The KD Chronicles

I did this Manali – Leh – Khardung La Cycling Expedition in September 2024 and have chronicled my overall ride experience in a separate post. There’s no doubt about it… every endurance cycling enthusiast should have this trip on their bucket list. There are some who are experienced enough and adventurous enough to do this ride self-supported. I am not one of them. I needed to do this as part of an organized group.

When I googled for adventure tour organizers that organize this ride, Bikat Adventures was one of the top search results. Their reviews were mixed, largely positive, but mainly around their trekking and mountaineering trips and rarely about the cycling expedition. In any case, I decided to take the plunge and register with them. I’ve reviewed Bikat Adventures’ performance on this ride for the benefit of others who are also trying to figure this out.

Summary

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About the Pre-ride Experience

Their website for this ride is well laid out. It is quite detailed, with a daily itinerary and even includes Garmin Connect links to a previous ride. It may have been nicer to have GPX files for the non-Garmin users. The process of online registration and payment was smooth.

Post registration, their coordination and communication was extremely poor. I tried calling their contact numbers to clarify queries. No one would pick calls or return calls. Finally, after getting hold of one of their coordinators, I was able to speak to him and clarify many doubts. But I left him with a few specific queries that he was to revert on, including the fact that I wanted my bike at Manali a day earlier for an acclimatization and familiarization ride. Repeated reminders later, I wasn’t getting a confirmation. Similarly, other queries on the common WhatsApp group were going unanswered. I understand from my fellow riders that some of their queries were even misleadingly answered.

I have seen trek organizers setting up briefing calls at least 2 weeks before the event. Bikat, on the other hand, scheduled a briefing call 4 days before the trek, on a Wednesday afternoon, giving us 2 hours’ notice. It was like they were expecting us to be sitting at home twiddling our thumbs, awaiting their call. I said I couldn’t attend and asked to reschedule it to later that day or to the next day. The answer was a curt “At other time our other meeting is scheduled. Team, please join”. Wow, it’s like they were the only ones with appointments. Anyway, I couldn’t attend the call, which was just as well because I was told later that it was a waste of time. In any case, what was the point in arranging a briefing call just 4 days before the start of an expedition!

On a positive note, we were informed that there were just 3 of us on the ride. Some agencies might have cancelled the ride for such a small group, but they didn’t.

I reached Manali. I was promised the bike on 20^th Sept evening after servicing. I coordinated with the trek leader and was asked to come at 6 PM. On reaching there, I found that the bike hadn’t yet been serviced. Further, the hydraulic brakes weren’t working. It was another 2 hours’ wait to get the bike. Is 2 hours really enough to service a bike for a major ride? When I took the bike for a ride the next morning, the chain fell off a couple of times, and I had to send it back for service again. I understood that my ride partners had a similar experience the next day with timeliness of their bike pickup.

On a scale of 1 to 5, I would rate them at 1 (very poor) on Pre-ride experience.

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The Ride Experience

Punctuality wasn’t their forte. On Day 1, we agreed to start at 8AM. At 8:30AM, there was still no sign of the crew. We set off on our own. The support vehicle caught up with us only at 12:30PM! Similarly, on Day 10, we were to start at 6 AM, but there was no crew in sight for another 30min. On interim days, punctuality was better since our only dependence on them was to get our tea, breakfast and dinner on time.

The overall itinerary was reasonably well spaced out. Like I mentioned in my main post, I would have liked to see rest / acclimatization days included. I would also have liked to see them recommend acclimatization at Manali before the ride. But unfortunately, this lack of provisioning for acclimatization seems to be the norm with most of the organizers.

A detailed daily ride briefing is something I would have liked. I am accustomed to the pre-dive briefs while SCUBA diving, where the leader runs you through the dive plan, topography, expected sightings, currents, etc before you hit the water. Here, the briefing was mainly about the next day’s start time, and a few words on the difficulty level. I would have appreciated a map, an elevation profile, a few words on what we expect to see on the ride, where we expect to take breaks, weather / wind information, etc.

