The title is pure click-bait. Well, now that you have started, carry on reading to find out the little truth inside the title.
Because of bad planning on my part, I landed up at Dehradun on a work trip, in the middle of Dussehra holidays. Not having too much to do, called up my friend Soumya Prasad, and asked her for help in arranging a cycle. Nitin Shreshta, one of the many Doonites that Soumya calls her friends, was visiting Dehradun from Ladakh, where he mans the China border. Nitin loaned out his Trek for the ride.
In the tour planning session, my first choice was Dhanaulti, a town 57 km ahead of Mussoorie. Google maps showed the existence of a 36 km direct route from Dehradun to Dhanaulti via Chakrata. As we chatted over some of Soumya’s lovely homebrew litchi wine, both the Dehradun denizens advised against it. I learnt later on that is a pony trail, good for trekking, but not too much else. So the decision was made to head to Mussoorie. Having visited Mussoorie only a few months ago, visiting Mall road did not catch my fancy. So it was decided to bypass Mussoorie town and reach Hathipaon.
Had decided to start at the crack of dawn from my hotel near the Dehradun Railway station. As with all plans, this one too saw delay. Left the hotel around 0630 hrs – and headed towards to sabzi mandi to stock up on fruits for the trip. Got tempted by a thela walla at Ghantaghar who was making parathas. Had one to get some calories in reserve for the road.
The climb started literally from Clock Tower. Off late, I have been focussing on cadence – and don’t hesitate in gearing down to maintain the rpm. The gradient increased after I crossed Dehradun Zoo, and I found that the bike’s gears refused to go beyond the 2-5 combo, With a little bit of cajoling could get the shifter to go to 1-4 – and that was it. Has to stay with that combination till the end of the climb. Moral of the story: go through a bike checklist before the start of any ride.
Met with 3 cyclists en route. One rode with me for the first 5 km of the ride. He was a good rider, my age, but liked his silence. So could only gather that his first love is walking – and his average walking speed of 8 kmph rivals the average I could achieve in my climb. He cycles only 3-4 times a month – and it took some huffing and puffing to keep pace with him. A few more km into the ride, was overtaken by a young man who was off the saddle – and the relative speed was such that he was out of sight in a matter of minutes.
The climb on the relatively busy Dehradun Mussoorie road was not too much fun. The road is wide enough, so you don’t get pushed around by cars. But it does get a wee scary when a bus or a truck passes by. You appreciate the wind stream that follows and gives you that little push uphill, but then most times the valley is to your left, so you don’t want a push in that direction. What a cyclist appreciates is roads with less traffic, especially on the uphill. And it does not then matter if they are a bit narrower.
And that’s the road that I got for the last 10 km of my ride as I hit the 4 km milestone to Mussoorie. You take a left there and hit the Hathipao road – and two things happen at the same time. You lose traffic – and mama mia, the gradient also peters out. Additional manna from heaven was the clouds that started cooling things down. To quote Shah Jahan: Gar firdaus bar-rue zamin ast, hami asto, hamin asto, hamin ast
Reached Hathipao at 1230 hrs. The board there indicated altitude of 2093 m above MSL. Dehradun is 637 m above MSL. So had climbed 1.5 km in a 36 km ride – an average gradient of 4 %. Had a VFM gobi paratha with some achar for 40 bucks at Hathipaon. (The standard menu offered it with butter and curd, both on my negative list.)
On any cycling trip, the fun is when you combine it with tourism. And time to let the title secret out of the bag. Was attracted by a board that said ‘George Everest Calligraphy museum, 1.5 km ahead’. Most of my writing happens on the keyboard and my handwriting definitely could do with some improvement. So I cycled on. In hindsight, should have parked my cycle and just walked to Monsieur Everest’s house. But then how could I claim to have cycled to Everest J
Sir George, after whom the peak is named, wasn’t the guy who first surveyed that part. Here is a short excerpt from an article in Scroll that tells the story:
The Trigonometrical Survey had been instituted in 1802 by the East India Company to survey scientifically the entire Indian subcontinent. Initially, it was thought that India could be surveyed in five years: in reality, it was to take 70. From 1823, the survey was under the superintendence of George Everest, and he appointed Waugh to the service. When Everest retired in 1843, he nominated his protégé to succeed him.
