Africa (all)

Welcome! We are Maria and Spiros, two slightly adventurous souls, who on January 12th, 2008 will begin a year long journey of a lifetime. The first part of our adventure will begin at the foot of the Pyramids in Giza, where we will embark on the 6th edition of the Tour D'Afrique. Starting in Cairo, Egypt and ending in Cape Town, South Africa, the Tour D'Afrique is a 12,000 km, 120 day cycling race/expedition across the exotic and intriguing African continent. More challenges and adventure are sure to follow as we then continue riding our bikes through Europe and Asia.

Our goal is to raise funds and awareness for WaterCan, a charity providing clean water and sanitation to impoverished communities, and Against Malaria which works to donate bed nets to fight Malaria, a devastating disease that kills over a million people a year.

Trip to Marrakesh. From Marrakesh over the High Atlas to the desert and back. As it was my first real cycling experience on my own I decided to stay on the main roads. There were only 20 km offroad.

Read about my adventures by bicycle around the world,taking in Europe, the Near East, India, South East Asia, Australasia, and the USA on Route 66.

For something a little less ambitious, I have prepared details of a three-week tour of the beautiful landscapes of central Portugal.

Or if you prefer a central base and some day rides, read about my routes on the Spanish island of Mallorca - a cyclist's paradise, with warm weather, flat hinterland, stunning mountain climbs, and huge ice-creams!

Just a simple compilation showing some photos of my solo, minimum preparation/planning, fast, travel light, using only my vacation allowance rides across the continents. First ride was with road bike, all other rides on Orange P7 rigid mountain-bike with semi-slick tyres.

3 men, 3 bikes and 3 months - a swing through the mountains, forests and great lakes of east and southern Africa.

We're Andrew & Friedel Grant - two Canadians who, after living in the UK for 6 years, have set off to travel the world by bicycle. We had no previous bike touring experience when we began, having really only gotten into cycling at the start of 2006, and when we say we ``got into cycling'' that means short commutes to work along flat cycle paths and the odd day trip, that usually ended up at the pub. We're still not quite certain how that translated into the situation where Friedel said ``hey, let's bike around the world'' and Andrew said ``sure, why not''. The first leg of our tour was in Canada, then through Europe to Morocco. We will keep cycling around the world; hopefully next towards eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Having sold all our belongings; paid all our debts; having said goodbye to all our friends, we will be looking forward to a five year cycling adventure. It will take us around the world and through five continents.

During our travels we'll keep you up-to-date via this site with travel stories via our diary; photos in our slide show; and we will even try to put some film in as well.

Wonderful Maroc!

I started my cycling holidays in Maroc. After traveling a great part of the world and to Maroc two times by bus and one time by hired car. I hoped there was something better to do it, and there was....the bicycle. Since then the cycling-bug got me and I visited more countries on a bicycle.

On my windows webspace the route and the pictures tell the story of a few bicycletrips in Maroc. Enjoy!

The author is selling a book on his tour around the world, but has made several chapters available for free, in PDF format. Espcially the chapters on Ethiopia and Siberia are fascinating to read and among the best stories found on Trento Bike. This is true adventure. Here are two short paragraphs:

• Ethiopia How can two sides of one village be so different? One hundred metres from Sudan and I had left behind Islam and North Africa and was into the continent's heart. The buildings, people and attitudes all felt different. The red dirt road was busy with pedestrians. Barefoot people and donkeys easily outnumbered the few fume-spewing, rattling vehicles. Women walked shaded beneath golf umbrellas, a strange sight in the African sun. Men bore a stout staff across their shoulders, their hands hooked over like wings. In Sudan the ladies flowed in colourful loose robes and men with bushy moustaches glided around in white galibayahs. In Ethiopia the men wore tight little shorts and tattered T-shirts, repaired many times, with a blanket draped over their willowy shoulders.

