Andy Strapz threw himself and his Himalayan 450 into some of the world’s toughest roads – and both came out grinning
The Himalayas seem to be the motorcycling destination on the minds of many Aussies at present. And why not! It’s exotic, dramatic, affordable and challenging.The chance to be a ‘guinea pig’ for a tour company called Karma Yatri fell into my lap out of the blue. The idea was to forge a new route from the North West province of Himachal Pradesh, India to Kathmandu via remote areas of Uttarakhand and Western Nepal. The promise was one of an adventure of a lifetime, into the unknown.
There’s a narrow month’s window post the monsoons that work on washing the Himalayas into the sea and the coming of the harsh winter. The group was restricted to four riders who demonstrated that they could cope with most of the riding conditions the area could dish out. Bearing in mind the Uttarakhand area had been hit with the biggest storms in recorded history, it was gonna be no mean feat.
Travel advice was to avoid Kashmir due to cross-border blueing, Kathmandu due to riots, and Uttarakhand due to dangerous roads and landslide risks – what could possibly go wrong?
I got to it, practised my squeaking, padded out my riding CV, secured the required leave pass and threw money at the venture. Chats with Hashim, the principal, who has been running tours across the sub-continent for around 15 years, combined with the company’s online reviews left me with the confidence that I was in good hands. His approach was to secure a passage through places in Western Nepal that will have their isolation and therefore culture radically change in the next decade.
As it turned out the group consisted of my long-time riding buddy Tomaselli and two Good Ol’ Southern USofA guys who had a similar long-term relationship with each other and bikes. It was essential this group be small, and made up of capable dual-sport riders and hardy travellers.
Tomaselli and the other guys, Terry and Brian, completed a longer, 21-day trip from Kashmir through more regular archetypical Himalayan high desert country until we met up in a small town called Rampur. Appropriately, the ancient village was an important stop-off along the trade and pilgrimage route between Afghanistan and Tibet.
The first cultural ‘blow out’ for me was staggering jetlagged across the road to grab a few bananas. Behind a roadside stall, a set of stairs descended steeply off the edge of the road; ‘in for a penny as a pound’, as the saying goes. Before me opened up a dazzling, colourful, frenetic, snakes-and-ladders maze of shops and stalls clinging to a steep mountainside. I just had to show the other guys when they arrived!
The following day, the descendant of the original kings of the region popped in to show his new bride around the family’s castle adjoining our hotel. Bands, fireworks, a guard of honour and much fanfare accompanied him. Our host at the hotel even wangled a private tour of the castle for the group. Hooley dooley, I hadn’t even thrown a leg over a bike yet!
The following morning, we struck out on Himalayan 450s. A blessing by a holy man at the first servo left me feeling sufficiently charmed to strike out in the chaos of Indian traffic. But… that had hardly happened when our guide cut off the main drag onto deserted (for India, the world’s most populous place) sinuous secondary roads and we climbed and climbed. This is why you need guides; we were straight into the back blocks. Knock me down… all of a sudden, we were in apple country.
Part of the experience was our guide Hashim tossing us straight into the deep end of roadside chai and food stops. I never would have dared stop at them in a million years but being guided by an articulate, multi-lingual, well-read, approachable person meant that no culturally cringe-worthy question was left unanswered, changing my outlook on that part of the world.
Unfortunately, the blessing of the previous day didn’t protect me from the evil spirits of Delhi Belly that night, but a few ‘bind up pills’ later, I coaxed my show back on the road. Trusting a fart in that part of the world is a big decision to make.
This area had been hit hard by unprecedented weather and the evidence was everywhere. Tectonic plates bash against one another, pushing up these enormous mountains and the monsoons come along and wash it back down… including the roads. Wash-aways were regular and frequent, boulders the size of trucks would meet us around blind corners, muddy puddles, torn-up rocky remnants of road and side tracks the norm. As were traffic jams, as the locals seem to need to be the first vehicle in any queue. One afternoon, while being beaten by 30°C heat and high humidity, we lane-split at least 20km of this chaos. The last struggle saw us edging past a solid line of traffic paddling in the sloppiest mud I have ever experienced; it was the consistency of chocolate mousse – whipped mud!!
