We are coming out with our first Newsletter to inform you how our planning is going, what we have been doing and what we are going to do in next couple of weeks/months.
It has been already 5 months since we’ve decided to leave New Zealand and go home. Go home by bike. We have another 5 months for planning and preparing ourselves both mentally and physically ahead. As time flies our plan is getting shape, colour and matter. Our “silly idea” is getting serious and we know we are creating our future right now.
We bought our bikes about 2 months ago. Some people invest in gold. We invested in steel. We have bought rigid steel frame bikes for a simple reason: to have bikes as simple as possible and to be able to fix any eventual failures. For more information about our bikes and gear, go HERE.
Since we bought the bikes, we know we have been doing baby steps forward. Besides we are working hard we are reading guidebooks and looking for all important information about countries, visas and border crossings. We have changed our mind and instead of flying from Auckland to Bangkok we are going to fly to Chiang Mai. We will get 30 days visa on arrival which we can spend in attractive Northern Thailand (instead of Bangkok) and then we are going to do a loop in SE Asia in clockwise direction – Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia and back to Bangkok to organize our visa for Myanmar. Check out our planned route HERE. Now we are searching for information about Myanmar’s visas and special permits and about an overland border crossing into India, which can be impassable. Plus we will need a (way more expensive) Classic Tourist Indian Visa because with a (cheaper) E-Visa you may only enter India trough International Airports. When we realized it, we were thinking about skipping Myanmar and flying from Bangkok to India/Nepal instead. But our journey is supposed to be about overland travelling so we are going to try our luck. Fingers crossed.
But Indian visas are just the beginning. We will need Chinese visa and a special permit for Tibet, and Mongolian and Russian visa. We have heard it is not easy to get any of them. Special if you don’t apply from your residential country.
Meanwhile we are biking as much as we can to improve our skills and to break-in our new leather saddles. The latest bike trip was the Welcome Rock Trail – a 27km long loop in beautiful countryside. And when the weather allows we do the Weekend Coffee Rides – morning bike rides ended with self-brewed coffee on the lakefront. I am also working on my photo/video skills to be able to make good shots in motion and send them to Michal who is going to make a movie about our journey.
Before winter definitely comes, we hope to do at least one multiday trip with our new bikepacking bags from our very best sponsor Acepac who will send bags from Czech Republic in any moment.
Stay tuned for more updates and possibly for a video from biking Welcome Rock Trail.