Total Distance Travelled: 32KM

Total Distance Travelled: 93KM

It’s much easier to ride a bike, than to box it and transport it. Given this is the first time I’ve taken a bike on a plane, and that the airlines don’t provide boxes at the airport I decided it was best to have Alter Ego Sports tune my bike up and box it before the trip. While I can get the unboxed bike into the back of an Altima without any issue, the boxed up bike isn’t flexible and really requires an SUV or truck to move it around.

The trail I’m biking over the next 2 weeks is the former Kettle Valley Railway. Like most of Canadian history, it was built to prevent the American’s from annexing parts of Canada. The CPR was finished in 1885 and helped join western Canada to the east. However in the rockies, the CPR route (which follows Highway #1) goes a significant distance north of the American border. The southern interior of British Columbia is rich in coal, minerals, forestry etc. and there was a demand to bring these resources to market. Since the valleys in the rockies generally go north/south, it was easy to bring commodities south to the Great Northern Railway in the US – but difficult to bring the commodities west to Vancouver. Without a railway linking the southern interior to Vancouver, there was a fear of American’s gaining too much control over the territory. Hence the CPR through various subsidiaries built the Kettle Valley railway to link the southern interior with the coast. Wikipedia has a more detailed history available. The last of the rails were pulled up around 1989 and it was turned into a hiking/biking trail.

I know I haven’t posted in a while, but I’m trying to catch up now. Jaipur was my first real Indian city, it has a total population of about 3 million. That makes it large by Canadian standards, but pretty small by Indian standards given that Delhi and Mumbai have 20 million people each approximately.