Mountain Biking in Laos: Highlands and Lowlands

Alice Cuninghame    mountainbikingholidays     holidays in Laos, Laos, Mountain Bike, mountain bike holidays, mountain biking, MTB, off-road

It may come as a surprise to many, but tiny Laos offers fantastic cycling for the adventurous. The rugged uplands to the north are great for mountain bikers looking for thrills, while the southern lowlands offer biking on the flat against a rural backdrop.

Views to ride for! Image:Luisah

Laos is mostly undeveloped, so any kind of travel there requires a willingness to rough it a little. Even its capital, Vientiane, feels like a quiet backwater. The rural areas are a step back in time to a simpler world. People live in small villages among their animals, farming largely for subsistence in the same way they have for generations.

Poverty and poor infrastructure means that most roads are unsealed, which makes for a bumpy and sometimes challenging ride, even in the flat south. The reward is stunning views and a warm welcome, in Asia’s most laid-back country.

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Can we get too close to nature?

Mark Pawlak    ash     California, canoeing, Kayaking, sea kayaking, swimming with whales, united states, Whales, whalewatching

Some sports take you closer to nature – and the closer you get, the greater your responsibility. Nature as scenery is passive; it’s usually  the weather conditions that will pose the real danger. Until you come face to face with some of the biggest animals on the planet…

The video clip here is a controversial one. There’s no denying that it’s one of the most amazing handy cam clips ever – nature documentaries take years to get this close. But when is close too close?

Image: Flickr Chris Walker Innerwealth

The International Whaling Commission’s Scientific Committee (IWC SC) has previously noted that “whale swims have the potential to negatively impact whales through harassment and disturbance”.

Which really is not the plan. Further reading shows that divers have their own concerns. A piece in Scuba Diving.com suggests that the best place to view whales is from the boat. But watching the video below, we can see why this guy kayaking in the US (off California) took the opportunity.

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Adventure sports you never heard of: Yak Polo

James    trekkingholidays     Adventure Sports, Adventure Travel, Afghanistan, pakistan, Polo, Yak

In a new, occasional series by James from Untamed Borders Ltd, he explains the basics of less well-known adventure sports. Using the classic journalistic trick of a fake interview, he explains the history of ….Yak Polo

So what is Yak Polo?

It’s polo, but instead of horses, the players ride yaks.

Why yaks?

In the high mountainous areas of the Hindu Kush and Pamir ranges in southern Tajikistan, north east Afghanistan and northern Pakistan, horses struggle to cope with the rarefied air in altitudes over 3500 m. The local people of these regions have taken to using yaks to play polo rather than horses.

Yak Polo - popular in the Hindu Kush

People play polo in Pakistan and Afghanistan?

Sure. Polo comes from the mountainous regions of northern Pakistan and was adopted by the British Army to keep the cavalry fit. The matches are a far cry from the Hurlingham Club. There are no champagne tents, high heels or blokes in blazers called Tarquin. Just huge, dusty polo fields with tea tents and samosa stalls.

The rules are different too. Pakistan polo, also known as frontier polo, allows players to check each others sticks and each team has designated chuckers who restart the game if the ball goes out. It is not uncommon to have pitch invasions and general mayhem with players and horses coming off injured.

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Hard or Soft: How Mountain Bikers Shop for Tail

Gabriel    mountainbikingholidays, Pro Tips     Adventure, Adventure Sports, cycling, Downhill, mountain biking, MTB, off-road

Mountain bike technology has come a long way over the past 20 years. Once, bike manufacturers created stiff and solid frames that would roar down hill before people really knew what they were doing (no helmets, no body armour). This video gives you an idea of how rocky and risky downhill descents were on a rigid frame.  Then they decided to put motorcycle suspension on these bikes. And an industry was born!

It began with front-suspension forks. Companies like Rock Shox and Manitou couldn’t keep them on the shelves. Then bike manufactures had the idea to make each wheel float independently of the frame. Full-suspension bikes became fashionable and the market was flooded with them.

Today, the industry still makes a number of sharp and snazzy dual-suspension bicycles that make the heart pound (probably because many of them look like combat helicopters). The next time you go shopping for a mountain bike, get one with a lock-out front suspension. However, before you dump over 3K on the latest “full-susser,” consider these tips so you don’t wind up buying more bike than you can ride:
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Himalayas: Over the Roof of the World

Alice Cuninghame    overlandholidays     4x4, 4x4 driving holidays, Himalayas, India, Overland holidays

India is full of dust, dirt and heat. A place where travellers fight for space on crowded trains and traffic-choked streets. And that’s it, isn’t it?

It isn’t. Venture north, past the teeming cities, through the green lowlands, and up onto the roof of the world. India’s Himalayas are a startling contrast to the rest of the country, and the only way to really get to know them is overland. Buses do connect the larger towns in India, but they won’t take you to the heart of the place.

The Himalayas Image: Flickr/ilkerender

Plenty of travel companies offer overland trips around the Indian Himalaya, in buses or jeeps. They often include an element of trekking, and opportunities to try out other adventure sports. For a tailor-made itinerary, you can often hire a private car and driver: a surprisingly cheap option.

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New Bikes: Buying a Mountain Bike

Luke    mountainbikingholidays     Downhill, full-suspension, Mountain Bike, Mountain bike gear, mountain biking, Mountainbike, mountainbiking, MTB, off-road

Back in May, I decided to replace my barely road worthy ‘mountain’ bike with a bike that can handle proper off-road riding. I hadn’t ridden off-road since I was a kid, which was well before mountain bikes had disk brakes or suspension so I went into this very green.  These are the main things I considered:

GT Agressor XC2, ticked all my boxes

Budget

Everyone has a different amount to spend; my magic number was £400 max. I knew the bike would get plenty of riding on the road to cycle to work, but having not ventured into the rough stuff for nearly 2 decades, I couldn’t justify spending more in case the off road riding never happened.

Suspension

When I last rode bumpy trails, suspension consisted of standing up to avoid a sore bottom! Now with the choice of full-suspension (front and rear), hard tail (just front suspension) or no suspension, I could choose to avoid the sore bottom but had a sore head trying to decide what to go for.

In the end, it came down to what I could afford: I wanted some suspension, but I could only afford a bottom of the range full-suspension bike, which would be very heavy – so as I would be doing plenty of hill climbing, I went for a hard tail.

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Skiing in France: are smaller resorts better value?

Lucy Grewcock    ash     France, Skiing, Skiing Holidays, skiing in France, Snowboarding, snowboarding holidays

When skiing in France I had always stuck to the Alp’s biggest resorts to get my winter kicks; hotspots like Tignes, Val d’Isere, Chamonix and Alp d’Huez not only offer hundreds of kilometres of ski terrain and a network of speedy lift connections, but also boast all-action après scenes, non-stop nightlife and a smorgasbord of restaurants and accommodation options – so, why settle for anything less?

Can you go small and get more?

Cost was the main reason that I dared to consider a ski a resort with anything less than 200km of piste and 50-odd après bars.

But, a few winters ago, after a costly MOT had left my bank account at an all-time low, I begrudgingly booked a cheap apartment in the compact resort of Les Contamines Monjoie, where 40 piste-runs and handful of bars stood in very poor comparison to the 200 plus pistes and countless bars I’d enjoyed in Val d’Isere the year before. But with ski-pass and accommodation in Les Contamines costing around half the price of last year’s splurge, it was small-resort or none at all.

Since then, I’ve tried other smaller resorts and realised there’s much more to skiing holidays in France than offered by the biggest and most famous destinations, and here’s why:

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