Life of Bicycle touring
After days of entertainment in Seoul it was time to get back on the road. Seoul had been a blast. Martin was back from Denmark and Susanne was back from the WWOOFing farm. We prepared Mojo and Isaba who we dearly missed and cycled out of the city to discover the countryside of South Korea. We were [...]
The backroads of Eastern China were waiting and we were back in Gubeikou after four great days in Beijing. Beijing had proven to be a real surprise for us as we expected a busy and a city filled with modern houses and it was actually quite a cosy place. We left Mojo and Isaba in Gubeikou as [...]
After cycling alongside the Great Wall for quite some kilometers we were ready to start ascending it. We had picked the village Gubeikou as our starting point from where we wanted to walk to the Jinshanling section. Great photos from the Great wall hike The Great wall part 1 and The Great wall part 2 Our arrival at Gubeikou [...]
We took a day to settle back in to China, enjoy Chinese food and the bustling streets of Erenhot. This is a city in Inner Mongolia an autonomous region in China, also called Ereen or Erlian, where Susanne had been before on her way to Ulaanbaatar. Enjoy the photos Erenhot, the Chinese Gobi and The road to Gubeikou There [...]
It was hard to leave Ulaanbaatar. Our winter break had been good in many ways. We had created a nice social life, gotten to know quite a few really nice people, established bonds with Mongolians and with projects going on in Ulaanbaatar. But it was time to go and we were cycling the Gobi, a desert with surprises! Our goals [...]
We have gotten to know the city of Ulaanbaatar reasonably well because Susanne stayed here more than two months and Martin almost six weeks. It is a city of contrast. We both felt very comfortable in Ulaanbaatar. Maybe even too comfortable. For us it was the first city in a long time where everything was available although [...]
After knowing that Martin and I would split up for a while (because he was cycling through Mongolia) I started looking into what I could be doing. First my eyes were set in southern China, but soon I decided that I wanted to go to Mongolia after all and spend my time there. I was looking at [...]
In Mongolia there are two major traditional holidays. One is in summer and is called Naadam, the other is in winter and is called Tsagaan Sar or white moon. Tsagaan Sar is the celebration of the Lunar New Year, following the same calendar as the Chinese New Year. The photos of this special celebration can be found [...]
In Altai I had time to think and decided on a change of plans. I now was planning to follow the south route to Ulaanbaatar. The original plan was to cycle north from Altai to Uliastai. Due to being in the winter of Mongolia I decided on the easier and shorter southern route Altai, Bayankhongor, Arvaikheer, Lun, [...]
So, I arrived at Hohhot East train station at around 16:30. I was still operating on western China time and hadn't realized that the sun would already be so far down. I thought I had enough hours of daylight left, but instead I had to rush. I asked a porter to help me with my two huge [...]