5 things not to do when riding in the Himalayas

The Himalayas are a bucket-list destination for riders (and non-riders) the world over, a pinnacle of the splendor of nature. Here, the scenery varies from high-altitude desert to abundant rhododendron forests, with spectacular forested gorges rising to skylines of snow-capped peaks.

The Himalayas are home to almost 50 million people and span Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, China, Nepal, and Bhutan in a 1,550-mile-long (2,500-km) arc. It’s a region unlike any other, with green, yak-dotted pastures and high passes festooned with colorful prayer flags, and is home to red pandas and snow leopards.

And the roads! Those endless mountain roads promise unforgettable adventures for motorcyclists, who have a unique opportunity to be one with the environment on nothing but two wheels.

Let’s be honest: it’s also ludicrously dangerous – all the merry chaos of subcontinental traffic, plus extreme weather, thin air, wildly varied road surfaces, limited access to emergency services, an abundance of opportunities to drop off sheer cliffs, and some outrageous scenery to take people’s attention off the road.

I’ve personally spent many summers and thousands of miles riding in the Indian Himalayas. The experience has been incredibly rich, but frequently humbling. Mistakes? I’ve made a few; if it’s true that we learn from our mistakes, I am a well-educated man.

So, I’ve compiled a list of five mistakes that I’ve personally made while riding in the Himalayas – so that you don’t have to. Here are the top 5 things you shouldn’t do while riding in the Himalayas yourself.

1. Not letting your body adjust

You’re not in Kansas anymore – this is a very different environment from what most of us are used to. You’re quite high up in altitude, the temperatures can be extreme, the weather often changes by the minute and you’ve got to suck in a lot more air and put in more effort to take in your normal amount of oxygen.

So however you arrive – be it on a flight, a bike, or for the truly brave, riding a public bus – once you do finally reach your hotel, take a day or two to rest, acclimate, and recharge before you go about exploring.

If you don’t, well … I’ll be exhibit A here. Having left my bike back at the B&B with a view to doing some shopping, I’d decided to take a nice, relaxing bus ride into a rather famous hamlet called Kasol in the Himalayas. As is typical in India, the bus was jam-packed with fragrant humanity, and I was squeezed into an aisle holding on for dear life as the bus lurched its way through town.

A few minutes into the bus ride I started feeling dizzy. In no time, my head started spinning and I felt the nausea starting to rise. Considering myself a seasoned traveller, my ego kept me from alerting those around me. And boy, did I learn a lesson. One sharp hairpin turn later, I was scrambling over my fellow passengers’ laps for the nearest window, to let loose a theatrically loud torrent of vomit.

Safe to say, this caused no end of merriment at my expense – from pretty Himalayan girls and small children to the elderly, everyone else on board had a grand old laugh as I sat there wondering if my face was closer to red or green. Boy, did I learn a lesson …

When traveling in high-altitude areas, taking a few days to acclimate helps your body adapt to the decreased oxygen levels and lower air pressure. It helps you avoid altitude sickness and makes it less likely you’ll barf your way through your trip. To add to that, eat light, and don’t hog your breakfast like it’s the last meal of your life. That bus ride taught me well.

2. Not keeping yourself hydrated

The main threat to motorcycle riders is fatigue, regardless of where you’re riding. In the Himalayas, where the massive landscape extends for thousands of miles, it’s very easy to lose track of time, and forget to hydrate.

Like the time I was riding to a small settlement called Mori, on the banks of the Tons River in Uttarakhand, a Himalayan state in northern India. It had been a long, hard day in the saddle, the sun was harsh and relentless, and by midday, my mind was getting hazy and I felt slightly off my game. By mid-afternoon, a sense of dramatic exhaustion was creeping through my whole body – to the point that I simply wanted to get off the bike and lay down under some shade … And throw up.

It took me a while to work out why – I was severely dehydrated. It was a bit of a surprise to me considering I’d made sure to consistently sip some water each time I took a pit stop. But a few sips of water every now and then don’t go far under a harsh sun at high elevations.

So since then, I’ve made sure to ride with a hydration bag over my shoulders that I can sip constantly while riding, and I make sure to keep rehydration salts handy too. Up in the mountains is no place to be off your game!

3. Solely relying on GPS navigation

We are children of a digital age, and we sleep soundly knowing that wherever we want to go, our phones can always tell us exactly how to get there.

Except when cellular service is sparse … Say, in an area that’s highly prone to landslides and road blockages, or where passes frequently need to be shut down due to snow in the colder months.

Earlier this year, I was riding in a less-explored Himalayan belt. It was well past dark, and I still had to get into Arunachal Pradesh, one of the major Himalayan states in northeastern India.

If you’ve ever been in the subcontinent, you’ll know how erratic the mobile networks can be here. Sure enough, I lost all cell coverage by the time I had to start ascending the tricky sections of a border check post that appeared to have been hit by a landslide. Most of the road signage was rendered useless, and there were precious few locals out at this hour.

I remember working my way through the slick muck up one tricky section, only to realize I was on the wrong path and I’d have to get back down. It took a good 20 minutes to turn my bike around in all the slush, slipping and sliding my way down on headlight vision alone. By the time I eventually found the check post, I was out of breath, my wheels were caked in mud and slipping all over the place, and I must’ve looked like I’d crawled out of a lagoon.

So instead of riding deeper into the night in an unfamiliar territory, I parked my bike at the back of the police check post, pitched my tent, pulled out my sleeping bag, and called it a night. Too tired to eat and too freezing cold to sleep, I spent most of the night thinking how much I’d give to be sandwiched between two warm yaks.