The next two days were a series of climbs and descents through lush tropical valleys and pine-clad ridges, some of it along what is known as the Spiritual Highway into The Land of the Gods, Dev Bhoumi. We were in the middle of some of Hindu’s holiest places. A couple of weeks after we passed through, the area would boom with pilgrims.
From there we went remote. We wiggled and climbed to the top corner of the India-Nepali border in the Darchula region. The Karma Yatri team had tried through fixers and pleading to cross the border into Nepal up in those climes but struck out, so we roughly followed the border south again, getting glimpses of rugged snow-capped mountains to cross at Mahendranagar.
I’d prepared myself for cold, not hot. A quick check of our latitude soon cleared it up for me – we were riding in country roughly on par with Brisbane: late summer! Image Brizzy with imposing 7000m-plus, snow-capped peaks in the hinterland! The views can be jaw-dropping.
To cross the border, we had to descend to the plains. The transition from high country to lowlands was dramatic and rapid. Within five klicks we were in a different world… again.
Negotiating immigration at the border in Mahendranagar was slow, hot and tedious, with our guides getting stitched up with ‘extra fees’ to release the support vehicle. It was my first land border crossing and I was grateful for the Karma Yatri ‘fixer’ helping smooth the way. After a feed, acquiring Nepali sim cards and respite in an airconditioned restaurant, we finally pushed on. Passing signs warning us of elephants and tigers made for a nervy slash stop while making a beeline for that night’s accommodation.
Around 50km past the border, we jagged left and headed north, then climbed and climbed and climbed. Out of the blue we lobbed into what could only be described as a resort cut into a mountainside. Without our guide team we might have slept in a culvert.
On the road again early, switchback after switchback, ridge after ridge, verdant tropical valley, one after the other. Each stunning tropical valley was cut by blue-grey rivers galloping through them. Every corner was a postcard.
Photos seemed impotent, like taking core samples of paradise. This was not what I was expecting of the Himalayas! There is so much more to this part of the world!
The chai stores ceased to be and accommodation dried up.
Youdi, our Nepali-speaking guide riding pillion on the lead bike, gathered directions and local knowledge. He asked everybody he could corner, checking directions at remote and rough settlements. We’d climb a hill, get the bikes bogged, retrace our steps and try again. Often the local knowledge went along the lines of “the road ahead was rough as guts, but the other way is worse”.
On our longest, toughest day, we covered 300km in 12 hours (150 klicks was a solid day)! We nearly lost the support vehicle while it tested the depth of a rapid running river crossing, scaled a goat track to a suspension bridge rather than retrace our tracks and got rained on. We rolled into a hotel, in the rain, after dark. Phoo wee, that day is indelibly etched on my memory.
During our traverse of Mid-Western Nepal, we saw no other foreigners, very few other vehicles and life as it must have rolled on for millennia. Locals just gawped at us as we passed through their hamlets.
Another usual day’s 7am start, no faffing about for breakfast, we struck out. This was no ‘swan about and smell the turmeric’ trip; we started at sparras, getting breakfast on the road and often finishing late afternoon.
The riding was high-concentration and challenging. More switchbacks, more ridges, more cows… until we popped around a non-descript corner to be greeted by four of the world’s tallest mountains piercing the sky. Like, just there! A life event to be sure. Sipping the first good coffee in a week with slack jaws, the Karma Yatri crew (who’d been here a couple of times) and locals told us it was rare as rockin’ horse poo to have it so clear.
As we approached our penultimate leg to Pokhara, our first Nepali city, Hashim was working on us, building the suspense. We were to cross the tallest, longest suspension bridge in the world. Ho hum. After the truck-drowning incident it was a doddle! Stopping, turning the ‘bars to full lock and leaning the bike away to allow pedestrians to pass was another experience though. DON’T LOOK DOWN!
As the expedition evolved, I’d realised that my expectations were not of tropical paradise; my vision of the Himalayas was stark alpine desert, monotone grey, dominated by enormous snow-capped mountains. Lush was not on my radar.
