Denise Roman

Cycling nirvana a magical adventure
Denise Roman, Special to North Shore News
Published: Sunday, June 14, 2009
The grin on my face is as wide as the Bhutanese suspension bridge I’m flying across is long. And it defies all logic.
I’m terrified of heights and way out of my comfort zone. But I’m cycling in Bhutan, the Land of the Thunder Dragon, a wonderful, welcoming place in the Himalayas and everything in life feels possible.
Two of my cycling buddies have just flown across the nearly 400-metre span, the longest suspension bridge in the country. It bridges the banks of the north-south running Punakha Chu River, just north of Punakha Dzong, in central Bhutan.
I’m competitive enough to bury my fear and give chase. A heart-rate monitor would have exploded capturing my peaked anxiety. In a what-the-hell kind of moment I let her rip. Brilliant, unadulterated, fall sunshine bears witness to my mania before bouncing off the swollen, rippled river waters God knows how far below. The wheels of my mountain bike whir across the steel slats and keep rhythm to the mantra in my head, “Don’t look down, just pedal, don’t look down, just pedal.”
I’m part of a group of 13 cyclists on the adventure of a lifetime — eight days of cycling in Bhutan, where seeing a bike is almost as rare as sighting a Black-necked crane.
Walking is a primary means of transportation, usually on trails shared by mule and across suspension bridges like this one that link valleys and people throughout the country. Buses, cars and four wheel drives fill roadways closer to the towns of Paro and Thimphu, the capital.
We started our trip in the Paro Valley. After two days of acclimatizing by hiking 900 metres up to the Tiger’s Nest Monastery and peddling up-valley to the ruins of the Drukgyel Dzong, we begin cycling in earnest with the biggest climb of the trip, a 1,700-metre ascent over 36 kilometres to Chele la, the highest road pass in the country at 3,982 metres.
Our guides, Kesang and Rinzin, ride with us. Ugyen drives the sag wagon. Kesang rates this climb, with multiple switch backs through blue pine forest, “gentle but endless.”
About one third of the way up, the lead truck stops for “tea coffee”, the quintessential Bhutanese biker’s break. Cookies and the sugar sweet lemon tea give me the lift I need to finish the climb.
Road markers, easily mistaken for tombstones, mark off the distance. Four kilometres from the summit the skies open to thunder, lightening, rain and hail. A dramatic end to an epic climb.
I’m in the front group. We’re soaked, but riding steady. The sweep bus picks up the rest of the gang, meets us at the top and together we decide the slick, windy descent to the Haa Valley below will be too long, too cold and too risky to ride that late in the day. Besides the warmth and camaraderie of the bus seduces us all.
We stay in the Haa Valley over night. Our hotel is clean, basic and authentically Bhutanese, just not the plush experience of the five-star Zhiwaling that we began our trip in.
We dubbed the bathroom the morgue. It was one large white tiled room with a shower head poking out the wall over a slab of wood on the floor to stand on. Some of us were lucky enough to have some hot water to shower while others had a bone chilling experience washing off the day’s sweat. We learned that a clothes dryer in Bhutan is two trees and a rope and sunshine dependent. Either that or timed sessions on the radiator.