Here's a blow-by-blow account of the unforgettable experience. There were nine of us eager beavers altogether, all from Pune, apart from the two organisers. Except for two professional bikers, the rest of us were total novices.

After last minute frantic shopping for everything from chapstick to long johns, departure day finally arrived. We left for Mumbai on December 24 and caught the Khushinagar Express to Gorakhpur from Kurla Terminus. Now, there's a valid reason for mentioning this train journey. From Dadar to Kurla by local turned out to be an expedition in itself. With our bulging sacks, getting into the local, and staying in, was an award-winning exercise in manoeuverability!

From Gorakhpur to Sunaoli, the town on the Indo-Nepal border, by bus proved to be fairly uneventful. Some more hours in another bus, and we were finally in Kathmandu, phew! But before we could yell Yahoo, we were told by our organisers that the campsite where we were supposed to go was not available any more since some construction had come up there. Hey, no sweat, we just trooped to a hotel in a place called Sundara.

The next day was spent exploring the nearby market places in Thamil and in sightseeing.

The day after that was when we did what we came to do - biking. After hiring our 18-speed bikes, (the luckier ones got 28-speed ones) from a local shop, we were off. We biked to a place called Nagarkot. We didn't really do `mountain biking' per se on that day, just covered a lot of distance, 70 kilometres roughly, not bad, huh, for novices?!

The next day dawned with all of us feeling mighty pleased with ourselves. On the itinerary was a 20-km ride to a place called Shivapuri. Piece of cake, we thought. A few kilometres on road and our euphoria was replaced by something akin to desperation laced with exhaustion. But when the going gets tough, the tough get going (I've always wanted to say that!). And that's just what we did. By the time we got back, we were pooped. Aches and pains were all around, sore butts were the common malady that assailed all of us.

Nevertheless, we troopers left for Pokhara the next day. The entire road from Kathmandu to Pokhara is alongside a river, it's quite beautiful.

We reached our campsite at Fewa lake in the evening. Setting up camp proved to be, well, not as challenging as we thought it would. The tents we had were quite nice. In no time, all our tents were assembled. We had a great view.

The next few days were spent in biking to Sarangkot, Mahendra Caves, Devi's Falls and Kahundanda. The Sarangkot trail proved to be the toughest. Shivapuri seemed like child's play compared to what we had to go through while biking to Sarangkot. But it was a lot of fun too, especially the downhilling. The rush that downhilling gives you is quite incomparable.

Mahendra Caves was a picnic spot we biked to. There was a small cave with lime formations inside that was quite nice. Devi's Falls was proved to be more impressive. Kahundanda was the last place. That was a nice trail, all the way uphill. We took our time then, not taxing ourselves, enjoying the scenic surroundings - that's one thing about Nepal I loved, no matter where you look, there's some snow-capped mountain, standing majestically, imposing yet beckoning.

The journey back home seemed longer, we couldn't wait to get back to aamche Pune. 'Cos, there's really no place like home.