...Taking Stock...

After visiting 22 countries, pedalling nearly 11000 kilometres, and losing 2 stones in weight it is time to reflect on my journey and to take stock!

The most important thing first: I am still having an amazing time!

..Four months cycling solo..

It is now four months since Rebecca and I said our good-byes in Istanbul and I have been cycling mostly solo.

The journey has been amazing; from enjoying breathtaking scenery, to get to know ‘the good and the bad’ of the countries visited, to enjoying so many different cuisines and not least, it has been educational too! Yes, there were some physically tough days on route, but never tough enough that I’ve questioned my adventure! And also, I find it quite nice to ‘work’ more with the legs and less with the head…  

Crossing Turkey in the midsummer’s heat (that’s where I finally started to loose weight…), sharing a couple of weeks cycling with my niece Lilian through Georgia before spending some time in Azerbaijan, seeing Heinz, my old friend from school some 40 years ago provided a good transition from the comfortable, mostly flat riding through Europe to arrive in the more challenging parts of my journey.    

From there, after a rather long ferry crossing due to bad weather on the other side of the Caspian Sea, the desert was awaiting me…

..Hot, barren & monotonous..

I have to admit, the desert and I didn’t become best friends and Rebecca doesn’t need to worry me asking her to have a cycling holiday through the desert together because it is flat…

Grinding the cranks day after day, only to find the same monotonous environment after each bend was exciting for a few days – but now, it has been ticked off my ‘to do’ list… for good!

However, during that time, I also had amazing encounters with some random people; spending a night with a Kazak family eating beshbarmak, and celebrating ‘Railway Workers Day’ with a group of very jovial Kazak railway workers were true, local experiences.

And then there were all the other people who stopped their cars in the middle of the desert to give me a bottle of cold water, tomatoes, fruit and boiled eggs to eat! A family on holidays even gave me money to cover the next nights’ accommodation cost. And another 'one off' experience was the 20-ton water truck who voluntarily stopped, so I could fill up my water bottles straight out of his big tank!

In a town called Shetpe, I also caught up with Duncan Covey, an around the world cyclist and Instagram celebrity with over 75,000 followers. When I say ‘I caught up with him’ it’s not because I was cycling faster than him… no, he has been staying at a hotel for a few days due to illness and I arrived at the same hotel to spend the night there. And to be honest, I not even cycled the last 40 kilometres but got a lift on the back of a lorry! Cycling 150 kilometres on my very first day in the desert heat proved to be too ambitious for me…    

A couple of weeks later, I met Gerd, a 69-year old German cyclist, fit as a fiddle, who cycled from near the Northern Cape to China. We’ve met at a guesthouse in Nukus, Uzbekistan and we both were a bit tired of the solo riding through the desert. Therefore, we decided to continue our journey together to Samarkand, which was a welcome change at the time!

From Samarkand, Gerd continued his solo journey towards Tashkent whilst I had the pleasure of meeting up with Rebecca who came to visit! We had nearly two weeks together, exploring Samarkand, then making our way to Dushanbe in Tajikistan, Rebecca by taxi and me on the bike where we again had a few days of exploring and relaxing together.

We both left Dushanbe on the same day. Rebecca taking a 9-day 4x4 tour from Dushanbe to Osh in Kyrgyzstan and me doing the same route over 3 weeks on the bike.

..Wakhan Valley..

Cycling the Wakhan Valley, was definitely one of the highlights of my journey. A part of my travels I dreamt of doing for years and finally, I was here, enjoying it in person rather than just watching it on YouTube.   

The remoteness, the amazing, far reaching mountain scenery, the valley floor with its at times very fertile areas along the Panj River, the contrast from the Tajikistan side of the river compared to the Afghanistan side, the friendly locals and their hospitality made it an unforgettable part of my journey!

It was around this time though, I started to realize that the time was moving faster than I was pedalling and some compromises needed to be made.

Am I going to spend more time in Kyrgyzstan and skip China all together? Or, shall I cut Kyrgyzstan short and use the 15 visa-free days in China? I went for the latter. Knowing I won’t be able to cycle all the way through China but at least, I should be able to get an impression of that huge, to me largely unknown country!

And I loved it!

I was impressed how China appeared to be organized, how helpful the people were, how safe it felt on and off the road, the excellent quality of most roads I was cycling on and of course, the amazing food! Getting that first whiff of almost forgotten scents like ginger, lemongrass and 5-spice into my nose after several months in the ‘Stans’ where salt & pepper was dominating the spice cupboards… It was like entering food heaven again, and I still can’t stop eating!

15 days were not near enough days to ‘get the grip’ on China but at least, I had a lovely few days in the Xinjian region in the northwest which still has some familiarities with the countries I was cycling in prior to entering China. And afterwards, I really enjoyed the few days in the Yunnan region, in the southwest of the country. Everything was now so different; the scenery and climate went from rocky, dry and barren to being humid and tropical, the food in Yunnan became a lot more what Europeans would identify as ‘Chinese food’, and there is a real coffee culture there as well. Yunnan coffee – delicious! In one place, I had to choose the beans, then they weight it out, grind it in front of you and turn it into a very tasty cup of coffee! Delicious after living on Nescafe 3in1 sachets for weeks on end…

I also indulged in tasty Dai bbqs’, all sorts of noodle soups, dumplings, delicious stir-fries, fermented dairy products, preserved vegetables and the dinner at a ‘pigeon’ restaurant was delicious and unique too. The abundance of fresh fruit in Yunnan was in big contrast to what was available in the ‘Stans’! Many fruits on offer I not even knew they existed...  

