Ride to the Sky: A Journey to Dim Paha | Passion Projects | Education | 56516

The town came alive before me. Chittagong’s buzzing neighbourhood tended to wake up earlier than the sun itself, the buses rolling in their sheds, rickshaw pullers guiding their rickshaws into lines, and the sound of tea stall boys ringing glasses against one another. I pushed my fixed-gear bike out of the narrow alleyway, the chain glinting in the half-dark, and leaned on it for a little while.

My destination was far beyond the city’s noise—Dim Pahar, the nation’s highest motorable road point, between Thanchi and Alikadam, nearly 2,500 feet above sea level. A place that cyclists mentioned like a myth. To reach there on a geared bike was an accomplishment; on a fixie, it was bordering madness. But there was a logic to that madness: you sometimes need to force your body into extremes in order to hear what your soul is telling you.

Muradpur road at dawn was dead on. Minibuses honked, each competing to be louder than the last. Vendors were deploying their carts, blowing prices before they’d even laid out their produce. Traffic police, arms out like human metronomes, waved rickshaws and buses into the chaos. I clipped into my pedals, legs heavy with impatience, and started rolling into the crush.

The initial kilometers along Muradpur were like swimming against a torrent of steel and fumes. CNG auto-rickshaws splashed in crazy angles. Bus conductors stuck their heads out, rapping metal coins together in their hands, calling out passengers like carnival barkers. Trucks exhaled heavy smoke into my lungs. Every hundred or two hundred meters, the sharp barks of traffic police pierced through the din, their whistles shrill and insistent, attempting to subdue a city that would not be subdued.

I threaded through, twirling legs without break, the chain humming with the pure truth of a fixie. No coasting, no free ride. That was the philosophy that seemed right in this city—life does not give you a pause button; it moves you on, always pedalling.

As I came to Bahaddarhat, the horizon shifted. Skyscrapers lost their height, the horizon stretched open, and the hills that had resonated like rumour began to take shape against the lightening horizon. A narrow orange crevice glowed eastward. The trip’s first sunrise spilled over the highway, bathing trucks, rickshaws, and roadside tea shops in liquid gold. I breathed deeply. For a moment, the city’s hold loosened.

I pulled over at a street stand just outside the city’s mayhem. A wood stove popped and kettles warbled. The air was filled with a warm aroma of black tea, lemon, and ginger. I propped my bike against the bamboo frontage, wiping sweat from my brow.

“Koi jachen, bhai?” (Where to, bhai?) the seller asked, pushing into my palm a glass half-filled with piping hot tea.

“Thanchi jacchi (To Thanchi. Dim Pahar).

He paused, eyebrows shooting up. “Oi Bangla Cycle e?” (On that Non-Gear Cycle?)” He pointed toward my fixie, whose sole gear glinted in the flames. The stall regulars tittered, heads shaking in disbelief.

An elderly man with a grey beard, in a lungi and a worn-out Panjabi, leaned in. “Dekho baba, ami onek bochor oi pahaṛi elakaya ṭruck chalaisi. Pahaṛi elakaya gaṛi chalanor shomoi amar truck kapto, ar tumi—shudumatro bangla cycle niya jacho?” (You see, I spent years driving trucks in the hill tracts. Even gears cry on those hill drives. And you—with only one gear)?

I drank, the burn less intense now. “Uita e toh porikha. Kono shortcut nai. Shudu iccha shokti r amar pa” (That’s the test. No shortcuts, no coasting. Just will and legs).

The stall was quiet for a moment. Then the laughter dissipated into nods of admiration. “Allah bachaibo” (Allah will keep you safe), said the old trucker finally.

I had two more teas, refilled my water bottles with hot water, and started off again. The highway stretched long, bounded by half-sleeping markets and waves of rice paddies awakening in the sun.

By the time I reached the outskirts of Bandarban, the flat highway had converted into the rolling beat of hills. The first real climb hit me like a wall. My legs, accustomed to the flat bedlam of the city, were suddenly required to fight gravity’s pull. There’s no downshifting on a fixie—just lean forward, grip the bars hard, and negotiate your thighs into furnaces of flame.

Each pedal stroke was a prayer: push, pull, breathe, struggle. My pace slowed to a walk, but the chain whirred willingly, my agonized friend.

At a shaded corner, I stopped at another tea stall. This one had a wide veranda where a few men sat chewing betel leaf, spitting mechanically into the ground.