• Siberia We rode on and on through a frigid emptiness of low hills white with snow or black leafless woods. The white road ahead on the wooded hillsides stood out like a photo negative. The horizon's high mountains looked enticing and I felt happy to be here, to be at the ends of the earth with my bicycle. ``I'm out here a thousand miles from my home, walking a road other men have gone down. I'm seeing a world of people and things,'' sang Dylan in my headphones.

Also check out the expedition advice.

South of Tunisia: a interesting country to visit with a bicycle.

We are now in Cambodia, after 10 months of cycling thru New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia, Thailand. Our site is bilingual.

Our web site is about the trip that we are now realizing. We have gone across the world to go back to Canada. We already crossed 5 different countries in 10 months. We will keep biking for around 2 more years. The subject treated by the web page is mostly about our trip (story, pictures, organisation) but we added a lot of other stuff like recipes, rock climbing, and small articles. We are French-Canadian, so our web site is belingual.

I decide to leave Switzerland and cycle until Tibet. The road decide for me and I finally arrive one and an half year later in Cape Town, South Africa. This is a journey dedicated to freedom, people and nature. This tour may continue to South America but I'm still working as a tour guide in Namibia to get money for the next destinations.

Have a look on my cold stage in Turkey, nice time in Syria, amazing Sudanese crossing, wild Tanzanian experience, pure Namibia, etc... I hope you will enjoy and feel free to contact me.

Bicycle world tour part II from Mun Suk and Eric Wehrheim. Actual tour in South and maybe Central America. Open end. On the homepage you will find also some information and fotos from our bicycle-world-tour part I who was from Germany to South Corea by crossing Africa.

If the link to our homepage doesn´t work well (sometimes in South America this happend to me) please go to http://aventurero.cjb.cc. It´s the same page only on another server.

A 30,000 kilometer cycling adventure through Africa traversing 30 countries. Tales from the saddle, photos of the people we encounter and places we pass plus detailed information on our bikes and gear.

The landscape is completely flat. There is nothing at all, nothing but stones. And sand. Although there is nothing to see, the emptiness has its own beauty. There is a quietness coming over me despite the harsh circumstances. All the problems and possibilities of life seem to dissolve in the infinity of the landscape.

From Marrakech, we have cycled across the Atlas into the Sahara. In two intense weeks we learned to know a bit about the many faces of Moroccan society and we were able to explore the extraordinary Atlas-Sahara region.

This is my own personal diary from a solo trip I made by bicycle around Southern Morocco over Christmas and New Year 2005/2006. My bicycle tours invariably seem to turn into wild and woolly adventures involving deserts, mountains, extremes of weather... and fantastic experiences. This trip was meant to be a little less 'epic' in nature, as such all the camping gear was left at home in favour of guesthouses and pensions though I did fill the space to a degree with a lot of cold weather gear and my sleeping bag - fortunately as you'll see! It worked out well, though the terrain and weather proved to be no less extreme than past adventures and events did not quite turn out in accordance with my admittedly very rough pre-trip plan.

This, my second visit to Morocco, only served to strengthen the memories I have of the country as being populated by overwhelmingly hospitable people and blessed with some of the grandest scenery on the planet.

Picture by Mike Hayes, http://www.mikesimagination.net.

In 2001 vanuit Nederland vertrokken en nu okt 2005 meer dan 65.000 km en al meer dan 40 landen doorgefietst.

Bei der geplanten Tour wollte ich 5 neue, interessante Abschnitte erfahren.Für die Strecke 1 lagen Beschreibungen vor, der Rest ließ sich vor der Tour nicht in Erfahrung bringen.

1. Strecke durchs ``östliche'' Ait Mansour-Tal
2. Pistenverbindung Anti-Atlas (Izerbi) an die Strasse Akka - Bouizarkane
3. Piste Akka - Imitek
4. Piste Tagmoute - Tiguermine
5. Piste Tiguermine - Agadir Tasguent - Souk Tnine Toufelazt usw. zurück zum Flughafen

Ja, hebben jullie het al gezien, we zijn meer dan 4 jaar onderweg. Wat een tijd en toch.... we genieten er nog elke dag van. Nu zijn we in Jujuy, noord Argentinië. Via Chili gaan we binnenkort naar Bolivia, waar we een tijdlang niet zullen kunnen internetten. We zullen op grote hoogte gaan fietsen, hoogtes waar we nog niet eerder waren. Of dat prettig is.. jullie zullen het later lezen.

