[adpandey]

I have taken many road trips before and enjoyed most of them. But never before had I experienced fear, excitement and awe at the same time. My trip to Manang changed all that.


The Destination: Manang is situated at an altitude of 3519 meters in the Himalayas about 250 km from Kathmandu, Nepal. It is a beautiful valley across the Himalayas and is a very popular tourist trekking destination. Motorable roads have opened recently, however the roads are rocky, dangerous and are carved on the side of the mountains. Only off road vehicles can travel in this road.


The Car: 2016 Ford Endeavour 3.2L Titanium 4X4.


Even though the roads were scary and bad, at no point did we lose confidence in the ford we were driving. This car we took is a stock SUV and no mods have been performed (although I am now looking for new suspensions, snorkel and some off road tires for my next trip). We had engaged the low range gearbox and it performed excellently. When the roads got worse we engaged rock mode and locked the rear differential. With these engaged the car handled any obstacle beautifully and at no point in the whole drive did we lose control over the car. I have to give to Ford for creating this beautiful piece of machinery.


The Video: If you guys enjoy watching videos then I've compiled our whole trip in this video. The pictures from the trip are below the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZA5O3cJfrw

Day 1: Kathmandu to Besisahar: This drive is a typical drive on the highways of Nepal. It takes about 5 hours to get to Besisahar assuming that there is no major traffic on the way.

The guys are excited for the trip.


Day 2: Besisahar to Chamje (Manang): We left Besisahar at 8 in the morning hoping to reach Manang town which is about 12 hours of driving. This is where the off road tracks start. Af first we were encouraged seeing that the road was just like the other off road tracks we have driven before. A little bumpy with and a little rocky. However, as we starting moving to the higher altitudes, this changed quickly. The track we were driving on was small and could fit only one car. As we moved higher the roads go rockier and rockier. At some places there were basically just loose rocks and at some places we had to look for a few mins just to make sure that we were driving on a track. All the roads were carved on cliffs and any mistakes here would drop you thousands of feet below. In many places, we could see that rocks were falling from above and in some places there were major landslides. The river crossings were always difficult because the water going to river would damage the roads bad. We had planned to reach Manag Town, however after driving for 10 hours we were only able to reach Chamje. Since it had gotten dark already we decided to spend the night thre.





Early morning view from BesiSahar. Our destination is to the mountains and beyond...






Start of therocky roads. The mountains are still a long ways off, but the weather is beautiful and the air is clean and crisp.







Here is the beast. I have to say this SUV is just awesome and its prowess is truly felt in rocky off-road trails.







There are numerous impressive waterfalls along the the way. This waterfall was very impressive as we could see rainbow formation on the water. If you look closely you should also see the rainbow







The roads to Manang have been made by carving the mountains. The road is dangerous and there is no room for mistakes.






Another waterfall along the way.






Love this car!!





This picture should show you guys how scary the roads were. Towards the upper half of this picture, you show see some space/carving in the rock formation. Yes! that is the road and we had to drive along it.





The road is also very busy with porters and trekkers.





The famous Chamje Waterfall. There is a bridge made of wooden flanks. That was scary. There are several other bridges like that.





This place is called Taal. This place greeted us after a very difficult stretch of roads. The local drivers informed that the roads should get better after this place.






However, the reality was different. There were several river and wooden bridge crossings still left. We had planned to reach Manang on this day but we were only able Chamje.


Day 3: Chamje to Manang Town: This is about a 2 hour drive, but we took it easy since our destination wasn't that far. We stopped in a village called Bhartang. There is a huge apple farm in this village and we stopped at the owner’s house (which also serves as a shop to sell apples) for breakfast. The owner also gave us a tour of his apple farm which is quite impressive for a remote village in Nepal. After breakfast we continued our journey to Manang and on the way stopped again when we realized that the mountain which was in front of us when we started the journey was now behind us. We had crossed the mountain and the flat valleys would greet us soon. Manang wasn't far away now and we reached there in time for lunch. We relaxed for the day and visited different places nearby.





Apple farm at Bhratang. The owner gave us a personal tour. The scale of farming is huge for a place like Manang.






The mountains behind us now




We soon reached flat lands. Beautiful meadows where yaks graze and where mountains are formed.






We didnt have much driving to do on this day so we took our time and stopped along the way.






