4 Months 4000km 14-8000 meter peaks

© 2024 Tofisch & Partner The destination of my first trip was Asia. Together with Tilmann Waldthaler we prepared us nearly two month for this journey. Our goal was the surrounding of all 14 eight thousand meter peaks. We were expecting 4000km, 18 passes of the height between 1800m and 5600m, and all this in 4 month.

After 9 hours flight we landed in Kathmandu. The automatic doors at the airport were the door in a new world for me.

I did a step and already lots of Nepalese people surrounded me and my equipment and wanted to carry my things. At least we reached a taxi which brought us in a hotel. We just stayed a few days in Kathmandu preparing us and our equipment for our expedition.

Improvisation, or better saying doing the best of a bad situation is basically on a trip like this. You have to make lots of even if you just have very less. Especially considering the equipment, food informations or the language.

As example I'd like to tell you about China. I didn't imagine the difficulty of communication somewhere you don't know the language and the writing. Even eating is a problem, because you don't know what you get on your dish because the Chinese people eat everything what swims, runs, crows and creeps. But we found a solution: we asked an English speaking Chinese man to write down on a piece of paper our best dishes so we were able to order in a restaurant and to eat.

Water is also a very present subject when you're on the road. In the east of India we got in a terrible heat. 52° in the shadow. The bikes where so hot we couldn't even try to pedal. Our daily water consummation was by the 15l drinkable water and sometimes it was very difficult to find such a lot of it.

© 2024 Tofisch & Partner Except in Tibet we didn't have any problems with the food. The Indian kitchen is very extensive and you can get it nearly everywhere. But in Tibet we couldn't carry such a lot of stuff with us, because the distances were to far. Our only solution were muesli-bars from the Chinese army. They tasted like 20 packets of butter cookies and they were quiet dry but the important was that they had 8500kj. (Same to 20 yoghurt and 10 power bars).

The landscape of Tibet is nearly indescribable. The dimensions are much more wider than in the Alps. The eight thousand meter peaks, we've seen on the way from Lhasa to Kathmandu, were really gigantic. The tibetan plateaus are a wonderful scenery with its different colors, and it was fascinating to pass through with our bikes. Often Tibetan people showed us how to live in, from and with nature they learned it already as a child.

The route of the surrounding of the 14 eight thousand meter peaks was from Kathmandu down to Varanasi, on to the east to Kajuraho. Some of you may know the erotical temples of the early Indian culture, the Taj Mahal in Agra, the palace of the winds in Jaipur and the main town of India Delhi. Starting there again we went up the mountains of Ladak. The way Srinagar Leh Manali is one of the highest roads of the world. From Leh we drive on the Kardung La (Pass with 5600m). Then we biked from Manali to Amritsar, where we passed the frontier to Pakistan and reached Islamabad. We drived over the Karakorum Highway to Kashgar (China) and went along to Chengdu. There we prepared us for the last 1000km from Lhasa to Kathmandu.