And in Yunnan, there were also different grubs on offer, nicely displayed on skewers. Were they raw or cooked? I couldn’t really tell but apparently it is a popular food with the locals. I only took pictures…

And now, I’ve already left Laos behind me, where I cycled from Boten in the north to the capital Vientiane.  

The ‘Land of a million Elephants’ (it used to be) and the ‘Land of even more Hills’ to cycle over…

The fantastic, lush and tropical scenery had to make up for the roads which weren’t as good as in China any longer. Cycling over some of the hills was nothing short of cycling a mountain pass in the Alps. A few days back, I set off at 5 AM to find myself climbing 1600 meters over 5 hours up to just under 2000 meter above sea level.

Once at the top, that large plate of fried rice with a fried egg tasted fabulous…

And here I am! Yesterday, I crossed the border from Vientiane to Nong Khai in Thailand.

Thailand, country 22 to discover on my journey…

..Taking stock..

Sometimes, less is more

I came to the conclusion, it’s more rewarding for me to travel slower than I originally planned to do. Rushing through areas and places without taking the time to experience them feels like a lost opportunity. What I don’t see on route, I don’t know about – let’s enjoy what I see!

Sharing the experience

I love sharing my travels with family, friends and all the people who follow me on Insta, FB & the website. I hope, I can bring a few minutes of welcome and positive distraction into the lives of my followers.

But what I do miss, is sharing my great time with Rebecca and sometimes I feel a bit ‘selfish’ about that, being out here, making all those great experiences on my own, knowing Rebecca would love it as much as I do!

Wild camping

The wild camping never really came off in a big way.

Yes, spending an evening in a beautiful spot, gazing at the stars and eating instant noodles is very nice and relaxing at times but defeats one of my main purposes of this journey; to get to know foreign cultures, different ways of living, local people and their foods.

All the enlightening encounters with local people over the past 7 months really added a lot of value to my travels and a lot of those encounters were at the places I stayed overnight!

And being able to say that I haven’t showered for four days, is not a ‘badge’ I need to have…

Using other means of transport

I became a lot more relaxed about ‘skipping’ some cycling  and instead use public transport or hitch a lift. At the beginning, my thoughts were to cycle all the way apart from the places where there are physical barriers to do so (Caspian Sea, crossing from Singapore to Australia etc).

However, in the meantime, I've used the train for several days to travel through China, got lifts by trucks to avoid dangerous tunnels on route and once I got a taxi for over 100 kilometers as I didn't want to backtrack the same route I did a few days earlier in the opposite direction.

It’s not a ‘survival camp’ for me. ‘Having fun’ doesn’t mean for me to be as exhausted as possible by the end of the day, or having cycled at least 100 kilometres to call it a day.

After having followed several people on SM since I started planning this trip, I can now see a trend that travelling people can ‘burn out’ too, just like people who have the daily grind of a ‘normal working life’. Luckily, I am far away from this point but to be honest, if my mind would have insisted to cycle all the way through the desert, I probably would have lost some of my enthusiasm and motivation for my journey ahead.

On route, I’ve met long-term travellers who called their bikes ‘the enemy’, packed up and went home, I’ve met people who sold their bikes and continued by public transport and I’ve met a really funny British guy who sold his bicycle and had a ‘Royal Enfield’ sent out to him instead… It’s all about recognizing the warning signs in order to be able to continue to have fun!

Conversations

At times, I have been going without having a proper conversation for several days. This was especially the case through Kyrgyzstan, China and Laos, where I’ve met less other travellers but also less of the local people seem to speak English. Without conversations, the voice gets croaky and the learning about places slows down…

Bike packing vs bike touring

My setup is definitely a bike touring setup.

Whilst a bike packing setup is very minimalistic, as light as possible and often done with a mountain bike, my bike touring setup is on a sturdy steel bike, and I have still some elements of comfort with me; simple things like an extra shirt, swimming trunks, a small camping chair, and I even carry a spare tyre.

This all adds up to a bike with a total weight of about 50 kg. No mean feat to push up a hill, especially when it is on gravel! Therefore, I am choosing my routes much more carefully nowadays and try to take roads I can cycle rather than have to push too much. The backpain and trapped nerve as a result from having to push quite a bit when I was in Türkiye are still in my mind…

And here, I am giving a little secret away…

It is amazing how time heals and how dust settles!

You might remember Rebecca’s blog about her decision not to join me cycling through the outback of Australia. Her rational were the headwinds she experienced whilst cycling along the Rhine River, the slow grind and progress we made during those days and Australia will be too hot in January anyway…

And now, after all those months the headwinds are forgotten, and the dust has settled 😊 and Rebecca decided to rejoin me, hopefully as soon as towards the end of November when I should be in the southern part of Thailand.

Yes, we did adjust the route a bit too and instead of cycling from Darwin to Sydney, we will be doing Brisbane to Sydney. This is mainly because cycling through the tropical parts of Australia is not recommended during the rainy season as often, stretches of the road are flooded and closed and camping in those conditions wouldn’t be great either but also, the time would be too short in order to arrive in Sydney by the end of January ’25.

I can’t wait!

Just don’t mention to Rebecca the Great Dividing Range we will be cycling over...