Boarding the plane to Hong Kong and knowing to be back on the road soon felt really good after spending almost 3 months in Germany. Arriving back in Kunming made me instantly feel like coming home. Before I could leave the airport I was held back by the immigration police as the only one, and there had been quite a few westerners with me on the plane. I suspect the visa-extension, I had obtained last year after leaving Tibet, or perhaps they had information stored in their database about the fine and the alien travel permit which I obtained in Ali in West Tibet. After a brief check (more…)

I left Guiyang following the motorway. Unless there are alternative roads, taking the motorway with a bicycle is legal in China. I didn’t know wether there was another road nor how to find it, so I just continued and was rewarded with a nice 140km ride on perfectly smooth tarmac, little traffic and moderate climbs. Passing the ‘Dragon’s Backbone’, the rice terraces of Longshen, the first part of my ride that day took me along the banks of a stunning (more…)

Northwest Yunnan was spectacular with its authentic Tibetan culture, gorgeous views and friendly people. But also, there was a big presence of package tourists, Chinese and international due to relative ease of accessibility of the region. Reaching the town of Zhongdian, better known as Shangri-La, was another milestone: being back to “civilisation”, and the first and best place to obtain the desperately needed visa extension. After I had found the PSB Office, I managed to get another two months on (more…)

I had planned to stay five days or so but in the end left Lhasa after almost two weeks. I had caught a cold with a strong cough and cycling without being well didn’t sound like a good idea. The cough was persistent, though after a couple of days when I felt fit enough I decided that there was no point in hanging out for another week, so I hit the road hoping it would vanish with some exercise. Lhasa (more…)

I reached Lhasa on Sept 19. We left Kashgar as a group of four: the Catalans Imma & Pep, me and Joe from Switzerland. On the 2nd day out of Kashgar a few km’s down the road from Yarkand, we Claude, the Yakman. The perfect time for a break to hang out with this bike-celebrity. The usual bike-traveller chit-chat started and when the topic came to broken rims, I mentioned that my back wheel was behaving funny since Tajikistan. (more…)

The rest of the ride through Uzbekistan passed without any particular events. Most of it was through shadeless desert, except for the occasional caikhana. But once in a caikhana, I couldn’t really enjoy it. As soon as I arrived at place, I was besieged by curious locals. The problem with them wasn’t their curiosity in the first place, but rather that everybody approached me individually with the same set of questions, making me feel like an answering machine. So. Most (more…)

Aqtau, the next morning. I had to find a cheap room. If looked at closely, Aqtau is quite a bizarre place. The town doesn’t have a well or any other water supply except for a desalination plant, powered by a nuclear power plant which also supplies the town with electricity. Apart from that, Aqtau holds next to nothing of interest for the average tourist. There are few hotels relicts of the old soviet days, which is perhaps an explanation for (more…)

Taking a ferry across the Caspian Sea turned out to be one oft the greatest headaches so far – Well, this is a special one. This ferry is not a ferry in terms of offering ferry services to the public; it’s a cargo vessel for big trucks and train carriages with some more or less unofficial passenger facilities – basically the staff is sharing their cabins for a little mite, usually USD 10$. To successfully catch the boat there are (more…)

There is no direct ferry service from Greece to Turkey. Greek ferries go to some greek island located in front of the Turkish coast, there one has to go through customs and take a connecting vessel. Well, I missed it mine, so I had an unintended stay on the, at this time of the year rather boring island of Kos. The reason for this is sort of really embarrassing, so I don’t want to go into detail. When I arrived (more…)

On January 4nd, after having a final breakfast at my parents place, I left my hometown of Böblingen. My goal for the first few days was to reach lake constance, cycle up the rhine valley, cross the swiss alps over the Julier pass to meet Edith on the 14th in Milan. Edith contacted me by surprise on a stale advert in a cycling-board on the internet a few weeks before christmas, asking where I was and that she would like (more…)