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Cycling across Bhutan
Most mountain biking in Bhutan is done along the West-East highway and parts of it are is such a bad state that a mountain bike is definitely more suitable than any kind of road bike, although a few road workers ply parts of the highway on big gearless Indian Hero's.
One may wonder why anyone would want to cycle all the way from West to East across Bhutan. Possibly because the road is there, to boast about having done it or because you want to write about biking in Bhutan. But some people pay real money, and a lot of it, to suffer on Bhutan's West-East road. East-West cycling across Bhutan is hardly done. One crazy Dutchman once set out on a East-West trip. Although he crashed in the descent from Mongar, he survived the 3000 m climb to Thrumshingla, only to be defeated by a local villager in Ura who took his bike for a nightly joyride and totally broke off the rear-derailleur.
For those masochists among you who want to try this trip, I have a word of warning: just from Simtokha to Trashigang you are looking at some 9500m of climbing. If you really want to try it in the other direction it's almost 11,000 m. The good news is that the actual distance nowadays is 10 km less than the road markers indicate, thus only 535 km minus a few shortcuts that DOR is producing to marginally reduce travel times. If you are still convinced that this will make you happy, have a look at the graph. And if that does not frighten you, have a good trip and hope your brake cables don't break.
Sources: distances measured by bike computer, elevations by gps some distances and elevations based on Lonely Planet guide to Bhutan/Stan Armington
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info@bhutanmtb.com
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