Asia (all)

A travelogue from an 8 month, 16,000km bike tour from London to Beijing via the ancient silk roads.

A 40,000 km. 3 year ride through 30 countries, from far eastern Russia (Siberia) in winter, to London England, via Australia. Trying to cover the whole route by bicycle and boat only. I have encountered plenty of good times and a few tough ones, noteably in Siberia (camping at minus forty), Papua New Guinea (pushing my bike down a beach as no roads) and Tibet (in winter).

12 countries, 12,000 kilometers, five men and five bikes. This is the story of a remarkable bicycle journey across Asia nearly entirely by bicycle. At the time, we believed it to be geographically and politically, the most diverse summer ride the planet had to offer.

The website contains hundreds of high resolution photographs, extensive journals of each country and much advice on gear, immunizations, maps, routes and visas.

This was our first go at cycling in Asia. Our route along the Mekong and to Sukhothai was an excellent choice for a short bike trip in Thailand - villages, beautiful scenery, good roads and little traffic. We loved it. We also spent some time in Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Ayuthaya.

THE PLAN: My bags are packed, i've got a new bike (long story, best told over beer...) and i'm heading to the airport tonight. My plan for the trip is as follows:

Istanbul --> Bucharest --> Odesa --> Kiev

Each leg of the trip is about 600 km long and will take me about a week (at a stately pace). I'll try to send an email from each city. I'm hoping to take a train back to Istanbul and spend my last week checking out the sights there.

THE REALITY: Spent the bulk of the trip in Turkey, due to its inhabitants' incredible generosity and friendliness, as well as the dismal roads and driving in the Balkans.

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.

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've cycled over a number of passes these few weeks, but if I will remember one, then it will be Zoji La. It stands between Alpine-like valleys near Sonamarg and more rugged mountain ranges of upper Kashmir. The road is cut into a steep mountain slope and it seems it's a one-way road. As a cyclist I was allowed to go in the wrong dirrection. Before that, going up to the summit, I had a sur-realistic encounter with incredible number of trucks (at least 200) that were descending the pass practicaly bumper-to-bumber. With dirt road and the headwind it ment cycling in constant dust and exhaust fumes. By the time all the trucks passed I was as white as a baker after a night's shift.

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.

In March of 2006 we set out to cycle from the UK to Tibet. We didn't quite make it but had a great adventure cycling across Europe in one of the wettest winters on record and then through the wilds of Central Asia. The site includes lots of images from Tajikistan one of the really countries for cycling.

Questa volta dobbiamo ringraziare la perseveranza e la volonta` di Pierangelo che ci ha spinti e motivati nell'affrontare questa avventura.

Erano circa due anni che ci provava ed anche se non abbiamo fatto proprio quello che si era programmato all'inizio, siamo stati sul passo carrozzabile piu' alto del mondo (forse) ed abbiamo scorazzato per dieci giorni tra le montagne piu` alte del nostro globo.

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.

We felt that we were prepared for our trip to Vietnam. We had read lots of guide books, stories of the wars and the peace and novels by Graham Greene and Marguerite Duras. Lesley had spent a year trying to come to grips with some of the intricacies of the Vietnamese language and its pronunciation. We had talked to other people who had cycled in Vietnam. We didn't expect to be surprised. The immigration police lived up to their reputation for being rude and abrupt but everyone else was so friendly and helpful that it was almost embarrassing. Only a relatively short time earlier our country had been involved in a bloody war with these people and they were welcoming us with open arms. It took us by surprise.

Un viaggio incredibile tra le montagne e l'India, per conoscere veramente l'anima di questo stato, per assaporarne appieno la gente e i meravigliosi paesaggi ogni giorno nuovi.

I can't really remember how we came up with the idea. It wasn't like, 'Hey, let's cycle from Europe to Asia.' It was an accumulation of small and different snippets of information via the Internet, certain other events and I suppose fate, that all slowly came together to give us our planned destination 'ISTANBUL'.

One thing was definite, the good old faithful Blue Danube River played it's usual important role in the idea, which was to safely guide us, not all of the way, but at least a part of it.

``What road? There is no road. Just stones and rocks and rivers flowing over what is supposed to be the road. You cannot cycle there. Still there are some who try.

I do not know how, but they do. But it is impossible.'' An old English traveller tells about the road from Keylong to the Baralacha La. ``But I do not want to discourage you.''

We have cycled six weeks in the Indian Himalayas through Sikh, Hindu and Tibetan Buddhist country. We had to cross some of the highest cols of the world (5.000 m plus) to reach the stunning Ladakh, Nubra, Lahaul & Spiti valleys.

