We wake up early ready for the adventure. A small breakfast in the hotel, we also leave some bags at the hotel to be lean on the motorcycles. We also finally meet up with Terry at the hotel, he was suppose to arrive before us in Nepal, but ended up arriving a day later, 3 days of uncertain travel from him, and lots of canceled fight and missed connections.
Terry will be our guide, a mountain guide from France. He has prepared and completed many adventures around the world. Not only he loves the mountains, he also loves the sea. He has been in Nepal multiple times per year (every year) for over 40 years!
The Kathmandu airport is small, security is loose, it is messy, loud, and feels local, while being pretty high traffic. Our plane is 40 min late, we talk about past and future potential adventures, like sailing in artic ocean, or traveling on the beach from north to south Brazil with buggies.
We take a bus on the tarmac, our plane is an old [plane model] with 2 propellers. Soon enough, we are climbing up, and looking out the window to ‘green tropical’ nepal. A few minutes later, once we are over the clouds, we see the himalayan pics teasing us. It looks so majestic
Landing is smooth, and we end up in an even smaller airport, we are able to walk freely on the tarmac, even come in and out of the building to observe the planes. Soon enough, we are reunited with all of our stuff, meet our guide who will accompany us all the way to the north of Nepal, to the Tibetan border. We arrive at the hotel, a beautiful, old style nepalese building, but we are hungry, so we quickly leave to find some food. Lunch was incredible, next to lake, good food, and more adventure stories to be shared.
Time to ride! Right after lunch, we hop on the motorcycle for a first test ride, they are old, and weird to get used to. We also have to drive on the left side, and with questionable traffic laws. Here the biggest win, like on the sea, so it is our job to avoid incoming traffic, merging buses, trucks on the wrong side of the road. Our goal is to visit the Stupa, on top of a hill, it also requires us to do a bit of off-road, a good way to get to know the bikes. We get some mechanical problems (I lost my exhaust pipe), and are forced to shorten the ride. This was calculated, better to discover problems now, than tomorrow on the road. Once back at the hotel, we go to the swimming pool, wash our clothes, and finally go eat dinner. I do a small digestive walk with Pierre before going to sleep ready for the next day.
