Royal Mountain Travel Magazine Royal Mountain Travel Magazine Issue 3 | Page 9

Cycling in Bhutan by Piet van der Poel Piet cycling past school kids. Photo: Piet van der Poel. Back in 1993 when I first arrived in Bhutan, bicycles were rare in the capital Thimphu and mostly belonged to expatriates. More bicycles, mainly ridden by Indians, were circulating in the flatter border towns in the south. In Thimphu you could not buy bicycles or spare parts and if your bike needed to be fixed you had a problem if you could not do it yourself. The first known bicycle in Thimphu was a Hong Kong made Raleigh racing bike, imported around 1971 by Prince Namgyel, then Minister of Trade, Industry and Forests, who wanted to set a good example and cycle to work. His first trials at cycling failed miserably. He asked the advice of Fritz Maurer, then a development worker in Gogona, who noticed that the bicycle had been assembled ‘upside down’, or at least some parts of it. After fixing it, he demonstrated the art of cycling and then cycled to Phuentsholing and back. The first known bicycle in Thimphu was a Hong Kong made Raleigh racing bike, imported around 1971 by Prince Namgyel, then Minister of Trade, Industry and Forests, who wanted to set a good example and cycle to work. In those days, drivers had tremendous respect for bicycles on the road and usually would pull over to let Fritz pass. Villagers would just gaze in disbelief. However, by the early 1990’s respect for bicycles, especially among truck drivers, had vanished and getting them to let you pass on a down-hill run was virtually impossible. But horses along trails still had a deep respect for mountain bikers and would only pass if you pulled your bike at least a couple of meters up the slope above the trail. At the start of the 21st century, some of the more opulent and/or corpulent Bhutanese took up mountain biking, mainly for exercise, on tarmac roads. In 2002 the first mountain bike sale and repair shop opened in Thimphu. Bicycles became a more common sight, Cycling past stupas near Paro. Photo: Piet van der Poel. ROYAL www.royalmt.com.np 9