This is our first time ever in Central Asia, our first time ever cycling in a (former) Russian country and arriving at the airport and being dropped right in the middle of a new culture is always a bit overwhelming.
Beautiful colors, amazing mountains and fantastic offroad tracks; that’s cycling in Morocco! Watch the video now!
Welcome to Morocco; sweets, pens, money.. anything! But, the nature is beautiful, the people are very friendly and the food is great! The offroad tracks through the Atlas Mountains are a great way to cycle through this country.
Alaska; green and barren. Endless roads, sometimes unpaved, sometimes paved. A bear lurking around somewhere… camping in a tent. Mosquitos.. and yet, we are having a great time! Glaciers, lakes, white mountain tops. Alaska is wild, Alaska is the last frontier.
Let’s do something different! Let’s go hiking in Norway! Ok, it’s still early in the season, but why not? So, bicycle junkies become hiking junkies! Watch the movie now.
With a soft push I open the old, wooden door. For a short moment the conversations are silenced and about twenty pairs of eyes are staring at me. I nod with a smile and behind me the door closes. In the small, but overcrowded restaurant is barely enough space for two, but I find us a seat in the corner.
Jeezzz, this is too much! It hurts.. I’m nackered. I lift myself up from the saddle and use my own weight to push the pedals round. With a last effort I manage to keep the cranks turning and I crawl further up into thin air. I can see the pass.., I saw it this morning for that matter! It’s still 20 painful kilometers away from me. In the distance; the Tachlang La with no less than 5331 meter one of the highest motorable passes in the world. It would be so much easier to just turn around and quit, but I just won’t…
With 40 degrees Celsius we work hard to climb the Cuesta de Chucabaca on the terrible ripio road on our first cycling day. We are here for only two and a half weeks and want to climb two passes: the Cristo Redentor and the Paso Agua Negra.
In front of us lies a black track through no-man’s-land. Rocky and sandy, finding its way across Iceland with a backdrop of snow peaked mountains. A lonely lake is the ideal place to pitch our tent, if it wasn’t for the stormy wind pulling the pegs out with a force unknown to us. “Hold on to the tent-pole, Ellen!” Elmar rushes outside to pitch the pegs back into the ground. This wind is fierce!
We know one thing.. finding a hotel in Las Vegas during a mega-event on weekend nights after a long and exhausting flight.. well, impossible! So we head back to the airport and just fall asleep in a waiting room. These things happen!