Der folgende Tag stand natürlich ganz im Zeichen der Besichtigung der alten Stätte. Nach einem längeren Fußmarsch erreichte man den Siq, jene imposante, enge Schlucht, die den Einstieg in die Stadt darstellt. Bis hier hatte man auch den Schock über die knapp 50 DM Eintrittsgeld verdaut... Den ganzen Tag stiefelten wir zu Zweit durch die Ruinenstadt, bei brüllender Hitze bergauf und bergab. Neben dem 8000 Menschen fassenden Amphitheater beeindruckte uns vor allem die Anlage als Ganzes und der gute Erhaltungszustand der Gebäude. Alles machte einen ungemein plastischen Eindruck, der Sandstein schimmerte in vielfältigen Farben. Irgendwann ließen jedoch die Hitze und die Menschenmassen die Aufnahmefähigkeit sinken, so daß wir uns zur Rückkehr entschlossen.

Der folgende Tag diente der Erholung. Die Hitze begann unerträglich zu werden, selbst auf dieser Höhe herrschten schon weit über 30° C im Schatten, wir ruhten uns also aus und bereiteten und mental auf die Bezwingung des Desert-Highways vor, wovor uns allerdings schon ein wenig graute angesichts der dort herrschenden Geschwindigkeiten und Verkehrsdichte.

Hurgada - Sharm-el-Sheikh - wadi Dahab - mt. Sinai - oazis Feiran - Suets - Cairo - Luxor - Quena - Hurgada.

The old riverbeds that cross the mountains of Sinai Peninsula are called ``wadi''. Now the rains are rare, but when they happen these narrow valleys become rivers again. We could see signs of it as the soil was a mixture of sand, stones and thorns, and we had to ride on narrow dry streams of clay that could hold the bicycles. The thorns probably belonged to some poisonous plant as they poisoned our living a lot. One day we had to repair the flat tires at least seven times.

From the moment we started, we knew this was going to be a holiday with a difference. Maybe it was the envious looks we got from British cyclists on the way to Heathrow, or maybe it was the stares from shocked Spaniards as we did a sudden strip-tease beside the baggage reclaim in Madrid, revealing if not our true colours, then at least our lycra-clad limbs. Full of gorgeous pictures well worth waiting for...

Tussen juli 1995 en december 1996 hebben wij een fietsreis gemaakt van Rotterdam naar Kaapstad. Op deze reis hebben we door twintig landen gefietst in Europa, het Midden Oosten en Afrika. In anderhalf jaar tijd hebben we een afstand van ruim 20.000 kilometer afgelegd. Op deze internet-site kun je enkele verhalen over deze reis lezen en de mooiste van onze honderden foto's bekijken.

A brilliant site, with several well-described itineraries.

``First, this was not a bicycle tour. It could probably be done by bicycle but I used trains, boats, and buses. And camels, of course. My excuse to put it here that I rented a bicycle in Luxor and rode through the desert to the Valley of the Kings.'' The previous Trento Bike manager, Andreas Caranti, is particularly sympathetic, as he did the same as a young man: his first off-road experience! (And the new manager is the guy on the camel.)

[We] spent about a week touring Tunisia in June 1994. We took road bikes and stayed in hotels. It was nice and sunny, but there was sometimes a stiff north westerly breeze.

A site filled with tours all over Europe, Africa, Asia, and America.

