some lawa pickers who are on their way back to their
village after a month away in the high meadows they are both carrying
infections and fevers and ask us if we have any medicines. Another foreigner is
here so we ask him for a second opinion and to pool our 1st aid
kits. The imposing 6-foot plus trekker looks studious and grave as we show him
our medicines and the ill man. The crowd swells as we wait on the prognosis of
the white haired trekker, a man who appears to hold the gravitas of a learned
doctor more and more. After a pregnant pause he speaks, he has not traveled
with a 1st aid kit for 15 years he says and furthermore he is
against all conventional medicine claiming they are “cancer pills”. He
recommends month long detox programmes as the way to avoid getting ill which
seems a perfectly legitimate view point to hold if you had a month to spare and
no pre-existing illnesses. We dish out our pills and thank him for his advice
without bothering to translate his ideas to the “patient”.
We wind our way
down through the forests and meet a small party of government trail builders
escorting a black goat to what looks like inevitable death. We are invited to
breakfast. We arrive at a newly constructed wooden bridge where it is explained
to that it is auspicious to slaughter a goat to bring fortune and good luck for
the bridge and those who built it. We are presented with goats testicles for starters
then plates of mutton curry which provide for an unusual but tasty mountain
bikers breakfast that sets us up for the stunning 12km of trail through the
valley to Khatti. From Khatti we head away from the mountains into warmer,
richer air past a village where the donkey caravans start and the road
finishes. It gets busier here a jeep, and then a sign by the road that reads “impatient
on road, patient in hospital”, we all laugh and peddle on slowly and patiently
reflecting on the past weeks riding.
