Part of the game

We were already about to come to the end of our journey and then it yet happened: Our first accident. A cow blocked our side of the road when a car came from the front. While we were overtaking the cow, it happened that one of Silke’s front panniers got tangled up in one of Hauke’s so that Silke fell down with her bike. As we enjoyed lots of rapid downhills these days, we were going quite fast. But luckily, nothing serious happened, light abrasions on knee and hip, one swollen knee - and a genuine, red, smarting racing cyclists' road burn around one elbow. After the shock went away, the pain came up, we treated the wounds and continued cycling.

Along the road, we occasionally saw ropeways going up to some villages high above which are only accessible by steep footpaths with many stairs. The government supplies these remote villages by sending up baskets full of foodstuff - those poor people living up there in their oases of peace should not lack Coca Cola and other convenient food, of course...

Back down below 1000m, the heat took away our motivation to continue cycling and when we faced our last, unavoidable ascent up to almost 3000m, some laziness sneaked in: We stopped a pickup and hitchhiked up to the hill station Narkanda. This allowed us to stay there for a couple of days in a refreshing climate and to explore the dense, surrounding pine forest by foot :)Read more