Joris en Stella fietsen vanaf augustus 2005 van Nederland richting China. Na een uitstapje door het middenoosten wordt nu de weg naar het oosten voor gezet.

[Commercial tour operator, plus general information.]

A unique and special tour crossing Israel hot spots. 2 weeks of travel (that are devided to 3 sectional rides) in which we will meet people, ethnic foods, culture, amazing historic sites and much more.

The Route:

Americas: Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina
Atlantic Traverse: Azores Islands [Portugal]
Europe: Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey
The Middle East: Iran
Central Asia: Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Pakistan, India
South East Asia: Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia
Australasia: Australia

Welcome to the Brink Expedition!

Imagine attempting a global traverse that would take you 50,000 kilometres through some of the most difficult terrain and extreme weather on the planet, all the time attempting to use only human power and the natural elements.

Starting deep in the heart of Amazonian South America the Brink Expedition will encounter unforgiving Patagonian winds, snowed over Himalayan Mountain passes, monsoons on the sub-continent and the oppressive heat of Australia's Red Centre.

So while the clock ticks, the seasons will turn, making this a full-throttled Race Against the Elements!

This website accompanies the book ``Why Don't You Fly?'' (ISBN 1-905203-25-X published by Pen Press).

How does it feel to trade comfort and security for life as a nomad and to pare one's life down to the bare necessities? What is it like to push at the frontiers of one's physical and mental endurance?

``Why Don't You Fly?'' is the account of an epic adventure in search of an elusive sense of identity in which triumph, disappointment, discomfort, exhaustion and exhilaration all trade positions against a backdrop of prodigious physical endeavour. During a gruelling 16,500-mile examination of physical and mental stamina the author ate and drank in roadside cafés in the company of inquisitive lorry drivers and shared dormitories in remote Chinese villages with fascinated farm hands and gleeful mosquitoes. Sceptical western existentialism met religious fatalism in the restaurants and teahouses of the Middle East and India in the course of a physical and spiritual journey that constantly raised questions about the attitudes and values that prevail in the West.

The Website includes a chapter-by-chapter synopsis of the book, a sample chapter and 93 photographs.

Photo albums and brief travelogues from two bicycle trips in South-East Asia in 2001 and 2002, repectively. The trip 2001 started in Singapore and took us through Malaysia, Thailand, Viet Nam and Lao. The journey in 2002 started in Chiang Mai, took us through Northern Lao, Isan, and Cambodia.

Travelogue of a 2700 km journey in Himalachal Pradesh, Ladakh, Nubra and Rupshu. The route was consistently on altitudes higher than 3000 metres, crossing Lachalung La 5065 m, Taglang La 5360 m, Khardong La 5603 m, Chang La 5519 m, Kiagar La 5000+ m, and Polakongka La 5115 m. Some of the passes were passed twice, as it was not possible to do a loop.

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

From April 19th to May 22nd I rode 2523 km in Turkey. I stayed in Marmaris the first week as the ticket I had bought in Copenhagen included hotel there for one week. I rode 268 km there to acclimatize, get tanned, and work out where to ride next in Turkey. After this week I first rode 745 km eastwards along the Mediterranean from Marmaris in the SW-corner of Turkey along the coast to Tarsus, then 919 km across the country to Havsa at the Black Sea, and then 593 km westwards along that coast. It was mostly quite easy being tourist in Turkey - no problem finding accommodation, mostly food is inexpensive, no shit-bureacracy or taxes at the borders, i.e. the basics work well. Turkey is also a very beautiful country, and extraordinary things happen, as I experienced on May 11th. What is then bad in Turkey? Millions of honking truck drivers, and lack of adequate maps. Some basic info is included at the end.

Trip 2 started August 2nd and ended September 5th. I started riding in Igdir in E-Turkey, from there I rode straight westwards. The itinerary (or places I slept) was as follows: Igdir (Ararat) - Kagizman - Horasan - Erzurum - Erzincan - Imranli - Sivas - Akdagmadeni - Yozgat - Kirikkale - Ankara - Sivrihisar - Bozhuyuk - Eskisehir - Bursa - Bandirma - Gelibolu - Uzunkopru - Edirne. That was 2078 km and took 20 days in the saddle - 104 km a day on average. There was less climbing than on trip 1, only few days involved more than 1000 m climbing.

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.

This is the story of a one-week-long trip in Anatolia [...], much of it having been done by trekking bike. The protagonists are two university lecturers in science, both with a solid interest in history, archaeology, and simple life in nature. Virtually all the ancient 2,000 to 4,000-year-old sites we visited are unknown to the general public, because of their remoteness from the tourist trail or because of their inaccessibility to tour buses. Nevertheless, most are absolutely fabulous sites. [...] I mainly wrote up this trip report so as to show that the ``real Anatolia'' still exists. So just sit back and enjoy the story for the sake of the story. I dedicate this report to the Anatolian people, those of yesterday and those of today, hoping that they will stay true to themselves tomorrow.

