What and how to pack for an all-India cycle tour? The complete checklist.

There are two rules to bike packing:

If you look up the internet, you will find that on average the luggage weight for a cycle tour is anywhere between 25 – 50 Kg. Anything above 25 Kg is an abysmal weight acting as a recipe for discomfort.

 

In the beginning, it may seem as though whatever you pack is too little for the journey. Don’t let your brain trick you into carrying too much. The reason for packing more is that we need comfort during our journey. However, no comfort equates to the comfort you get from riding pain-free. Heavy luggage is going to exhaust you in the long run making the whole experience a huge discomfort.

 

Finding the right gear in India is extremely hard as we do not have a cycle touring culture. The lightest tent we have available weighs 3.4 Kg. Over the past two years, I have done quite a bit of research to figure out the right gear and fit in all the luggage we need for an all-India tour to almost 20 Kg.

Here is my complete packing checklist.

 

As I mentioned earlier, the 2 person tent you will find at decathlon weighs 3.4 Kg. The trekking poles and the pegs which hold the framework of the entire tent and pin it to the ground are the biggest culprits. I noticed that the length of the tent is 5 meters because the trekking poles are folded to that length. I simply swapped the default tent poles with aluminium tent poles which are only 30 cm long and weigh far faaarr less! These poles are available at decathlon but are not of the right size and so require some bit of engineering. A hacksaw blade and a nail filer simply did the job for me. Next, I took to Amazon to buy some lightweight aluminium pegs and voila! The tent simply reduced from 3.4 Kg to 2.2 Kg and packed into a 30 cm space rather than 50.

 

The best outcome of reducing the size of the tent is that now I’m able to place it into a dry bag. This allows me to cycle even when it drizzles.