Some useless facts you can immediately forget …
(May 2002 until September 2008)
The accomplishments, well well…
| Cycled with luggage | 60.000 km |
| Without luggage | also a lot but we didn’t keep tab |
| Longest distance in one day | 165 km (northern Namibia, level route and light tailwind) |
| Shortest distance in one day | 19 km (in Lesotho, over a kind of goat track, it took us the whole day and we pulled the bicycles more than we actually cycled)
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| Longest saddle sit | 9 1/2 hours net in the saddle in southern China to reach Shangri La in order to watch the European Championship-match Netherlands-Russia (the Netherlands lost) |
| Total ascension | 414 km, straight up in the sky |
| Maximum ascent in one day | 2.365 m Jalori Pass, Indian Himalayas; with a so-so roadmap, not knowing what was ahead of us, to over 3000 metres altitude, with rain, cold and wind. All of this on Peter’s birthday
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| Most difficult paved climb | from the Dead Sea to the King’s Road in Jordan; climbing 2156 metres in one day from a scorching fly-infested valley to a mountain ridge where we ended the day in wintery cold with a cutting headwind |
| Most difficult unpaved pass | the ‘Hell’ in South-Africa and the Sani Pass, at the border between South-Africa and Lesotho; both unpaved and extremely steep
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| Strongest headwind | Haboob, Egypt; roughly 9 on the Beaufort scale, with sand; our skins received a free scrub-treatment |
| Hottest headwind | during the descent from Citrusdal in South-Africa towards Namibia the hairs were singed off our legs as if a giant hair dryer at the highest position tried to barbeque us |
| Maximum speed | 87.6 km/hour (Peter), 74.6 km/hour (Karin) |
| Visited countries | 38, including our own frog country |
The big sleeping
On a bicycle journey sleeping, just like eating and drinking, is of vital importance. The best nights are often in our own tent, |
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but still we spend most nights in a hotel or guesthouse. A number of times we dreamed in a hospital, several shepherd huts in Tibet, |
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| a school or on a boat. We also slept in an amphitheatre, ruins, |  |
| at many homes of hospitable Koreans, a church, in the open air between Pakistani soldiers, a caravanserai, a portacabin with air-conditioning in a marina in the Emirates, |  |
the luxury apartment of Marleen and Paul in the same country, a train, a tourist information centre high in the mountains of Lesotho, at several South-African homes, a truck, a date-plantation, three weeks at Arie cs in Beijing, a pick-up truck and a monastery. |
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Most special place to sleep
The caravanserai built in 1574 in Payas |
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| Turkey; we were allowed to make our bed in one of the ancient shops, after having enjoyed a cold bath in the antique hamaam. Foto 10 The guard told us we were the first travelers ever allowed to do so… |  |
Misery and other difficulties
| Somersault | 3 times |
Terrifying fall |
1 (Karin in Namibia, a drama of the first kind, see Namibia, the Fall 1 and 2)
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| Collisions | 2 (without damage) |
| Falling asleep whilst cycling | 3 (really true, Karin is very good at sleeping; since we rediscovered ORS it never happened again) |
| Operations | 2 (fairly divided, one each)
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| Dentist-visits | 11 times in 7 countries with alternating success... |
| Malaria | 1
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| Thrown at with stones | 10 (of which 8 times in Ethiopia) |
| Robbed | 7 (mainly small things, but once a handle bar bag with contents) |
| Lost each other | 5 |
| Found each other | 5 |
| Attacked by ticks | 6 |
| Attacked by ants | 218 (our most frequent tormentors whilst camping as well as in hotels) |
| Attacked by mosquitoes/flies | thousands of times |
| Run over by rats | 3 (two times in bed, once in a restaurant, always in India) |
| Pannier eaten by rats | 1 (in fancy hotel in Islamabad)
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| Kicked by ostrich | 1 |
| Stung by scorpion | 1 |
| Bitten by dog | 1 |
| Amount of rabies shots | 5 |
And still it’s fantastic, how is it possible… |
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Extreme activities
| Extremely foolish |
climbing the Moses Mountain in the Sinai Desert in the middle of the night with minus twelve degrees Celsius to watch sunrise
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| Extremely nice |
going on safari in the Kenyan Masai Mara, where we experienced National Geographic with our own eyes for the first time in our lives
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| Extremely wet | rafting on the Nile in Uganda with the most difficult navigable rapids, which of course lead to total soaking
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| Extremely cosy | the visits of Peter’s parents, sister, brother-in-law and friend Mirjam to Kathmandu |
| Extremely sticky mud |
the east-west ‘highway’ in southern Tanzania where we drowned in the rain on some days and weren’t able to cycle because of the red-brown mud with ultimate sticking power grade ten
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| Extremely hospitable | the white South-Africans, Marleen and Paul in the Emirates, Arie, Patricia and Lhasa Victoria de Bruijn in Beijing, friends and family in the Netherlands and Belgium, Major Achmed in the Emirates, the Korean cycle, marathon and triathlon freaks. And hundreds of others. |
| Extremely deadly |
hunting with Thijs and Marina in the middle of the night in the vast sheep meadows of the Karoo in South-Africa. Target: rooikat and kudu. Thijs successfully shot a kudu, Peter hit a cardboard box right in the heart. |
| Extreme tree |
THE Baobab near Hoedspruit in South-Africa. The baobab as a species is already beautiful and special, but this one is from another galaxy. The world’s largest, we have no doubt about it after having cycled for years all through Africa.
