ROAD TO MUSTANG – A MOTORBIKE RIDE THROUGH THE HIMALAYA!

pilotstories (25)in #travel • 7 years ago

Hello folks, today we will not soar into the sky with an airplane but we will come very close to heaven anyway! My good friend Manuel decided to let go everything back in Germany, grab a motorbike (manufactured in the 50s) and make a once-in-a-lifetime trip through the mountains of the Himalaya, home for the highest and most dangerous mountains of our planet.

Fasten your seatbelt and enjoy the pictures, Manuel shared with me. The beauty of mother earth is just breathtaking sometimes. 🙂
The Road of Mustang leads from Pokhara into the Tibetian Kingdom of Mustang in Nepal. Temperatures varied from minus 12 Celsius at night to plus 25 Celsius throughout the day. Manuel couldn’t complete the entire trip to Muktinath 3800 Meters by bike since the trails were iced-up, so the last miles were taken on the back of a horse!

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present: This is world’s tenth highest mountain, the Annapurna. It is rarely climbed, since it is not only one of the biggest mountains, but also one of the most dangerous ones. Until today, 60 people died trying to reach the top of this beauty, mostly because of avalanches. Only 154 guys made it to the peak.

A tour of 5 days with roundabout 5 to 6 hours on the roads makes hungry – luckily, the dishes offered in Jomsom (3,200 above sea level) and Tatopani were awesome and really affordable (around one buck per dish!). It reminds one of the Indian cuisine in some kind of way, many flavors and spices combined to a firework of tastes. Beer, however, is really expensive up there, they sell it for 5$ per bottle (maybe due to the fact that no local would drink it)

Now let’s move on through beautiful fields:

Rice is served almost with every meal here. Of course it has to grow somewhere. Nepal and especially the Himalaya is world famous for the highest quality Basmati Rice. The picture below shows just some of the many vast rice fields.

The landscapes were both stunning and bizarre: Just few animals are capable of surviving here. From now on, it started to change from green to a more grayish look.

Here we are: Muktinath, Upper Mustang, on a hight of 3,800 meters. It is a sacred place both for Hindus and Buddhists. It lies beneath the foot of the mountain Dhaulagiri, the number 7 in height of all mountains worldwide, 8,167 m.