A year ago, adventure and outdoor photographer Daniel H. Bailey and his friend, Eric Parsons, took off on a little summer trip.

Across the Himalayas.


Well, what would you expect an adventure photographer to do? Drive to Disney World?

"I'm interested in the Himalayan regions," Dan says. "I'd been there twice before, and knew a little about the area of Ladakh, which is an autonomous Tibetan region in India. It's a Buddhist enclave in a Muslim state of a Hindu country, so there's a real mix of cultures up there. About two years ago I was on a photo assignment in Canada and met a man who'd done the trip on a motorcycle. He told me he'd traveled along a 300-mile road that leads from the town of Manali into the heart of the Ladakh region to the capitol city of Leh. Since Eric and I were looking for a travel objective for next summer, this sounded like it might be fun—only we'd do it on bicycles."

What made it especially challenging, and thus especially attractive to Dan, was that the road from Manali to Leh, snaking over four mountain passes at altitudes above 16,000 feet, was considered to be the highest continuous road in the world. "One of the passes is 18,000 feet high," Dan says.

The first thing Dan and Eric did was get sponsorship help. "We got bikes, custom made for us, from a Fort Collins, Colorado, company called Black Sheep," Dan says. "The outdoor clothing manufacturer, Patagonia, gave us some clothes. We got some other support, and we were ready to go."

They flew to New Delhi, then took a 17-hour bus ride to Manali, the last real town before the 300-mile trek to Leh. From there, it was pedal power all the way.

"Manali is at 6,600 feet, and we climbed 34 miles uphill to the first pass, which is at 13,000 feet. That was a two-day climb. From then on we were at 10,000 feet and higher the whole time, and we slept mostly at 14,000 feet or higher. The passes up there are usually 12 to 20 miles of switchbacks that climb long hills."

The weather, he says, "pretty much ran the gamut of mountain weather—warm days and then the temperature drops off at night. We ran into storms from time to time and freezing temperatures at the top of the passes."

They carried a small tent, clothes, food, Dan's two cameras, extra batteries and lots of film. The cameras were his "lightweight expedition cameras"—an N90 and an FM2. He packed 80 rolls of film and ended up shooting 47 of them.

"We carried two weeks' worth of backpacking food," Dan says, "but there are tiny villages along the road and almost every day we'd see tent camps and rest stops because there's a lot of truck traffic up there, mostly military and supply vehicles. And there are tourists up there, too. So we could have done it with a lot less food."

Most of the people they met spoke English, were friendly, helpful and not at all surprised to see two Americans on bicycles making their way across the mountains. "What did surprise them were the bicycle trailers," Dan says. The Big Tow trailers, made by Yakima, a California company specializing in "destination hardware," are essentially one-wheel baskets that attach to the rear axle of the bicycles, and they carried all the gear for the duo (you can see one of the trailers in the first photo here). "I don't think the local people had seen them before—they called them trolleys. And what also caught their attention was that we'd replaced the trailers' safety flags with prayer flags."

Dan and Eric rode for ten days to get to Leh, then took a five-day trip farther into the Nubra Valley through the highest pass in the world—some 18,300 feet up—that actually has a road through it. "Then we went back to Leh, took another side trip and eventually ended up back in Manali after a month on the road."

Traveling by bike, Dan says, is the perfect way to see the world. "You can stop and interact with people, go at your own pace, control your own destiny and see things as you ride." The bikes performed flawlessly. "We wore through a set of brake pads and had a couple of flats, but that was it."

What they didn't carry was a cell phone, a laptop or a pager, though a CD Walkman made the trip with them.

What's next for Dan? When we spoke, he was a few days away from heading off to Alaska. "I'm going to do some alpine climbing in Denali National Park."

Travels with Dan
You can see more of Dan's work at his website, www.danbaileyphoto.com. You'll also find a section of the site devoted to the Himalayan bike trip that features additional photos and selections from Dan's diary of the adventure.