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| Extreme insect |
we can’t choose. Two of them wage war for the first prize. One imitates a flower in an unparalleled way, the other a boozer with a flaming red nose.
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| Extreme encounters with animals | swimming with dolphins in Zanzibar; standing eye in eye with a wild, ear flapping trumpeting elephant in Namibia; being assaulted in our sleep by millions of ants in our tent in Kenya; over 400 rare Black-necked cranes on a mountain pass in Tibet; the aggressive and especially creative weaver ant in Thailand that builds the most exclusive nests in the highest trees.
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| Extreme bird |
the 'shoebill' in Uganda; a mixture between cartoon character Donald Duck and a dopey prehistoric animal from Jurassic Park.
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| Extremely emotional | visiting former school building Tuol Sleng in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where not so long ago thousands of people were tortured and killed. |
| Extremely generous | look at our sponsor page to find the people and companies who help us realising this journey, mostly without expecting any favour or service in return. |
Things do break sometimes
| Broken Tent poles | 12 |
| Leaking ground sheets | 2 |
| Leaking sleeping mattresses | 3 |
| Torn rims | 3 |
| Broken saddles | 7 |
| Broken frames | 5 (of which 4 were the notches to attach the luggage carrier to the frame; new Avaghons have enforced notches now) |
| Broken cameras | 6 |
| Broken stoves | 3 |
| Unbreakable cup breaks | 4 |
And several other things, but they’re part of the deal. |
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What everybody everywhere always wants to know
| How many punctures did you have? | The first two years we don’t count, there were too many calamities caused by tires that shouldn’t have left the factory in the first place. From the end of 2004 until September 2008 we all in all had seven punctures. With those Schwalbe tires you’d almost unlearn how to repair a tube....
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How long are you planning to travel on? |
Until November 2008: or until a worldwide credit crisis makes us stumble... |
| Will you come back and live in the Netherlands then? | As it turns out, yes, temporarily, until we've earned sufficient money to explore the rest of the world and fill our pension piggy bank. We expect to be cycling again within five years. |
The nicest, funniest, kindest, beautifullest…
| Highest temperature | 49 degrees Celsius in the shade in Sudan. A bit too warm, sometimes we cycled in the night, because then it was ‘only’ 39 degrees.
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| Lowest temperature | -12 degrees Celsius; Mount Moses, Sinai, Egypt, we had the same night temperature a couple of times in Tibet, in the middle of summer!
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| Most horrible event | Karin’s malaria attack in the south of Tanzania. The uncertainty whether she would recover or not and the sluggish communication with the doctor in the dirty clinic caused a powerless and frightening feeling. |
| The ugliest city | Islamabad, Pakistan: new, no atmosphere, partly polluted, big holes in the design, no centre. In short: a soulless city. |
| Most special country (an impossible but often posed question) | Still Egypt. The fantastic Sinai, the diving courses and snorkeling in the impressive Red Sea near Dahab, the hospitable Bedouins and Egyptians, the stunningly beautiful Sahara interspersed with cultural treasures of the highest class. Unrivaled.
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| The most beautiful city |
Number 3: Istanbul. Crossroads of east and west, the Golden Horn, the Bosporus, the immense mosques, the atmosphere, the fishermen in the harbor, the funny con men, the kindhearted people. |
| The longest wall | Well, not very difficult after our visit to China. The Great Wall, originally thousands of kilometres long. We saw some of parts of it, from ancient mud walls to tightly laid brick walls. Impressive.
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| The hardest stretch | From Kashgar in western China, through Tibet to Kathmandu in Nepal. Two thousand unpaved kilometres of which many above 4000 metres, with five hundred kilometres of asphalt in between. Ten mountain passes above 5000 metres, once in a while a snow storm, even in summer. The hardest stretch, and thanks to the outrageously beautiful vistas, deep blue sky and friendly Tibetans also the most beautiful one.
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| The most appealing encounter | It is absolutely impossible to make a choice in this category. Literally dozens or maybe even hundreds of times we have been lovingly received in people’s homes and families by hospitable people and helped with all of our needs. Regularly we’re stopped on the road by people who want to give us something, a bottle of cool drink or a bag of nuts, or just want to be photographed with us. |
| The hardest pass | Ploughing over rocky roads and through loose sand during the hottest hours of the day, a complete lack of supply of drinking water and food, alone, on a road that’s getting steeper and steeper all the time. And longer, far longer than expected. The combination Swartberg Pass and the ‘Hell’ is unforgettably beautiful and especially very hard (South-Africa). On a shared first place ends the Sani Pass, on the border of South-Africa and Lesotho.
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| The most beautiful stretch | Until 2006 this was the Sahara Desert in Egypt.
But in 2006 the Sahara was surpassed by the unreal gorgeous landscape of western Tibet, where you can look around for fifty kilometres, the sky is bright blue, you sometimes get dished up four seasons in a single day, you imagine that you’re the only person on the globe and you have to be able to count to one million when looking at the stars.
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| The most beautiful event | What’s the choice?
The fact that we are together, that we after all these years are still cycling together, literally and figuratively, through wind and weather, in good and bad times, with tears of joy, and tears of sadness and pain?
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'Live your dreams
Listen to your heart
Lose your fears
Life is short... and beautiful'