After a little re-jigging of plans, Tom and I decided to abandon the last day’s commute to Kathmandu, hire a couple of different bikes from a Pokhara company and head into the sacred area to the north, not far from the Tibetan border. We’d ride the Mustang district and check out Muktinath, one of Hindu and Buddhism’s most sacred places. To head farther north would have set us back $US500 just for a pass and more days than we had. The Nepali coppers are red hot on checking paperwork; they seem to have created an artform of it!
The four-day detour didn’t disappoint (the Hero xPulse bikes did, but that’s a different story). Mountains that soar over 8000m above sea level, giants with names like Dhalagari, Annapurna, Nilgiri and Manasalu that seem to be within touching distance. We stayed in the ancient town of Marpha, mostly constructed from local stacked rock. Nepalis come to reconnect with their heritage, hire traditional dress-up costumes, perform dances and take selfies. Fascinating.
We had beers with a gaggle of young touring Indian riders whose goal wasn’t sex, drugs and burn-outs but religious pilgrimage. We took backroad detours on single tracks and crossed more suspension bridges, battled BYD cars coming at us (literally) from the northern border over rough-as-guts roads, dozens of them! Diesel smoke-belching tourist buses and Mahindra 4WDs blocking steep mountain passes with bloody-minded dumbfoundingness had us edging past while teetering on the edge of dizzying vertical drops.
We ate food with our fingers, squatted to shit, washed our bums with our left hands, drank chai, didn’t see meat for days, saw things not many westerners have ever experienced, rode until our bums were sore through scenery from picture books, experienced new friendships, saw different religions cooperating, thriving and working together, marvelled at really tough people (especially the older women) and drank plenty of ‘strong’ beer (5 per cent is Lite there!).
We were looked after superbly, accommodation was well above expectations, support was always at hand, the bikes were checked daily.
We signed up for a crash test dummy experience and survived – no, thrived – without crashing.
I want to go back tomorrow.
We ponied up for the adventure of a lifetime; Hashim and the entire Karma Yatri team delivered in spades.
Getting There
WE FLEW from Melbourne direct to Delhi, connected to Chandigarh, got picked up and delivered seven hours later to Rampur, a gruelling 24 hours in transit. Our highly professional Karma Yatri experience was all-inclusive once landed… other than that rocket fuel 9 per cent beer!
When this route comes online we are told it will not be so rushed, allowing a modicum of time to savour the sights, smells and sounds of one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. I think I’m in LOVE…
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!
Andy is going back in October 2026 to finish the Kashmir to Kathmandu ride. If you want to join him on a 24-day specially curated epic, contact info@andystrapz.com
The Himis
KEL BUCKLEY AND I tested the RE Himi 450 back in Vol74 No.07; I was confident it would do the job but hooo-wee they shone in that environment! Every hundred metres or so an obstacle was encountered: cow shit, cows asleep in the road, rocks (often the size of a 4×4), washaways, mud, potholes, puddles, dogs, nasty climbs, fun twisties, big dust, buffaloes, donkeys, water crossings and cow shit. Did I mention cow shit?
Everything we threw at the little Himalyans they gobbled up. Tough rocky uphills? No dramas, just point and shoot. Fun times on mountain roads? Rip in, if the sounding of the horn cleared the oncoming blind curves, that is. Long days in the saddle were not as comfy on the bike with the ‘rally’ seat but the stock seat was okay. Standing position was good enough, they fuelled well, high altitude didn’t knock them around overly and they were reliable.
We saw top gear once or twice a day (if at all) and 80km/h was blindingly fast. Our average speed had to be around 25-35km/h for the trip I’d think.
Our bikes were in need of chains and sprockets at the end of it all with around 13,000km on each – they endure a hard life!
Food on the fly
OUR DAYTIME stops would be categorised on the Smart Traveller website as high risk. Dingy, smoky, rundown tin sheds initially had me hugging my roll of toilet paper. Roadside food was usually basic, vegetarian but delicious and totally different from the uberdasharoo corner takeaway back home. Omelettes were the usual fare at brekky, coffee was off the menu until we hit big cities. The ubiquitous shot-sized cups of chai were standard with subtle variations of the recipe that kept things interesting. Bottled water was supplied from the support vehicle, which was never very far behind. Evening meals were always exceptional. Sharing food with new friends is always joyous.
