I’ve been riding long enough to know that everyone has their own comfort pace, both up and down. My own stint at racing mountain bikes has long been cast to the rust-pile of history along with its elastomer-sprung forks and peak-less helmets. Nowadays an insatiable thirst for beer and a noticeable lack of bounce when I crash have become my excuses for never being the first to the top or the bottom of a trail.

But assemble 30 riders together and you’re usually swept along in a spirit of informal competitiveness, compelled to dig deeper, to ride faster, encouraged to show off, to somehow become “superhuman” in your own eyes or those of others. There are elements of this rivalry among our group of Yeti aficionados, something that fuels an incessant but friendly banter between strangers over dinner.

“Our lives become refocused on the simple priorities of sleeping, eating, drinking and riding.”

But here in Nepal’s wild terrain, a million miles from the fibre-optic driven speed of western living, that nagging competitive streak within us is easier to ignore. Instead, immersed amid physically and mentally impenetrable mountains, riding between terraces ploughed by yaks, on tracks that are ambiguously called “roads” and staying in tea-houses whose window panes rattle in the afternoon wind, our lives become refocused on the simple priorities of sleeping, eating, drinking and riding. For a little while at least, we have that luxury.

We leave and return among the yaks and chickens that ply Kagbeni’s narrow flagstone alleyways, while crimson-robed monks busy themselves around the village’s 15^th century monastery. We sink Everest beers at the end of our rides, or wash down chocolate cake with frothy cappuccinos at one of Kagbeni’s new, western-styled coffee shops — indications of the creeping changes that tourism brings. Sitting on the infamous 12-day Annapurna circuit trek, Kagbeni sees a daily ebb and flow of trekkers and more recently mountain bikers. As such we’re a valuable source of income to many families eking out a living in such a remote and harsh environment.

“We flaunt crosswinds to hurriedly sprint over swaying suspension bridges and zig-zag through pine forests…”

Our Nepalese riders RJ, Mandil and Nishant and U.K. guides Euan and Chris from H&I Adventures show us the best, and often hidden, trails of this spectacular area. When we ride the Gandaki river valley up from Jomsom, we deviate from the usual trekkers itinerary to lap through the nearby villages of Pilling and Phalla, both perched high on the valley side. We flaunt crosswinds to hurriedly sprint over swaying suspension bridges and zig-zag through pine forests and down alpine switchbacks as we make our way down to Marpha and on to the heat and sweat of sub-tropical Tatopani.

In only five days we ride a year’s worth of flow, and file a lifetime of memories. But it’s the ride from Muktinath, a 4000m high outpost of civilisation, that most steals my attention, and not because of the sight of RJ’s defiance of the effects of altitude. Still gasping for air, I finally reach the top of the Lupra pass and peer into the seemingly bottomless valley that is our way ahead.

Surrounded by some of the tallest peaks on the planet and embedded in a landscape devoid of trees, it’s hard to get a scale on things here —what seems like a ten minute climb takes an hour, a fifteen minute descent becomes fifty. Whatever our skewed perspective, below us a ribbon of singletrack teasingly meanders its way back and forth across the mountainside before disappearing abruptly, and if I’m honest a little alarmingly, into a vertical abyss. From where we stand it looks like the trail might as well plunge into the centre of the earth itself.

We roll in, with RJ at the lead. The descent is fast and dusty. Shadow another rider too closely and you’re left spluttering through clouds of dirt, teeth coated in grime. The trail begs to be ridden fast, but its surface is loose and deep swathes of dirt on every corner threaten to rob front wheel control. I battle self-preservation and the instinct to grab my brakes, an action I know would see me cart-wheeling down the steep hillside, bouncing off rocks into the abyss below.

The Nepalese are a hardy bunch. And they have to be. The Yeti Tribe gathering happens in the wake of Nepal’s devastating earthquake, a shock that seismically halved the country’s valuable tourist numbers overnight and devastated household incomes in many of the tourist hotspots such as the Lower Mustang.

With few exports, Nepal’s population is one of subsistence farming, the country’s impossibly steep and rugged terrain adding to the list of challenges that monsoon rains and an inadequate transport infrastructure already heap upon its inhabitants.

But faced with such unrelenting challenges in life the Nepalese remain positive and largely upbeat. There is no point being any other way they say. RJ is just one Nepalese face, but he’s a symbolic ambassador for the attitude of a country. And he rides bikes like a Nepalese, grabbing life with both hands and refusing to give up.

I watch RJ disappear into the void ahead, dropping down towards Lupra village, a tiny jumble of houses impossibly clinging to the side of the Panda Kola gorge, a sight that looks like it has been torn from the pages of National Geographic. I have the luxury of visiting this amazing country, and I have the luxury of returning home, back to comfortable western lifestyle where clean water pours at a turn of a tap, where roads are asphalted and bikes ridden for fun alone. Standing there with RJ’s dust settling around me, I realise that this Nepalese lad has a lot to teach me.

He might be half my age and riding in borrowed and loaned kit, but he has shown me what’s possible if you ignore limitations. Like most riders, I’ve basked in my own heroic feelings before. I’ve cleaned impossible-looking technical lines I never want to repeat, and raced multi-day events through the Alps on hardtails that left me unable to sit for a week.

I’ve watched the slow-mo films of our privileged upbringing heroes of the bike world, but now standing on a remote Nepalese mountainside I realise whatever we think about our bike riding back home, however impressive our heroes’ antics or riding ability, whatever Rampage line was survived, or new Strava record was set, it all pales into insignificance alongside RJ. In this one lad, having juggled school and work at the age of 13, won races, landed work as a mountain bike guide, and now dropping the rest of us like it was our first day on a bike, the word “superhuman” is being redefined.

To read the rest of the Superhuman Issue head here

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