Back from the Himalayas
After returning from those 82 days in the Himalayas, Bengaluru felt too quiet.
The mountains had left a certain intensity in me. I did not want to lose it in a soft, predictable routine. I needed something that could continue that feeling. Something physical, uncertain, and real.
That is how cycling started.
It was not about fitness. It was about staying close to that edge again. The first few rides were small, but they started stretching my world very quickly.
In August 2022, I left after midnight for Skandagiri to catch the sunrise. Once I crossed the city limits, the streetlights disappeared and the rain started. My front light died.
Riding through the pitch black Nandi Hills region, my mind started playing tricks on me. Every sound from the side of the road felt suspicious. I even imagined ghosts in the dark. It sounds funny now, but in that moment it felt real. Pushing through a 150 kilometer ride, followed by an eight kilometer trek on a muddy trail in the rain, made me feel completely alive.
Going Further
After that, I started seeking out discomfort.
I found an old quarry called Chhota Ladakh and did a 105 kilometer round trip with one rule. No breaks. Highest gear only.
A week later, I rode 160 kilometers to SRS Hills. By the time I reached, the trail was closed. But the destination had already stopped mattering. On the way back, a stranger smiled at me, village kids laughed as I passed, and an old man stopped me near the hills to ask questions. The road was slowly pulling me out of my own bubble.
By October 2022, I wanted to see what happens when going back becomes harder than going ahead.
I strapped 25 kilograms of gear onto my bike and headed south. I had been cycling for only three months. My longest ride until then was nowhere close to what I was attempting now.
The plan was simple. Ride hard enough on the first day that turning back to Bengaluru would feel foolish.
The goal was Kanyakumari.
That one decision turned into a 20-day journey across South India, covering more than 1050 kilometers. The numbers were never the point. I just wanted to travel intensely and see what stayed when comfort was taken out of the picture.
Out there, life became very basic. Breath. Pedal strokes. Hunger. Fatigue. Doubt. Then the next turn. Then the next town. Then the next day.
Friction and Flow
After that, bikepacking stopped being just a challenge. It became part of how I moved through life.
I rode more than 800 kilometers to Goa with my bicycle, Firefox Bad Attitude. On New Year's Day 2023, I rode a tandem 164 kilometers to Dudhsagar, spent an hour in the water, and came back the same day.
Then came a different kind of ride.
Late 2023 brought a 1000 kilometer ride from Bengaluru to Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar. This one had none of the obvious beauty people like to talk about. No ocean. No dramatic mountains. Just hard roads, rough trails, and long empty stretches where beauty showed up only as mirages.
For more than 600 kilometers, it was mostly windmills.
It was dry, repetitive, and mentally draining. That ride did not give much. It just kept taking. Maybe that was the point. Some roads do not inspire you. They empty you out.
By early 2025, I was living in Hyderabad, trying to balance my job as a software engineer with this growing pull towards the road and the wild.
During a 350 kilometer ride to Srisailam, those two worlds collided. In the middle of Nallamalla Forest, I was awake till 4 AM fixing a production issue on my laptop before getting back on the bike.
It was ridiculous.
But it was also true. That was my life at the time. Work and wilderness. Deadlines and distance. Friction and flow.
A Full Circle
Bikepacking 5000 was never just a number.
It is dark roads before sunrise. Rain. Fear. Wrong turns. Heavy loads. Village conversations. Hunger. Silence. Long hours with nowhere to hide from your own mind.
These 5000 kilometers were built ride by ride, season by season. Not in one grand push. Just through restlessness, curiosity, and the need to keep moving.
And somewhere along the way, something became clear.
I had ridden south until I ran out of land and touched the sea at Kanyakumari. Now I felt a familiar pull in the opposite direction.
Cycling had started as a way to hold on to the intensity of the Himalayas. It only made sense that the bicycle would eventually take me back there.
I had touched the sea.
Now I wanted to touch the mountains again.
The next road was clear.