The desert is subtle and baffling, with few landmarks and none that appear on any map. For those of us from temperate climes, travelling through such an extraordinary environment can be a mystical experience. It is a disarming vacuum, seemingly benign and very romantic. But come tea time, we come into our own, as temperatures plummet and camel dung camp fires become compulsory. On a clear night, the canopy of stars is awesome and the silence creepy. By 5:00 am, the temperatures are sub-zero.

We spent the first week of March 2004 cycling to, around, and back from Tafraoute at the western end of the Moroccan Anti-Atlas. We had been there before, trekking with Exodus in late 1992.

This time we flew to Agadir and on the following morning took our bikes by minibus to Aït Baha, from where we rode on to Tafraoute. We spent 3 days cycling around - largely on pistes - and then rode to the Col du Kerdous, perched over the coastal plain. An easy descent took us to Tiznit, and we returned to Agadir by taxi.

We stayed in upmarket hotels, booked from England by telephone and confirmed by fax. Route-finding was never much of a problem, but it helps to have some acquaintance with the Arabic script since many signposts on tracks and minor roads have no Latin transliterations. We took a GPS unit with us but could have got by perfectly well without it.

The notes of [8 nights spent] in southern Morocco in November 2000. Includes a narrative and gorgeous pictures.

A nice report, with plenty of photos. Itinéraire:

• Jour 1: Arrivée à Ceuta le matin. Petite journée d'échauffement jusqu'à Martil
• Jour 2: Martil à Oued Laou, par la très jolie route côtière
• Jour 3: Oued Laou à Chefchaouen, en suivant la rivière qui prend sa source à Chaouen
• Jour 4: Repos à Chefchaouen
• Jour 5: Chefchaouen à Zoumi, en plein c?ur des campagnes du Rif
• Jour 6: Zoumi à Karia Ba Mohamed, sortie du Rif
• Jour 7: Karia à Volubilis (ruines romaines très touristiques)
• Jour 8: Volubilis à Meknès
• Jour 9: Repos, visite de Meknès
• Jour 10: Meknès à Tanger en bus
• Jour 11: bateau pour l'Espagne

Eine Atlasüberquerung per Rad.

From the moment we started, we knew this was going to be a holiday with a difference. Maybe it was the envious looks we got from British cyclists on the way to Heathrow, or maybe it was the stares from shocked Spaniards as we did a sudden strip-tease beside the baggage reclaim in Madrid, revealing if not our true colours, then at least our lycra-clad limbs.

The diary of a trip from Marrakech over the Atlas, along the Draa valley to Zagora, then coasting the Sahara to Tata and Akka, over the anti-Atlas to Tiznit.

An enormous collection of bicycle tours all over the world.
Eine enorme Sammlung von Fahrradtouren in der ganzen Welt.

Man on a bicycle can go three or four times faster than the pedestrian, but uses five times less energy in the process. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer of flat road at an expense of only 0.15 calories. The bicycle is the perfect transducer to match man's metabolic energy to the impedance of locomotion. Equipped with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well. [...]

Bicycles are not only thermodynamically efficient, they are also cheap. With his much lower salary, the Chinese acquires his durable bicycle in a fraction of the working hours an American devotes to the purchase of his obsolescent car. The cost of public utilities needed to facilitate bicycle traffic versus the price of an infrastructure tailored to high speeds is proportionately even less than the price differential of the vehicles used in the two systems. In the bicycle system, engineered roads are necessary only at certain points of dense traffic, and people who live far from the surfaced path are not thereby automatically isolated as they would be if they depended on cars or trains. The bicycle has extended man's radius without shunting him onto roads he cannot walk. Where he cannot ride his bike, he can usually push it.

The bicycle also uses little space. Eighteen bikes can be parked in the place of one car, thirty of them can move along in the space devoured by a single automobile. It takes three lanes of a given size to move 40,000 people across a bridge in one hour by using automated trains, four to move them on buses, twelve to move them in their cars, and only two lanes for them to pedal across on bicycles. Of all these vehicles, only the bicycle really allows people to go from door to door without walking. The cyclist can reach new destinations of his choice without his tool creating new locations from which he is barred. [...]