Himalayas on a mountain bike.

So I'm leaving Australia in mid July, and need to be back in the UK by the end of August. I've decided to fill the gap in with a bit of mountain-bike touring in the Himalayas.
I'm still in the planning stages at the moment, but basically I'm going to fly in to Kathmandu, with my bike, a large saddle bag containing a sleeping bag and lightweight tent, and a 30L evoc tour backpack for the other stuff I'll need.
I'm going to ride, unsupported, to Srinagar, in Kashmir, and will have to cover atleast 60km a day, riding a 140mm travel trail bike on sketchy singletrack and unsealed roads, up and down mountains, and through valleys.
I was originally planning on riding my Ibis Mojo, but decided it might not be a reliable enough rig, if I'm going to be in the middle of nowhere, potentially 100s of km from help. So I am currently building up an S-Works Stumpjumper (2012 model with 26" wheels) to do the job. My primary consideration for every component on the bike is reliability, and secondarily weight. For example, I have replaced my Formula ORO brakes with BB7s and Ultimate levers, as they are much less delicate, and easier to repair, with fewer spare parts needed. I have also swapped the carbon seatpost for a much sturdier Thomson one, and have kitted it out with a new X9 2x10 groupset, and am running my bombproof mavic 819s on Pro2 hubs.
I will keep this thread updated with photos and information on the trip, as things progress, including kit and equipment, and eventually pictures from the trip!
If anyone has any questions, please feel free to ask.

well you've got the parts sorted nice and tough kit

here is a link to a trip a friend of mine made
http://www.bootsnall.com/articles/08-08/cycling-in-shangri-la-bicycle-misadventures-on.html

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Awesome - Nepal is an amazing place!
Went trekking there a couple of years ago: http://www.flickr.com/photos/danburbridge/sets/72157616752912478/

Be aware that any maps probably bear very little resemblance to real life and that the standard of driving is horrific,

I think it may also be monsoon season...

Yes it will be monsoon season, which means your views of the amazing mountains will be limited. You'll be at the bottom of the driving food chain on a bike as well, I'd expect to be run off the road fairly often. Although nepal is utterly beautiful and the people, in my experience at least, are friendly and wonderful.

Have you checked that the border you want to use takes foreigners?

I have contact that may be able to offer some advice. He has a sort of "business" where he takes rich people on bike rides down mountains and makes a pretty film of it.

Can recommend this book:
http://www.himalayabybike.com/
which covers some of that area, though is probably more road based than you're intending.
(I did a tour round Sikkim/West Bengal based on this book).

And it is really important to check which borders you're allowed through - some don't allow non-Indians/Nepalis to cross. On the West Bengal side the only usable one is in a pretty inconvenient place if you're cycling.

Thanks for all the advice. All very useful. I will look into the border situation, and adjust routes accordingly.

Got my bike built up last night, and took it for a test ride today. Pretty happy with it, and I think it will handle anything this trip might throw at it. I am going to swap the shock for a modified RP23, with pedal-platform, and no brain. This should be much more reliable. Rode about 45km of steep climbs and DH descents today, with my bag on (but no saddle bag), to get an idea of what it's going to be like.

It's not your typical touring bike!

rear suss ?
an extra thing that might go wrong and finding spare parts in the himalaya's might be tricky

have you got lock outs for both ends ? you might end up wasting a lot of energy on up / down motion rather than horzontal motion ! would be nice to have the option to go un-suspended ?

Yeah. I'm going to swap the rear shock out for an RP23, which is pretty bombproof, and has pro-pedal. In all the time I've worked as a bike mechanic, and all the riding I've done, I've never seen one die (I have one on my Ibis already). It's currently setup with a brain, so you lose virtually no pedalling energy into the shock. It is fully locked-out, until you hit a bump, and an inertia-valve opens, allowing the shock to activate. However, I see these coming back for warranty on a weekly basis (I'm a mechanic at a Specialized concept store), so woudn't be happy relying on one in the middle of nowhere.
The reason I'm using a Pike up-front, is for reliability too. A coil fork is much less likely to implode than dual air, so it's worth the weight penalty, for a trip like this. The way it feels suits the bike too, and it winds down from 140mm to 95mm, which makes technical climbing much nicer.
For the places I'm going, and the type of riding I'm going to be doing (I am going to be on the road as little as possible, and shredding all the gnar I can find), a hardtail wouldn't cut it. This bike comes in at under 13kg (with pedals), and it pedals uphill better than any other 140mm travel trail bike I've ridden!

Sounds good on the bike front. A lot of the trials we were on would be unridable, but it really depends where you are - on the more touristy routes you could get away with a CX bike for large parts of it.

Get hold of some decent anti-biotics ( ciprofloxacin is what we took with us and came in handy....) too if you can.

Where abouts were you trekking? Were you on specific walking trails? Any tips/advice would be awesome.

Good advice with the antibiotics. I always carry an emergency course, when I'm doing this kind of thing. I got a pretty nasty blood infection, sailing around the Pacific last year. Would have been much more serious if I didn't have them.

We were trekking In the Ganesh Himal,

Walking on local tracks mostly - as its not a typical tourist route, so just the routes that villagers might take to get from one village to another or to pastures etc. These varied wildly - tending to be pretty good when close to mettalled roads to barely recognisable "tracks" that involved quite a bit of climbing/scrambling to negotiate.

One thing that is very important to be aware of is AMS (acute mountain sickness - ie "altitute sickness"), especially if you are planning on travelling on your own, the symptoms can be hard to spot yourself - and are often more evident to others.
Just walking/climbing gets harder above 2500-3000m and tough at 4000m (the air is very noticably thinner) and I believe that on a bike the effects are generally noticed lower than when walking.

The weather is often very changeable, particularly at altitude - we had to re-route due to snowfall at ~4000m (despite it being in the 30's in the valleys) - storms can come in very hard and with little warning.

Sorry if all this is sounding a bit scary - just wanting to make sure you are safe - It is an amazing place with scenery second to none and super friendly.

Namaste!

Thank you very much. All very helpful.
What time of year were you there? Did it only rain in the valleys, or did you get wet at higher altitudes too? I might send you a PM with a few questions, if you don't mind?
I've been looking through your flickr album. Some great photos there. Looks like it was an amazing trip?!

Do feel free to pm me.

We were there in March/April - had a mixture of weather - generally worse weather the higher we were - rain and snow at higher altittudes - the valleys/KTM was hot and dusty.
The rain tending to come in hard and (fairly) short lived, mostly as storms with some spectacular thunder and lightning.

Indeed it was an amazing trip - seriously hardwork and by no means a "relaxing" holiday, but so worth it.

Dawn til Dusk - Mountain Bike Nepal on Vimeo

The guy who made that vid is the friend of a friend I mentioned who takes people to Nepal and makes films of them riding. Shoot him a question, nice enough chap.