But I’m glad that a lesson was learned that day. So by all means, keep Google Maps open on your phone in the background, but I’d suggest you also get a detailed physical map of the area you’re riding in, and scribble down a rough idea of the route you want to take.

And then, most importantly, consult the low-tech Himalayan GPS system: every now and then, stop and ask some locals if you’re going the right way. They’re by far the best source of information – and will often know about route closures long before the internet does.

In my experience, not only will they generously pass on that information to you, but they’ll also help you understand alternate routes and options as well. And as long as you’ve got that physical map and a pen, language doesn’t need to be a barrier.

4. Disregarding the uniquely subcontinental traffic conditions

The Himalayan region is incomprehensibly vast, but don’t expect to cover huge distances quickly. Normal travel time rules of thumb go out the window; a distance of about 100-125 miles (160-200 km) can easily take six or seven hours.

And that’s without extra complications like road closures, weather events forcing you to stop and shelter, bike problems … Not to mention the fact that you’ll want to make a fair amount of stops to grab some pictures or take in the staggering views. Which is kinda the whole point, right?

And then there’s the baseline chaos of Indian traffic to contend with. You’ve heard about it; cows in the street, buses overtaking buses overtaking scooters on blind cliffside hairpins, and the kind of threat-rich motorcycling environment you tend to get when there are 1.4 billion people all acting according to their own priorities.

It caught me out once, badly enough to make me consider giving up riding on two wheels forever. I was on my way to Meghalaya, another beautiful little Himalayan state in the northeastern part of India. My girlfriend sat behind me on my trusty Enfield Himalayan as we set off on a month-long adventure across India.

We were a few days into our journey, and cruising down Asian Highway 2, I felt I had gotten acquainted with the conditions and into a comfortable and confident rhythm. It was a two-lane highway, without a proper barricade in between. That meant village folk, animals, bullock carts, rickshaws, you name it, were free to cross the road at any time.

I don’t know if it was a moment of inattention, whether I missed a visual hint or simply had it coming, but in an instant, I saw a random old fellow in front of me, crossing over from the opposite lane into mine. He sure didn’t see me – he was looking back and waving at someone. I hit the brakes, I hit the horn, and a split second later, I hit the old bloke himself, skittling him and launching my girlfriend and I off the bike.

Sliding down the road, I remember briefly locking eyes with my girlfriend as we skidded and bounced along the tarmac. By the look on her face, I was done for.

But more than myself, I was worried about the damn guy we’d hit. A few hours later, I was sat, bruised and battered, at a desk in a police station explaining my plight. Thankfully, both my girl and I escaped with a few minor injuries. The old fellow, too, recovered from the accident, although it took him a few months. It was a torrid couple of days for me, trying to navigate between getting my bike repaired, taking care of our injuries, and worrying about that man in the hospital.

Everyone who saw that accident unfold knew the old bloke was at fault. After all, there wasn’t a stop sign, or a pedestrian crossing and I was within the permissible speed limit.

But motorcycle accidents are like wars; it doesn’t matter who’s right, as much as it matters who’s left. And there’s a saying here in India – in a road mishap, the blame goes to whoever’s got the more expensive vehicle.

So, take it easy – a lot easier than you might cruising the blacktop in the United States. Give yourself extra space on the road where you can keep yourself dialed in mentally, and expect the unexpected.

5. Forgetting the tool kit

The number one mistake you don’t want to be making while riding in the Himalayas is being underprepared – an area I’ve got plenty of experience with, be it shivering in the saddle because I didn’t bring warm enough clothes, or wandering the streets of some unfamiliar town for hours, hunting for a spare throttle cable that would easily have fit in my luggage.

To some extent, it’s not an adventure if you roll up fully prepared. But taking off into the remote Himalayas without a tool kit is just bonkers … As I discovered on my first-ever solo motorcycle adventure.

I was full of confidence and high on life, at the crescendo of a surreal couple of weeks in the mountains, when I felt a squirrelly, flappy sensation in the back wheel. Yep, a simple flat tire – adventure riding 101. But at the time, I was a clueless, tool-less noob with no experience or gear to help me fix a small problem like a puncture.

So, I had to leave my bike on the side of the road and go looking for help on foot. I lucked out; I only had to walk a few miles before I found a mechanic, but it was still an hour and a half hiking in boots that weren’t made for walkin’ – and all the while I was freaking out, picturing my bike and my luggage, deserted on that random stretch of road, ripe for a good ransacking if the wrong character came past.

As soon as I got the bike fixed and back on the road, I went and bought the beginnings of what’s now my touring tool kit – starting out with just enough tools and spares to fix small issues like punctured tires, broken cables, and so on. I’ll never be a full-blown mechanic, but learning basic motorcycle maintenance and not being afraid of a spanner has served me well ever since.

In any case, if you’re planning to rent a bike here in India, you’d best know enough to do a thorough inspection of the bike. It’s pretty common to be handed the keys to a beaten-up old Royal Enfield, with any of a thousand problems waiting to transform themselves into serious situations as soon as you’re sufficiently far from town. Carry a basic tool kit with useful spares and don’t be shy about getting your hands dirty!

There’s plenty more where these mistakes came from. God knows I love me a good mistake in the Himalayas, and I’m proud to say I can point at most of the gray hairs I’ve got and tell you which one came from which rookie error.

But we live – if we’re lucky – and we learn, and most of the time, there’s no place I’d rather be than out in those stark, majestic mountains making some new mistakes, revisiting some old favorite stuff-ups, and coming home with a fresh batch of lessons from the Himalayas. I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride as much as I have!