Bikepacking Philippines,
With Ram.

Words by Ram
Photography by Ram and Alina Jäger

Bikepacking Southeast Asia has been a slow-burn obsession to cover almost all countries. Four months from Singapore to China last year. Three months back, Indonesia. And now, finally the long-awaited country, the Philippines.

I’d been following @clippedinandfree for a while - a few Instagram messages later, we realized we were both landing in the Philippines the same week. She got to Manila first; I touched down five days later. We met up over lunch, swapped itineraries, and within hours, we had a plan – We were both heading north. Might as well ride together.

From Angeles to Gerona and Gerona to La Union we were mainly still on the main roads. Traffic wasn’t as busy as in Manila but that was where I had three near misses back to back. Firstly, I almost got sucker punched by a random stranger by the road. I ducked just in time before his fist landed on my face. We turned to look back and he was sucker-punching the air so we thought he wasn’t sane. Secondly, a tricycle made a turn into my lane without checking for traffic and I almost crashed into him while moving at around 35km/h. Thirdly another tricycle intentionally came close to me while we were on an empty road cycling on the road shoulders. So close I know I would have crashed if I didn't move a few inches away.

La Union(LU) was a popular spot in our journey. It’s also known as a surf town. Alina and I took some time off our bikes to surf. It was my first time surfing while she had done some before. We were slowly adjusting to the heat in LU because Manila at that month wasn’t hot. During our trip, Alina was on a running training plan. On rest days, she would casually go for a morning 30km run while I was snoozing. Eventually, I met up with her towards the end of her run to support her with some food and hydration. We hung out with our accommodation hosts and their friends and that’s where they warned us about how steep the journey is towards Sagada and how they wouldn’t even want to drive there.

LU to Sagada was where the climbing adventure began. From the heat of LU, it slowly got colder and colder. Elevation got higher up to 1800 metres. Coming from the hot and humid island city of Singapore, any sight of mountains is a blessing to the eyes. Even the cold weather is enough to put a smile on my face. There was no rush in reaching our destinations as we both didn’t really have any structured plans to follow. It was a go-with-the-flow type of journey just like how we both would do them individually.

Upon reaching Sagada, the spot where almost everyone recommended us to go, it was a beautiful small quiet town 1800 metres above the sea. Temperatures were down to 15 degrees celsius and we both were shivering most of the time. Alina slept with 4 blankets those nights while I slept in my rain jacket. Every town we go to, we explore them by foot walking end to end of the road in search of oat milk coffee and any vegetarian food. We were always hungry!

Sagada to Banaue was roughly a 50km journey. It starts with a 10km descent followed by a 30km climb followed by another 10km descent. It started out well, we were happily laughing, singing, chasing each other on the descent and all things fun started to fade as we started our climb. It got colder, it started raining the entire climb, and it got even windier as we got higher and there weren't any shops to stop for a break. In fact, it was so cold we didn't dare to stop otherwise our body would just cool down too fast. We were both soaking wet, and shivering, and I was on the edge of bonking. We stuck together and not long later we reached the end of the climb and found a shop that sells food and hot drinks. Like happy kids, we chugged hot coffee, hot coco, and instant noodles and bought more layers to wear. Alina spilled hot coco on her thighs and felt nothing. At this point, we were left with 10km of descent and we both didn't want to ride in the cold anymore. Luckily there was a truck going down the same route and they offered to give us a ride down.

From Banaue, we ditched our bikes for two days and set off on an adventure to Batad where the rice terraces and waterfall were. It was a one-hour tricycle ride there. It was magical seeing how huge the rice terrace was. The 1-hour hike down to the waterfall was so worth it too. Batad is situated far away in the highlands so the two days of no internet was a nice retreat back to nature.