In the fall of 1998 I set off on a long journey by bike. It covered more than 15000 kilometers and 14 countries. During this trip I was hit by rocks and cars, I was baked, soaked, and deep frozen by the weather gods. Mostly, however, I had a superb opportunity to see some of the most beautiful scenery in the world, meet wonderful people and enjoy the culture of widely differing lands. This site is about my bike trip from Sweden to South-East Asia via Eastern Europe, The Middle East, Pakistan, China, and Tibet. It also contains general information and links on bicycle touring and travelling in general.

Le violente eruzioni dei vulcani Erciyes (3916 m) e Hasan (3268 m) avvenute tre milioni di anni fa, avevano ricoperto l'altopiano intorno a Nevsehir con tufo, una polvere composta da lava, cenere e fango. I venti e le piogge, erodendo queste rocce friabili, hanno creato dei paesaggi surrealistici spettacolari a forma di cono, di pinnacoli, di burroni scoscesi, dipinti con dei toni che variano dal rosso all'oro e dal verde al grigio.

For Kurban BayramI (``Sacrifice Feast'' in English, ``eid-al-adha'' in Arabic, in honor of Abraham's pledge to sacrifice his son (though God then bade him to sacrifice but a sheep), i.e. the Islamic holiday in the middle of ``Hac'' (``Hadj'' in Arabic), the Islamic pilgrimage month to Mecca), I drove with my Turkish friend TuGrul to the Mediterranean Sea for a mountain-bike tour in the Taurus Mountains. Here's an account of how we braved physical adversity and faced the impeccable logic of rural Turks.

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

A trip from the Netherlands to the USA - over Asia and Australia. The European part goes through Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Turkey.

Leaving home for a trip like this is not something one does from one day to the other. Along the way I joked often, saying: ``Yeah, one night I went out, got pissed and I am still trying to find my way home.'' In truth I had no foreign experience; well, none on my own. I had never been to an embassy before, I knew nothing about what's out there. Still I wanted to go, and with some hard work I managed to get my trip sponsored too! Getting ready to leave is always something special. Packing for a holiday, going out for a long weekend... Packing for a trip is even more emotional. Because I wasn't only packing my bags, I was packing all my belongings. Most of them went to storage, some of them into my bags. And with what I packed in my bags that 31st of may 1998, I lived for almost 3 years. What an adventure I was heading forward to... What a story you are about to read!

[The author travels around the world and reviews hostels, and has built up a large hostel directory.]

What are hostels?

The quickest answer I can give to you is that hostels are budget accommodations where you share a room with other travelers. To be more specific though and to give you a better idea of what to expect I will say that a hostel room is like a hotel room but instead of being just one bed there are a couple (or a few) bunk beds. There are also (gasp!) other people. People you do not know! These other people are travelers who are most likely very much like you in the sense that they are exploring and traveling and doing it as absolutely cheaply as possible. Hostels have been around a long long time. There are over 20,000 of them around the world. Hostels are very much a part of the culture of Europe, and are starting to be known in the USA as well. Hostels are a cheaper way of staying in a city where you do not live.

This search engine helps to find information provided directly from about 490 bike manufacturers.

A high quality photo gallery of over 350 loaded touring bicycles from around the world. A tribute to the loaded touring bike and the places the bikes take us. Expedition links and tourer profiles. Tailwinds!

If you are travelling in Israel, and you like cycling, you should do it around the Sea of Galilees. Here you will find a combination of road trails that will bring you to some holy places, like Kefar Nahum and Beit Tzaida. You will also will find lots of beautiful off-road trails in the nature resorts at the north side of the Kinneret lake, were you will cycle in banana, mango, lichee, and many other kinds of plantations. You can ride beside the Jordan river at its wild areas.

In Drachim Bagolan you can find very good mountain bikes that you'll enjoy riding on. We will help you with information, maps and any other assistance that will make your tour easy and safe.

For all those going abroad - or searching for advocacy-advice from other countries - here is a list of the 48 most important bicycle groups around the world. These groups specialize not only in bicycle advocacy but also in tourism, consumer issues, hpv-matters, etc. The list includes e-mail and homepage addresses where I have been able to find them - and a word of introduction (explanation) about the nature of these groups.

Ernst Poulsen is a photo journalist, and has photos from bicycle trips to China and Israel.