Mountains of Tea

I feel like I’ve done 20 minutes in a mosh pit. With every lurch of our Jeep over another boulder in the road, my shoulder crunches against the car’s bodywork. I brace myself for impact, but it does little to save me from the beating. I know I’ll emerge from the experience bruised, but on a high—just like staggering out of any punk gig.

Nine people and six bikes are squeezed into today’s mosh pit (a six-seater Mahindra Jeep) for the punishing ride up a mountain called Meesapulimala, or “the leopard’s whiskers”, the second-highest peak in India south of the Himalayas. Our Jeep’s lumbering pace is not much quicker than pedalling, but I can’t turn down a 1200-metre uplift that puts us within striking distance of a summit only a handful of people have mountain biked from. Descending this 2640-metre high mountain will top off a week of riding that has taken us though the rugged