- Make sure your bike is in top shape before the trip - a good bike will greatly enhance your experience and a troublesome bike will certainly detract from it. Its a dampener to stop during a ride and have to attend to your bike. Pay attention to your bike when you have already taken a break.

- Ride responsibly without disturbing other fellow riders and traffic as well as locals

- Provide for your own food, snacks, personal toiletries and other essentials.

- Do inform the doctor or the mechanic at any signs of trouble without waiting for it to get serious.

- Ensure that your bike can do 400km on a tank full of fuel, if not please make provisions to carry additional fuel for the required distance.

High altitude sickness

High altitude sickness is still a grey area and in our experience there is no pattern or benchmark that it follows. It seems to afflict the young, old, fit and unfit individuals with the same intensity or ignore them whatever the case might be. At the root cause is the lack of oxygen supply to the body under the rarefied air conditions at higher altitudes.

We are giving below a few pointers that are common sense to any sensible person with substantial high altitude experience.

- Breath - We breath all the time but in the mountains make a special effort to concentrate and take deep breaths.

- Don't get excited - Always remain calm and composed keep your actions, movements and exertion under check.

- Don't stop eating - Eat! Even if you don't feel like it.

- Drink water - Pure water, don't count cold drinks and alcohol as water. In fact if you are having cold drinks, coffee, alcohol or medicines for high altitude sickness, drink more water to compensate for the same.

- Listen to your body - Don't push it. In case of any discomfort contact the pilot or the doc immediately. You don't get any macho points for suffering in silence.

There is no guarantee that an extremely fit person will not suffer from high altitude sickness but we cannot escape the fact that increased levels of fitness will help you achieve more out of this trip. If fitness is not a regular feature of your life, its time to start working at it now as you prepare the bike. Do the paperwork and get all your gear into place for the Himalayan odyssey.

Start gradually and keep a tempo to ensure that you are not overly fatigued near the start of the trip. In fact you might decide to reduce your tempo gradually to allow your body to recover as you come closer to the Himalayan Odyssey dates. Any training programme that builds up your strength and stamina should be beneficial and it is your call how to balance the two requirements. Strong forearms, shoulders, triceps, lower back and legs are a definite advantage to a rider but along with strength he also needs the stamina and lasting ability to sustain the steam over long distances.