On the 15th of June 2014 my boyfriend and I got on our bikes and started what is our biggest adventure so far. In this post I want to give a brief overview of the trip. More in depth stories will follow, so stay tuned.
We had a general idea of which countries we wanted to see and had a route for the first few weeks of cycling mapped out. Our first big goal was getting to Stockholm by bike. After that we hadn’t decided anything yet. I knew I loved hiking and camping, but had never done any cycling. My boyfriend had done neither and only went camping once. It was a leap of faith and we hoped we would both enjoy this way of traveling.
My mum couldn’t bear the idea of us starting with cycling at our front door, so my brother dropped us off at a seemingly random place in the Netherlands: Zaltbommel. Of course it wasn’t completely random. We had decided to follow a certain bike route and Zaltbommel was the official starting place. We took a scenic route through the Netherlands and Germany before hopping on a ferry to Denmark. In Denmark and Sweden we followed the main cycling highways until we reached Stockholm. It was quite the ride, but we made it.
We didn’t cycle as much as I had hoped, but we got a lot further than anyone anticipated.
From Stockholm we took a plane to Mongolia, we had some bad luck there but eventually were able to take the train to China. We left our bikes in Beijing and traveled with public transportation. After a month we boarded a ship to Japan. It took us two days to get there, but the trip was wonderful. A month later we boarded again to return to China and pick up our bikes. We stayed in Beijing for a couple of days before taking the plane to Thailand.
In Thailand we started cycling again. We cycled from Bangkok to Krabi. After spending a miserable Christmas in Krabi we decided to stop cycling and fly to Australia. We didn’t cycle as much as I had hoped, but at the same time we got a lot further than anyone anticipated. In Australia we decided to buy a small camper van and drove it for three months before reselling it. We hopped on another plane to New Zealand. This time we rented a van and drove for a month.
And that’s when our time was up. We returned home. I was on a one year leave off work, so started work again. The boyfriend started the job and apartment hunt. It has been about three years since our return and we’ve settled in alright. We’ve been saving, redid my camper van and this summer will be our first ‘real’ trip again. A month of traveling in Norway is coming up!