“Kotheke ashtoso?” (Where from?) someone asked.

“Chittagong. Muradpur.”

They opened their eyes. “R kothai jaccho?” (And where to?)

“Dim Pahar.”

The team erupted in discussion, half amazement, half admiration. A shopkeeper’s son questioned me “keno apni ita kortesen? Keno eto koshto kortesen jokhon odike bus, jeep r bike jai?” (why I did that. Why struggle on a cycle when there were buses, jeeps, and motorbikes?)

I thought about it for a bit. “Karon jibon chole upore utha te. Joidi ami ekhane pedal chalaite pari, tobe ami je konokhane pedal korte parbo.” (Because life is like a climb. If I can keep pedaling here, I can keep pedaling anywhere).

He smiled, with red-stained teeth. “Bhai, shomvob’o toh apni tikh bolse, tobu o ei cycle e” (Brother, perhaps you are right. But still… fixie?”

We laughed together.

The road bent deeper into Bandarban, each hill higher and steeper than the previous. Sweat dripped down my spine, moistening my jersey. My thighs trembled, mutinying. With every hard turn came another hill that ridiculed me.

But pain is a teacher. On a fixie, you learn that resistance is not the enemy but the tutor. The chain resists, the hill resists, life resists. But by working into resistance, by accepting it, you creep along.

I recalled all the nights of self-doubt, the crashes, the destroyed rims, the weariness of messenger duty in the brutal heat of Chittagong. All of those struggles had felt preparation for this road.

Halfway up a hill, a barefoot boy of maybe twelve came out of the bushes, banana sticks in a basket. “Chaibo?” (Need it) he asked shyly.

I bought three. He refused more money but asked if he could touch the bike. His tiny fingers moved over the frame, his eyes wide in wonder. “Ita toh bangla cycle kintu oino cycle gula theke alada lagtese keno?” (Brother it looks like a non gear cycle but why does it look different from other cycles?)

I nodded. He grinned as if he’d discovered magic.

There were hours of hard climbing after which the first long descent unfurled. My fixie zoomed angrily as gravity pulled me down the slope. Unlike geared bikes with freewheels, no escape. My legs pedalled wildly like crazy pistons, the pedals primed to fling me off in case I lost a stroke.

Fear clutched at my chest. A single misstep on these twisting roads lined with cliffs and forests could prove disastrous. In this fear was excitement. The wind rushed past my ears, the road curved in dazing turns, and every fiber in my body learned to yield.

I leaned into the turns, thighs burning, calves trembling, arms tense but prepared. To ride a fixie downhill is to dance with danger: one heartbeat behind, and the pedals can catch hold, sending you into lunacy. But hold the rhythm, trust in the chain, and you coast on the precipice between terror and rapture.

I paused at the edge, panting, laughter bursting uncontrollably from my mouth. The villagers in a roadside hut cheered with glee, as if I’d performed a circus trick. I had, in a way.

The last push to Dim Pahar was brutally beautiful. Forests thickened, valleys unfolded, and the road climbed mercilessly again. Every pedal a hill to climb. Sweeter air, thinner, perfumed with pine.

By then, my mind had gone quiet into something beyond words. Pain, sweat, breath, and chain were all that existed. Fixie philosophy revealed itself in the quiet: life is not comfort but cadence. “You keep moving, because movement is life itself.”

When I finally reached the top of Dim Pahar, the sky lay out before me in infinity. The hills rolled out for eternity below me, rivers glinting like ribbons of silver. Cool, crisp air, no mess of the city around me.

I dismounted, trembling legs. My bike rested against a milestone splashed in worn-off colours. I remained there for a long time, viewing, breathing.

Dim Pahar is more than a point on a map. It is proof that struggle refines you. That every drop of sweat is a seed, and at the summit, it blossoms into a view that words cannot hold.

It represented determination—refusing to give up when the world is telling you to. It represented simplicity—the single cog that, like life, wanted to be turned over and over again. And it represented humility—the understanding that the mountain does not conform to you; it merely allows you passage if you’re worthy.

As the sun dipped below the distant horizon of ridges, I sat to a final cup of tea prepared over a small fire by a group of villagers. The steam rose like incense into the evening. My legs ached, my lungs burned, but my heart was as light as air.

Dim Pahar was not a location. It was a mirror. It mirrored me back to myself without shortcuts, gears, and comforts. A bike, a rider, and a road that demanded everything of me.

And I gave it.