After spending a week at Chitwan I took a cab to Pokhara where I had decided to try out some mountain biking. Here I spent around 2 weeks exploring the various trails on my mountain bike and taking photos of the landscapes and wildlife. I had actually purchased the mountain bike in Kathmandu at a store called Panc Bike. It is a Polygon Premier 5 mountain bike. I could have rented the bike but I decided on purchasing it instead. I had mainly stayed at Nepali Cottage Guesthouse. I would recommend this place for a few reasons. One is that it is for those on a low budget, rooms are clean and the owners are quiet friendly and also there is a juice bar that not only serve juice but also make good breakfast.
There is a bike shop in Pokhara called Chamling Cycle and they also organize mountain biking day trips as well as overnight trips within Pokhara and beyond. They are pocket friendly and anyhow the trails I covered could be described as easy-medium to medium hard while one or two days, the trails were really exhausting as it was quite uphill and steep. This made me walk with my bike most of the way. Another factor was the intense heat of the mid day sun. Some days involved around 3 to 4 hours of cycling while some days required a maximum duration of 8 hours of cycling with a couple of breaks thrown in between.
I had shot alot of trail video on various days using the DJI Osmo Action Camera and Gopro Chest Harness. The cameras gets mounted onto the harness and the harness has to be worn across the chest. This helps in getting stable or near stable footage even on offroad conditions especially when RockSteady has been enabled on the camera. Here is one clip which I had uploaded of me cycling downhill from the village of Panchase to Bhanjyang.
Here are some photos which I captured along the trail on those 12 days of cycling.
The next and final part of my trip involved visiting Shuklaphanta National Park.