The team at the base of Mt Everest Base camp at 5200 m.

Biking to Tibet 12/6/2004
Kuensel 12, June 2004.

Traversing through mountain passes on stretches of gravel and asphalt astride a powerful motorcycle can be an exhilarating and endearing adventure to most avid bikers.

For Kinley Tshering, 29, of the Bhutanese tourist company, Himalayan Adventures, who recently rode a 640 cc KTM adventure bike from Thimphu to Kathmandu to Tibet and back, the first Bhutanese to do so, it was more than that.

“It’s the freedom and the joy of riding the open road,” Kinley said. Having introduced the first motorbike tours in the country, Kinley recently organised a spine-jolting 25-day bike trip to Tibet through Kathmandu, arguably the first expedition of a group of eight bikers to ride the 2,500 kilometres route of mountain terrain reaching more than 500 metres above sea level.

On May 7, the bikers grabbed the challenge with both hands, hopped on their bikes, gripped the throttle and headed off to a gripping adventure. The bikers were from Austria and Germany and were accompanied by a 17- member team of cooks and helpers travelling on four wheel drive vehicles.

The bikers journeyed to Tibet through sandy paths of sudden descents and jumps, over mountain passes and alongside a fabled cave where the great Buddhist saint, Milarepa, was said to have meditated.

They rode to Asia’s holiest mountain, Mount Kailash, 6,714 metres, on the remote western Tibetan plateau, where pilgrims circumambulated and did full length prostration for days and weeks to complete a round of the holy mountain.

They rode on wide open tracts of sand to Lake Manasarovar, 4,560 meters, Tibet’s most sacred lakes where a single circumambulation of the lake took about five days. The bikers also rode to the Mount Everest base camp.
“It was difficult but worth it,” Kinley said. “Most of the time I thought I was riding on the clouds.”