Its in the pouring rain mid winter 1980 and 3 very cold young guys are knocking on a farmers door high on the Apiti ridge in the central North Island New Zealand asking if we were on the right road to Taihape.. There I was at 15 years old riding a ten speed bike on back country gravel roads searching for escape from normal life and having adventures in a world of romance and dreams.
Nothing really changed over the last 35 years - even while I raced bikes at the highest level the sport side including the Tour de France was always secondary to the great adventure of life - indeed when I was young for a New Zelander to race in Europe it was still necessary to be an adventurer as well as a sportsman. Racing and riding bikes led dow n many different paths and inherent all these was time in the mountains and adventuring in them throughout the World. Racing in Africa , Asia , South America led to many exotic locations and plenty of mountains. The most memorable race trip was Qinghia - Tibet twice - across the Tibetan Plateau , an unforgettable experience which only stimulated the desire for more.
In more recent years I helped organize and do the route planning for the Tour of Himalayas Mountain Bike race in the Kaghan Valley Pakistan for the Kaghan memorial trust , an organization set up to provide quality education to surviving children of the massive earthquake there in 2006 - http://kmt.org.pk.
This along with the persistent life long dream of exploring the mountains of Central Asia has led back there many times and also to India and China riding my bike of course but also exploring by foot and of course always reaching higher. This is a brief photo essay of some of the good times over the years.
Charity
Nathan has a long running association with the Kaghan Memorial Trust (KMT) in Pakistan which was set up after the devastating earthquake there in 2006. KMT provides a quality education to children in the valley (over 400) and is substained entirely by donations. More information can be found at http://kmt.org.pk/
Boiling heat , even the rocks beside the road look like burnt toasted marshmallows. The Kohistani's themselves untamed bandits from the beginning of time reflect the attitude of this scorched land!! This land was largely unknown till the Karakorum highway was forced up here although as far back as 4th century Chinese Pilgrim Faxin (337 -442) describes his harrowing trip thru Kohistan –translated as land of mountains.