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| Early morning in Fraser Hill |
Once decided we wanted go for a long bike tour, the next thing came up: how
to prepare?
Basically, very generally, we did not want to prepare too
much and just take things the way they come. Having said that, no preparation is
simply not possible, and preparing is good fun too… We found a lot of useful information on cycling blogs:
travellingtwo.com,
worldbiking.info,
bicycle-junkies.com and several others.
The early info we found mostly on travellingtwo, as well as their e-book Bike Touring Survival Guide.
It starts by thinking about where to go. We have already
spent many years in Asia, but hey, it is still really really nice (why I attached some nice Asia pictures in this post) and there are
so many places we have not been to yet. But on the other hand, we have hardly
been to South America, maybe this would be a good time and a good way to
explore that side of the world a bit more. Australia and New Zealand are
another favourite destination, with perhaps a nice climate. Or why not Africa,
I’ve heard nice stories about cycling there. And even Europe, we have not
travelled much there in the past decades… So basically, the only continent we
did not consider, is Antarctica. In the end, it was not so difficult actually. Both our children will study in Australia, so we did not want to be too far
away from them – meaning: we'd stay in Asia.
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| Jungle girls in Cameron Highlands |
Then, even though we don't really want to fix our route in advance, you just really get curious. Where can we go? What looks nice? Where have we not yet been? Where have we been, but hey why not go again? You look at maps, and again. Then you check around, is it possible, is it nice, what is the weather like by the time we might get there. Ahh, never mind, we'll see once we're on our way. But curiousity killed the cat, so before you know you are looking at those maps again. And again. Or at those blogs. So we roughly know what we want to do, and yet really not.
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| I see the sea - Pulau Kapas |
All of that is great to prepare mentally. The trip itself is of course what it is all about, but the months of preparation are really nice and needed too. It gave us the chance to get the right bikes, right gear, read and talk about this, and just dream.
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Ahhhh beautiful Koh Lipe
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So we got our bikes and some of the essential gear like the panniers, did our first few short trips (more about this in separate posts), knew what else to buy, had some ideas of direction, had things sorted out for our children, arrangements made for our apartment, ... Time to start the blog! I was not sure if I even wanted to blog and also, how. This also meant, which platform would I use? Basically, it's mostly about Wordpress and Blogger if you read a little bit about it. After going back and forth a little, I decided to go for Blogger - it's just really simple. I had also used Blogger before for my Transalpine run
blog, and so was somehow used to it. And if, at some point, I would still prefer to have a personal url, it can still be done. So here you go... Oh yes, it also works nicely with Google Photo, which is what I am using to sync all my photos.
This blog is really mostly meant to keep family and friends up to date with our journey. As many of our friends speak English (and all kinds of mixlish too), we'll write mostly in English.
Happy reading!
