Jenny wanted a day out of Pokhara, so I reluctantly agreed to hire some mountainbikes and go out for the day:-) At the Sarangkot turn-off some locals thought we must be going the wrong way - they let us know that takng a bicycle to Sarangkot was crazy. We pushed the bikes most of the way up the hill to Sarangkot then continued on a rough dirt road up and along the ridge. At Sarangkot they charged to enter the village, park your vehicle (we got away with parking our bikes free) and to enter the top lookout area. We got to see lots of ordinary village life. There was a nice dam higher up with children swimming, people washing clothes, frogs and fish (the frogs and fish weren't being washed).
After the top point lots of concentration was required riding the Indian-style MTBs downhill to the main road at Naudanda. The highest point was 800m higher than our hotel at Lakeside, so Jenny got the exercise she was looking for.
The main road back to Pokhara had lots of roadwork on the switchbacks down the hill from Naudanda. We could actually go faster than the big vehicles, but you do have to be careful about vehicles coming towards you. 800m of vertical descent means lots of fun - it is almost all downhill for the 25km back to Lakeside.
We arrived back at the hotel after 50km and a full day out quite exhausted. I think people were quite surprised at where we had been (we didn't tell the people we hired the bikes from).