By the late 1830s, the Great Trigonometrical Survey reached the Himalayan region. Foreigners were not allowed to enter Nepal, so observations were taken from Terai. By 1847, Waugh and his team had noted that a mountain known as “Peak B” appeared higher than Kangchenjunga, then thought to be the “highest mountain in the world”.
Calculations and observations continued, with the mountain rechristened “Peak XV”. By 1852, the survey’s talented mathematician or “Chief Computer” Radhanath Sikdar established beyond doubt that the peak was indeed the highest mountain. It was normal for the survey to use local names as far as possible when naming peaks.
In this instance, Waugh stated, “But here is a mountain, most probably the highest in the world, without any local name that we can discover, or whose native appellation, if it has any, will not very likely be ascertained before we are allowed to penetrate into Nepaul and to approach close to this stupendous snowy mass”.
He went on to suggest “Mount Everest” as a suitable epithet, a name that was finally confirmed by the Royal Geographical Society in 1865.
The Brit big bosses loved places with good weather – Pune, Simla, Dehradun. So even today, the Surveyor General’s office is located in Dehradun. (For non climatic political reasons, ONGC also has its head office to Dehradun, though most of the top management sits in Noida.) Monsieur Everest had this lovely cottage on the outskirts of Mussoorie – near the hamlet of Hathipao (Elephant’s foot) You navigate a lovely paved road to get to the cottage. Thankfully, though cars can go up, very few are allowed to. The security guy was kind enough to let the cycle pass through. The gradient was too high for the cycle, so walked up with cycle in hand.
Once you reach the scenic Everest house, you can hyper-pollute with the helicopter joy rides on offer. And coming very soon, gyrocopters and hot air balloon rides too. I wonder what the energy consumption would be for a hot air balloon for a one hour journey. The average hot air balloon has a volume of 77,000 cu ft. And carries 4 people including a pilot. And consumes about 30 gallons per one hour ride. Now each gallon weighs 1.86 kg. So that would be about 55 kg of fuel burn. There are 14 kWh in every kg. That’s about 770 kWh. Can do a full charge in my Tata Tigor EV thirty times in that kind of energy!
But there is one option of going higher, which does not cost that kind of energy. You can continue walking another km from the bungalow and admire the view from the peak. This is where I met cyclist no 3 on his Montra. He too had come from Dehradun – and wanted to take the cycle all the way to the top for an instragrammable moment at the peak. Tried to dissuade him, but then what is youth all about!
The path is wide at most times but it does narrow down. Thanks to the clouds, there was no chance of getting vertigo, but then you couldn’t get the views either. I missed a left turn, and meandered around the peak. Realised that the peak was only 5 minutes away. But saw a traffic jam forming – and was reminded of the jam on the real Everest, where many folks died just waiting. Decided to end the trip at Everest cafe with a cup of herbal tea.
Started the return journey around 1430 hrs. It was a literal joyride. In the entire 35 km downhill ride, I would have pedalled for hardly 5 km. Most bikers on the Mussorie Doon road do a great environmental service by switching off their vehicles and coasting down. So it was nice to overtake Bullets on the way down. Soumya ji tells me that in the days of the Ambassador taxis, this would be standard practice for the cabbies too. But with assisted brakes and steering, this is not something modern cars can do.
Reached Dehradun Ghanta ghar at 1630 hrs. In time for a very early dinner at Chetan Puri. I was the last customer – they shut shop around that time. Had their last puri to celebrate the end of the journey. Understood the law of diminishing marginal utility as I gobbled down the third puri. After a long ride, done without too much of practice, the body’s metabolic rate takes time to come down. So you end up feeling feverish, but a night’s sleep gets the temperatures back to normal. Had a shoulder ache this time around. Probably sitting on the saddle with no leg movement led to that. Next time, I should act out the pedalling on the downhill and see if that helps. On a philosophical note, I wonder why is there no satisfaction in finishing 90% of a climb to a summit and returning back? This is a question that has been bothering me since 2007, when I cycled up to South Pullu, but did not go on to Khardungla. So my bucket list of having cycled to the highest motorable road in the world remains un-ticked. Am told that the Indian army has made another road which beats Khardungla’s altitude. Should I add that to the bucket-list?