The mountain views are just out of this world.





The mountain views are just out of this world.





The mountain views are just out of this world.






We soon reached our destination. This the view from the hotel we stayed at.






Very interesting architecture of the houses in the village in Manang





The alleys in Manang








Lots of bakeries and coffee places too. So eating should not be a problem.




Day 4: Manang to Bandipur: The drive back was grueling since we left at 5 in the monring. We didnt want to spend the night in the mountains again so we had planned to stay at Besisahar. However the hotels over there we packed to so we decided on Bandipur which is a small newari town catering to tourist around 1 hour away from Besisahar. When we reached Bandipur all of us were very tired so we just had dinner and crashed (we dont really have pics from this day)





We started very early in the morning. A glimpse of sunrise we captured on our way back






The mountains got further and further as we drove along.











Traditional newari design windows of the hotel we stayed in at Bandipur.


The view from Bandipur. End of our trip

[ampere]

Thread moved out from the Assembly Line. Thanks for sharing!


The star of the show is the Endy for sure!

[Madmax_SP]

Fantastic travelogue and pictures. The terrain is really intimidating, and you deserve the credit for traversing it in your vehicle.
Is there a way to access the location and that route through India?

[adpandey]

Originally Posted by Madmax_SP

Fantastic travelogue and pictures. The terrain is really intimidating, and you deserve the credit for traversing it in your vehicle.
Is there a way to access the location and that route through India?

Thanks Madmax SP,

Yes you can access the location from India by car. You will need to cross into Nepal through one of the borders nearest to you in your car. For Indian vehicles going beyond the nearest Nepali town or staying overnight in the bordering districts of Nepal are required to register the entry of vehicles for the specific number of days on payment of charges varying from NRs. 250/- to 500/- per day depending on the type of vehicle. The Pass/Challan issued by the Nepali Custom Authorities should be available for inspection all the time and has to be surrendered to the Nepali customs authorities at the time of exit from Nepal.

[Madmax_SP]

Originally Posted by adpandey

Thanks Madmax SP,

Yes you can access the location from India by car. You will need to cross into..... surrendered to the Nepali customs authorities at the time of exit from Nepal.

Simply Awesome! Thanks @adpandey.
Would love to see more pictures, and details of stay options as well as camping options enroute. Since Manang is in the Annapurna Conservation Zone, are there any stipulations about camping etc?

[maddy42]

Originally Posted by adpandey

Thanks Madmax SP,

Yes you can access the location from India by car.

My A Pandey welcome to the forum. I was your mobile guy in phx

Nice to see you here, i kinda was curious on who took an endy in nepal as i saw your video on fb. Great pictures man and i hope to do one trip soon and i know whom to contact. Hope things are doing good on your end.

Maddy

[PointZero]

Very nice place adpandey. Is this terrain only for 4x4, or UVs with high GC can go there?

[sunishsamuel]

Simply superb. I think i posted your video from Youtube with my brother and friend thinking that its an official Ford campaign especially with the music in the background. Thanks for sharing with us. I hope some day i will do this kind of trip (part of my bucket list)

How's the car after the trip ? Any issues/rattles that you face ?

[adpandey]

Originally Posted by maddy42

My A Pandey welcome to the forum. I was your mobile guy in phx

Nice to see you here, i kinda was curious on who took an endy in nepal as i saw your video on fb. Great pictures man and i hope to do one trip soon and i know whom to contact. Hope things are doing good on your end.

Maddy

Hey Maddy,

Good to see you here bro. Thanks.

Let me know when you plan a trip. Will help you.

Adpandey

[adpandey]

Mod note: Back to back posts, please use Multi Quote [Quote +] or Edit original post to add reply. Thanks.

Originally Posted by PointZero

Very nice place adpandey. Is this terrain only for 4x4, or UVs with high GC can go there?

Hi PointZero

Good GC is required. I would recommend something above 225 mm. Also, 4X4 is required because the terrain is full of loose rocks. I engaged the low range gear box for most of the trip which gave me full control over such terrain. On certain parts i had to engage the rear differential locks too.

Thanks
Adpandey

Originally Posted by sunishsamuel

Simply superb. I think i posted your video from Youtube with my brother and friend thinking that its an official Ford campaign especially with the music in the background. Thanks for sharing with us. I hope some day i will do this kind of trip (part of my bucket list)

How's the car after the trip ? Any issues/rattles that you face ?