The food arrangement was largely good. Breakfast was typically some Indian dish and a cereal. Evening snacks would be maggi or pakodas. Dinner included rotis, rice, some dal, and some vegetable dishes, followed by a nice dessert. All this was cooked fresh by the crew. Lunch was the only disappointment. The first day was some nice biryani. But after that, it was just cold and hard chapati-potato rolls. Very often, we sat in a roadside dhaba to eat this. Instead, it may just have been better to order some nice fresh food at the dhaba. Also, it would have been nicer to get the evening snack within an hour of the end of the ride, to help with recovery. But this was typically served only about 5 PM, after a rest break, because the crew also reached the camp site in the support vehicle along with us. During the ride we were served delicious Himalayan apples and bananas, and sometimes even a chocolate bar and fruit juice.

Regarding water, I would have preferred less optimism from the crew on water quality. They collected fresh spring water for our use. Sure, if all went well, pure spring water would be available and could be drunk without treatment. But as a backup, especially since water sources had started to freeze, water purification tablets should have been a standard part of their kit. And in any case, a stray case of water pollution in the spring water is all that is needed to put paid to a perfectly good holiday plan. Water treatment is not too much to ask for.

The ride support was a disappointment. They were supposed to have one camp vehicle and another support vehicle. This would have enabled the camp vehicle to wind down the camp, sort out food arrangements for lunch, and reach the destination in advance to get things ready for our arrival, including refreshments. But I’m guessing that since we were a sub-optimally sized group, the camp and support vehicles were clubbed into one. This meant that we had no support vehicle to back us up for the first couple of hours since the camp vehicle was still winding down the camp site. We also expected the support vehicle to hover somewhere close to us during the ride. But that “support mentality” was missing in that crew since they were primarily a camp crew. We invariably met the vehicle only twice or thrice during the ride, for a pre-lunch snack, for lunch and maybe once more in between. When they crossed us, they just zoomed past, without asking if we needed anything. While I can understand that the support vehicle can’t be trailing us slowly due to the nature of the roads, I would have expected them to stop a little bit ahead, await our crossing, move a bit ahead again after a while, check-in on us, and so on. There were several times that my chain slipped, and I had to fix it for myself. Sure, I could do that, but what if it was something more serious or for that matter, something simple like a flat?

That also brings me to the ride guidance. I expect that the guide rides with the group, provides support where needed, narrates on-route trivia, and points out and comments on landmarks. In our case, the guide was invariably riding up ahead, and we were on our own. Very often, one of the camp crew (cook or helper) was riding with us, not the trek leader. If one of us was suffering, he wouldn’t know until he returned looking for us or until one of us hitched a passing motorized ride to alert him up ahead. We rode past landmarks or wildlife and were left to figure those out for ourselves. Very often, we would have made our own regular snack stop, and would later find that the support vehicle and guide were just a short distance ahead awaiting with their stock of snacks. So that would be two stops in quick succession and two rounds of snacks too close together, both avoidable.

Regarding accommodation, the outdoor camp was top class. Tents and sleeping bags were excellent quality, as was the rest of the outdoor camping setup. A portable commode seat would have been nice to have in the toilet camp. Crew members were friendly and cordial, and always ready to help. Where we had homestay / hotel accommodation, this was also first rate. Except for the dormitory at Debring, with the Buddhist family, the other dormitories at Zing Zing Bar and Whisky Nala were substandard. I would rather have had a camp setup at those locations. And at Lato, I couldn’t understand the need to set up camp in the garden of a perfectly good homestay.

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My Overall Impression

On a scale of 1 to 5, I would rate Bikat at 3 for this expedition. In this rating, I have factored in that this is meant to be an outdoor adventure, and not a luxury cruise. So, some of the expected hardship hasn’t impacted the rating. Their main gaps are around the organization of their ride support and the pre-ride customer support.