Boarding the plane to Hong Kong and knowing to be back on the road soon felt really good after being home for almost 3 months. Arriving back in Kunming made me instantly feel like coming home. The heat, the crazy traffic and life just about everywhere! After acclimatizing for a couple of days, I soon realized that apart from having put on weight, most of my fitness was gone. And so the first days felt like I wouldn't have had ever cycled before. If you don't use it - you lose it. It's just like that. But fortunately the body seems [View Full Entry]

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Left Guiyang following the Motorway. Which is legal in China if there are no minor roads in place, e.g. for routes leaving a major town. But sooner or later all slow traffic is meant to leave, or made to leave. Not this time, which enabled me to enjoy 140km this day on excellent, smooth road, with very few traffic and just occasional climbs. The first part of my itinerary took me along a nice river to Guilin, passing the "Dragon's Backbone"-rice terraces at Longshen. Guilin is just another big city, but touristy for the famous karst rockformations and the Li-river. My [View Full Entry]

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Northern Yunnan proved to be almost the best part of Eastern Tibet - Tibetan culture, spectacular sceneries and friendly people! Reaching Shangri-La was another milestone: being back to "civilisation" and the first and best place to get a desperately needed visaextension. Got another 2 months without any problems, stayed there for 3 days - pretty relieved - enjoying western food and the company of fellow-cyclists. Left Shangri-La on a backroad leading to the northern end of the Tiger Leaping Gorge. Went through the TLG, and headed for Dali. Decided to skip Lijiang for several reasons (back [View Full Entry]

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Left Lhasa after 13 days. Planned to stay five or so, but caught a cold with a strong cough which I had to cure first. The cough was persistent, but I decided that there was no point in hanging out for a nother week or so hoping it would go away. Don't get me wrong, Lhasa is a great place to hangout (except for bedbugs and some nutcases in dorms...) and I could have easily stayed for another month or two, but the winter was approaching and my visa about to expire and I can't gewt extension in Tibet! So I [View Full Entry]

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Reached Lhasa on Sept 19. Left Kashgar together with Imma & Pep, the crazy Catalans :-), and Joe from Switzerland. On the 2nd day out of Kashgar, a few kms after Yarkant we met the "Yakman" Claude Marthaler and Nathalie. We were just talking about broken rims, as I discovered that my backrim was broken as well! I didn't like this decision but I was so close to Kashgar, so I decided to go back to get this issue sorted out. At the Giant Bikeshop they didn't have as strong rims as I would have liked, but they had a 32 [View Full Entry]

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Due to the server outage it might be that all my blogging is lost! For obvious reasons I will not continue for the moment. Sorry 'bout that! Heading for Tibet on Thursday. Cheers, Andy [View Full Entry]

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One oft he greatest headaches so far - I finally made it! I managed to take the ferry from Baku/Azerbaidjan to Aktau/Kazakhstan, where I am now. Taking a ferry doesn't sound all too difficult, does it? Well, this is a special one. This ferry is mainly a cargoship, roll-on, roll-off, which also accepts some passengers. The first problem with catching this ferry is that there are no schedules. The ferry comes when it comes and so does it leave. Nobody has information or is keen about giving it out until right before it is there. So what you do is [View Full Entry]

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LEAVING TURKEY... was a bit odd. Since Diyarbakir it seemed I was struck by bad luck. First I tried to continue to Lake Van being stubborn and cycled all day in the pouring rain, ending up being soaking wet catching a cold. Decided to skip Lake Van and go straight to Erzurum by bus. Unfortunately the guy sitting next to me was even more sick than me and probably transmitted some of his germs to me. So upon arrival in Erzurum I felt really sick and had to stay in bed for a week! Went to the Iranian consulate several [View Full Entry]

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Yes, I know: there is no officially recognized country by the name of "Kurdistan" - but hey: travel to South-Eastern Anatolia and talk to some locals! So, here's my personal Kurdistan Experience: From the West, the part of Turkey with high kurdish population roughly start east of the Malatya - Adana Highway going all the way up to Erzurum until the Turkish/Georgian border. Having travelled from Elbistan to Batman via the towns of Golbasi, Adiyaman, Katha, Siverek and Diyarbakir I experienced people as being friendly and supportive until west of the Firat river. The town of Siverek proved [View Full Entry]

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