Bike to Asia

What is our goal? The goal of the bicycle tour is to reach the Himalayas without using any motorized vehicle. In case we cannot go all the way (mainly because some visa issues), we’ll go as far as we can. We are flexible.

What is our mission? We’d like to make traveling by bike more popular. The whole point of the tour is to make people realize that traveling can be cheap indeed: no accommodation costs (sleeping in tent), no travel costs (bicycle works without fuel), no agency cost (you plan the route yourself), and food is cheaper than at home. The only costly and complicating factor is the visa!

So we’d like to achieve that cyclists should be able to get all the visas at the borders of the respective countries – this seems impossible, but who knows.

The team: My girlfriend, Zsofi (29) and me, Felix (32).

When? April to October, 2010.

Where? Hungary – Romania – Bulgaria – Turkey – Georgia – Armenia – Iran – Turkmenistan – Uzbekistan – Tajikistan – Kyrgyzstan – China – Pakistan – India – Nepal.
And then we fly back home.

This is the preferred route – it will be modified if we cannot get all the necessary visas! Most visas are valid only 3 months from the date of issue, but because it takes more time for us to get there, it is impossible to get them at home in advance. And who knows whether we can get the ultra-complicated *stan visas on the way (letter of invitation stamped by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the target country, multiple weeks of processing time, etc)… Bureaucracy is our main enemy!

Accommodation: mainly in tent, + we are couchsurfing.org members (we can send couchsurfing requests and stay at other individuals’ home). If all these fail, then we sleep at (cheap) hotels of course.

We are looking for sponsors! We mainly need bicycle and technical equipment (Netbook, etc.). We will place the sponsors’ logos to our blog with a link to their websites, of course.

The idea is actually quite old – my dream was to cycle to Tibet when I was 15. In summer 2009 I’ve mentioned my plan to Zsofi and she supported it, so we started to seriously consider it. Now we are very close so I hope we’ll make it. I already gave up Tibet: it is inaccessible for individual travellers like us because of the compulsory guide, hotel and jeep hiring requirement for every day of stay, which would be a nonsense expenditure in our case.

Background: This kind of activity is not new to me – I’ve already made some trips in Europe, the longest one was a 7 week and 4150 km long Northern European bicycle tour with a friend. (In contrast – we are planning a 30-week trip now!) Zsofi started riding the bike some 3 years ago, but she is very enthusiastic. Together, we haven’t made long trips yet, only a 2-day Round-the-lake-Balaton (212 km) and a 1-day Tour de Pilis (142 km). Some friends say that at first we should go on a shorter tour just to try if we can do it, but I say that yes, we start and try it in the first month, and if it is OK, then we simply continue.

You can contact us at the following email address:

izirajder (you know what goes here) yahoo (you know this as well) com

Or by phone – Felix: +36 20 538 3579, Zsofi: +36 20 234 5600

Thank you.

Felix