Hey Sunishsamuel,

It was a really good experience. Loved every moment of it.

The only issue I had with the car is that the A/C stopped working. This was mainly due to the excessive dust in the terrain. The guys at ford vacummed the dust out and it is working perfectly after that. Other than this, there are no issues with the car.

Thanks,
Adpandey

[n.devdath]

Originally Posted by adpandey

I have taken many road trips before and enjoyed most of them. But never before had I experienced fear, excitement and awe at the same time. My trip to Manang changed all that.

A truly wonderful trip in an equally wonderful vehicle.

How did you manage fuel for 500km (250km one way is what you have mentioned)? What was your average FE? >7 I guess.

How many occupants were there in the vehicle? Does the road go beyond Manang as well? If yes, where to?

[amitjha086]

Manang is an awesome place. I was there back in 2011 for trekking when I spent some 9 days there. All the pictures that you posted are fabulous. I could relate to most of those pictures as they were the exact sites where I, as well, took photos. When I was there five years ago, they were working on improvising the tracks. Though, its disheartening to see trekking routes being converted into a commuter route, its a blessing for the locals whose lives have become much easier.

There are only a few posts on Nepal on TeamBHP and I am sure this particular post gets many BHPians interested. While this posts has ample amount of information, I would still like to post a link here. This is a link to the largest selling English daily newspaper of Nepal where I published my trekking into Manang. Hope this adds some information.

http://kathmandupost.ekantipur.com/p...g-diaries.html

This link, as I googled out, has only the text. I would post a few pics the next time I am working on my laptop.

[gadadhar]

Wonderful snaps and the hero is Endy. Nilgiri and Bandipur are familiar names for we folks from southern part of India since we have our own with same names over here.

[adpandey]

Originally Posted by n.devdath

A truly wonderful trip in an equally wonderful vehicle.

How did you manage fuel for 500km (250km one way is what you have mentioned)? What was your average FE? >7 I guess.

How many occupants were there in the vehicle? Does the road go beyond Manang as well? If yes, where to?

The distance from Kathmandu is 250 KMS. There were various fuel stations along the way. Our last stop before we hit the off road track to Manang was Besisahar. There is a fuel station in that town and we filled up the endy. The distance from Besisahar to Manang is about 96 KMS. Our full tank was enough to take us to Manang and back. There were 3 occupants in the car. We filled up the trunk on our way back with Manang Potatoes and Apples (Speciality of that region).

There is no motorable road beyond Manang. However there is a hiking trail that leads to lower mustang region: The famous Thorongla Pass which is the

"the most challenging stage of the entire trek around Annapurnas and leads across one of the highest tourist passes in the world – Thorong la (5 416m asl) (sometimes written also asThorung la) in between nepalese regions of Manang and Lower Mustang. High difficulty of this crossing is determined mainly by its high altitude and long and tiring ascent and descent than by technical difficulty. However there has always been a trade route, along which trudged caravans laden with goods from Tibet, so the path itself is quite comfortable in nice weather. The pass usually becomes impassable for a few days just after big storm, when it is covered with snow."

Originally Posted by amitjha086

Manang is an awesome place. I was there back in 2011 for trekking when I spent some 9 days there. All the pictures that you posted are fabulous. I could relate to most of those pictures as they were the exact sites where I, as well, took photos. When I was there five years ago, they were working on improvising the tracks. Though, its disheartening to see trekking routes being converted into a commuter route, its a blessing for the locals whose lives have become much easier.

There are only a few posts on Nepal on TeamBHP and I am sure this particular post gets many BHPians interested. While this posts has ample amount of information, I would still like to post a link here. This is a link to the largest selling English daily newspaper of Nepal where I published my trekking into Manang. Hope this adds some information.

http://kathmandupost.ekantipur.com/p...g-diaries.html

This link, as I googled out, has only the text. I would post a few pics the next time I am working on my laptop.

Thanks Amit,

Superb article on your trip to Manang. I would encourage you to share your pics too. It would definitely add to this thread.

Thanks

[McLaren Rulez]

Beautiful and rugged! Adjectives that apply to both the landscape and the car

Did you feel the Endeavour was a bit too large for the narrow roads though?