http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Bike-Tour-Eurasia/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from Bike Tour Eurasia en-us Tue, 22 Dec 2009 12:51:00 +0000 Tue, 22 Dec 2009 12:51:00 +0000 Learning to ride with a loaded bike can be humbling. The first time you set out on a tour it is hard to fathom what the bike will feel like under the load of all your gear. The unsteadiness you feel that first time mixed with the thought of the task at hand makes the whole undertaking seem for a moment unimaginable and you are given the opportunity to either quit go insane or focus on what you http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Netherlands/North-Holland/Amsterdam/blog-449671.html So a white guy a black guy and a Polock were on an airplane that was about to crash.................. and that was about all we knew about Poland when we crossed the border out of Slovakia. Growing up in the States most of us were exposed to a wealth of jokes where the unlucky Polish bloke always ends up doing the stupidest thing possible. After travelling for just ten days in the country it s http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Germany/Saxony/Dresden/blog-446627.html For the first 8000 kilometers of our journey we had few choices of routes in that over most of the Eurasian Steppe there are few roads connecting any two places. We would pick our next destination and ride there on the only route we could find. Sometimes this meant small remote tracks where we were excited to see another car horse anything that could confirm our choice at the last intersecti http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Slovakia/blog-441482.html Until a few weeks ago we had been riding through countries so massive that border crossings when they so seldom happened seemed interestingly quirky at worst. When we met with our dear friends in the Crimean we knew that one way or the other we would be crossing several international boundaries in only a few days. We thought this quite irksome as Julie and JP had to be in Bucharest for a flig http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Romania/Transilvania/Brasov/blog-436782.html Riding across the vast plains of southern Russia we had a hard time imagining what any government could possibly want with all of this flat dry land. As it stands now the federation is the largest country in the world. Trying to picture all of this PLUS the former CIS states is mind blowing given that Moscow is closer to New York than the Russian Far East. Here in the Crimean Penninsula howe http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Ukraine/Krim/blog-433308.html When we studied the history of WWII in school we learned of the triumphs of the allies over the Nazi regime. We watched films and read accounts of the fierce fighting that raged for four years in the fields of central Europe and watched shaky black and white films of soldiers grovelling up the beaches of Normandy while warships launched barage after barage of cover fire and many of us came to reg http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/South/Volgograd/blog-429449.html When the Soviet empire collapsed in the early nineties it was heralded in the west. The thought of centrally mandated collectivism makes a capitalist's blood run cold and many if not most Americans view or were taught to view this shift as a great victory in the name of the human spirit. The communists doubtlesssly had innumerable failings but as western popular media triumphed through kill http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Volga/Ufa/blog-425792.html Kazakhstan is by far the largest and most prosperous of the former Soviet Central Asian states. Stretching from the 7000m Tian Shan to the Caspian sea it is longitudinally nearly as large as the 48 contiguous states. In the east pipelines carry petros across the mountains into China. The western most regions where much of these petros are mined are technically in Europe. It is the richness http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Kazakhstan/blog-422005.html Definitions gol mongolian for river nuur Mongolian for lake aimag a mongolian state or province asalam aleykhem Kazakh for peace be with you. The Bohmoron Gol drains several lakes high in the boundary ranges which seperate Russia from Mongolia. It then flows through a large wide 50 km rocky valley rimmed with 4000 m peaks before dumping heavily turbid water into broad shall http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Russia/Siberia/Barnaul/blog-417358.html A truck went by..... three hours ago. Smoke Creek Desert Gary Snyder A few years ago a group of us were speeding across the basins of Northern Nevada en route to a remote hot spr http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Mongolia/Uvs/blog-412372.html We hit a strip of pavement a dozen kilometers before Moron. It felt like riding into some glassy fourth dimensional plane. After a few days the riding style becomes adapted to dirt roads and a brief return to pavement can be an exulting if eerie experience. Two weeks of pounding the dirt have brought us here healthy and sure footed with only one slashed tire to show for it. We heard m http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Mongolia/Khovsgol/Moron/blog-405220.html China stops at the Mongolian border. In Inner Mongolia province we experienced a fair amount of Mongolian culture as well as tourists hailing from Ulaanbaatar. Signs were usually written in both Chinese and Mongolian script and the cross cultural exchange was evident in nearly every facet of daily life. Mongolia crosses the border into China but the opposite does not hold true. The crossing w http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Mongolia/Ulaanbaatar/blog-400677.html 09May09Woke up very cold out misty foggy 5 degrees C in tent. Hard to get started. Eat apple each with some moldy smelling but not looking chipatis picked up our muddy tent and bikes and rolled away cold. I wore my bright SeeMe vest Madonna gave to me. smiley face goes hereVery wobbly front end this morning. Sometimes it seems more wobbly when I'm not pedaling and sometimes opposite. We thoug http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/Inner-Mongolia/blog-398820.html At any speed the landscape changes at an almost unpercievable pace. Subtle details transform around you but it is hard to put a finger on any one particular moment from whence everything has changed. The steppe is a vast grassland with an enormous sky. When we turn on the GPS the screen is filled with satelites fighting for recognition. The fact that this plain stretches on for distances that http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/Inner-Mongolia/Erlyan/blog-398657.html Up up and out of the city we climbed. Through the restored ramparts of the Great Wall and out onto a high plateau. Last night found us enjoying the company of folks who are by Chinese standards political dissidents. We don't see any of them heading to the capitol with a truck full of fertilizer and fuel oil any time soon. None the less when the local police entered their restaraunt the bili http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/Hebei/blog-396653.html Today finds us in Tianjin China where we have taken the day to find info maps etc and enjoy another round of damn fine food. Southern Japan was a pricey treat and procuring ferry tickets turned out to be far easier than finding our way to the dock After a few interrogation sessions with helpful locals including a spanish exchange by some strange chance we found the obscure footbridge http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/Tianjin/TEDA/blog-394562.html