We are back in Europe! (Culture shock for us.) ...And Europe did welcome us with the full amount of autumn-atmosphere! For one month we were cycling from North to South. Coast, two capitals, territories of bears, rain, sometimes dizzling, pickled cucumbers and a lot of sauna for us. :)
Now the time had come: we went on our way home. We do not head east anymore, we travel to the west now. On rail tracks we went with the Transsibirian Railway through whole Russia. We enjoyed a lot to travel like this, as we had time to reflect and get in the right mood to head home. By train we arrived in Europe... Crazy shit!
Several weeks we could stay in the Tibetian plateau between yaks & yurts in the very west of China. In slow speed (it was simply to high to hurry) we cycled through the middle of nowhere. It was fucking cold and just beautiful!
And in the end we really made it. We arrived in Beijing. :)
Strawberry, the fat pic, Bowie, the small cheeky goat, and Tic-Tac, the ADHD-dog with skin irritations.... - we liked them all!
20 kilometers before we crossed the border from Laos to China we decided to change our route and traveled back to Thailand. There we could spend two weeks on "The little farm". Awesome decision!
Rice fields, jungle forests, rubber-plantation,... and in between the doze the bombs from a war in the neighbor countries that is more than 40 years ago.
Sometimes we better liked to make our own breakfast than eating the spicy "Som Tam"-salad every morning...
Our time in Thailand was super relaxing, emotionally constant and just nice.
Men in skirts, women with coloured faces, a flood of temples, monks everywhere, a lot of cycling-kilometers and things to see.
See our adventures in Myanmar. It was great!
Cycling in the tea gardens we look to the highest mountain of India.
Afterwards we were waiting for three weeks for a parcel in a small town. Luckily there were a lot of adventures that made our waiting wonderful...
Marijuana for the rhino, elephants and sparkling wine for us, sand for the gear and kilometers for the tacho.
We announce proudly: The Highway Number 1 lies behind us.
Nepal that means for us: 1000 kilometers on the Highway Number 1. We made nearly half of it. To take a breather and for a little bit of asphalt-abstinence we did flee in the mountains to discover the country by feet.
Between holy cows, stealing monkeys and honking masses of traffic we did flee from the smog in the capital to start our way to the mountains of Nepal.
Suddenly we were with the guy because of whom we originally wanted to travel through Iran: Shahab.
Together we travelled to the South. And the best: There were camels everywhere.
Suddenly we were 5 cyclists. ...And everything turned out to be different than expected! For nearly 24 hours we have been living on a truck, we cycled through the desert and discovered that mosques are the perfect place as a shelter to sleep.
The first two weeks in Iran. A lot of time for chats, to really arrive in the country. We found out about crazy facts & scurrilities and tried to understand the live and the living.
The pictures tell more than a thousand words.
Wonderful landscape, really tough mountains, on the way of the Armenian Silk Road. Showered with presents and on the way in loneliness.
Finally. The first social project where we could volunteer. In Tbilisi we stayed with LifeChance, an association which supports disadvantaged teenagers while they grow adult.
Besides we could help at a grape harvest, made a photo-shooting and produced a thousand of khinkali.
...And again we experienced a very lot of valuable time without our bikes. Hiking with friends, being part of the capital. We discovered Georgia from a completely other perspective than by bike in the countryside.
One time with our heads in the washing machine - that is how it felt when we arrived in Georgia. We have been crossing the Black Sea with the ferryboat. Afterwards we could get to know Georgia directly with the delicate mountains, their mountain villages and unforgettable views and even more unforgettable people.
Even cyclists are allowed to go on holiday.
That is why we scouted out the Bulgarian mountainside by train and finally we had really joyful visitors...
Wine, heat, celebrating birthday, enjoying a visit, giving up a plan, making a lot of kilometers, again: heat, endless roads, more heat...
...and finally the sea. The Black Sea.
We crossed to Danube, and get to the EU again,...
...and everything was different.
Time in Belgrade, on a visit to a 9-persons-family and finally through the second narrow passage of the Danube and the Iron Gate...
We think that we couldn't have been welcomed more lovely in the next country. Serbia grabbed us from the first moment and we had nothing else than a good time with finest encounters.
Not everything can be easy!
Maybe that is we experienced the time in Hungary meagre.
In the end we stayed longer than we wanted.
The river Danube led us til Budapest.
A lot of funny incidents followed after each other in a few days in this country where we don't understand a word.
Short, but colorful - that describes the time in Slovakia best.
In two visits we could cycle the very South of the country.
After our time volunteering on the farm we were showered with a wine-festival in the Austrian wine-area Wachau. Vine as far as you could see!
Afterwards we enjoyed big city life in Vienna between friends and climbed the Flak tower.
A farm to join - that was our live at "Sheep and bee", where we could volunteer and be part of their family live.
An April you can not imagine did greet us in Austria with early summer and sunburn.