Cycle Touring in Ladakh/ Northern India

[StevieB]

Has anyone any recent experience of cycling through here ?
I'm looking at going from Manali to ladakh and possibly some time in Spiti in a couple of weeks time.

Steve

[myflove]

If you're visit to india and want to the guides of travel please see India Travel Guide

[Mainelybikers]

Sorry, I just now read about your plan, so I wasn't able to offer advice. Turns out I rode this route south from Leh back in '96, the first year you didn't need a special travel permit. The 5 big passes were superb, especially Taglang La, the 2nd highest motorable road in the world!

So, Did you make it to India? How was it? Did you happen to find your way to Manikaran? (35km up the valley near Kullu) How about McLeod Ganj. I hope so, as they're both such special places.

[sanuk]

Cycling from Manali to Leh will probably be easy if you've done Everest a couple of times.  I'm not exaggerating that much: 5,000 meter plus passes - whatever that is in feet - very rough, or non existent road surfaces and clean water access limited or non existent. Not much food out there either.  Yeah, absolutely fantastic scenery and lots of cyclists do it.  I've seen them from the window of a beat-up bus.  I'd love to try it myself by bike but I'm probably not up for it physically.  The other aspect is the other traffic on that route.  India in general has one of the highest road fatality statistics in the world.  Delhi is one of the worst - a real traffic nightmare and cyclists have short lives.  So how would you get to Manali?  Put the bike on a bus?  I wouldn't want to be on any main route north out of Delhi on a bike.  Then in Manali, or once you get into the foothills, you'll run into the truck backlog waiting to get over the Rotang Pass - the first challenge.  Indian truckers are not cyclist friendly, to say the least.  They own the road.  The whole route is unfortunately a main trucking and military transport convoy route into Ladakh.  The only other way is via Kashmir which is still more or less at war.  Last time I was up there - about four years ago - I met a guy who flew up to Leh with his bike and then cycled down.  Well, it's also up but obviously overall he's loosing altitude going that way.  Good luck and say your prayers.

[trollins8]

Hi, Don't know if you have left for Ladahk yet. I'm currently living in McLeodganj, Himachal Pradesh and just last Friday saw a slide show on the current sad state of affairs in the Leh area. I think on August 5th, Leh was just hammered by a micro cloud burst that caused a massive mudslide that buried part of the city. 200 confirmed dead and 400 missing. The mudslide, according to the The India Times, was 20 meters deep, two kilometers wide and ran for six kilometers. I think you can fly into Leh but I'm not sure if buses are going all the way due to road damage. You probably want to do some homework. Many Tibetan refugees are living in tents as their adobe homes crumbled in the rain. An incredible area, but really unfortunate this happened. Terry