We haven’t done any multi-day bike trips in the last six months, nor spent a single night in a tent, so our excitement is tinged with nervousness about upping sticks again, especially with the diversity of Russia, Mongolia, China and South East Asia between us and our eventual return to New Zealand.

Over winter in Istanbul we have mostly been content to explore the city slowly, read extensively, catch up on films and meet other cycle tourists drifting through. Its been a treat to regularly meet up with Julien and Michelle, a couple who are working in Istanbul for six months before they continue cycling towards Central Asia.

Istanbul is a huge city in an even bigger country and there are parts of both which we will have to leave for a future visit. We didn’t explore as voraciously as we had hoped for, opting to enjoy life indoors on one too many cold winter evenings. After six months we both feel it is time to be moving on leaving the hustle and bustle of the big city behind and stretching our legs (and faded muscles) along the Black Sea coast.

Planning and preparations from Istanbul haven’t always been smooth as we had hoped. As we struggled with the complications of our Russian visas, we were consumed by tiny details – where exactly would the paved road turn to dirt south of UB in Mongolia? Why couldn’t we find details of a ferry that allegedly runs from Trabzon to Sochi? Would we make it out of Turkey before our visas expired? Would the weather ever warm up?

Gear repair solutions were hindered by Turkey being outside the European Union. Some companies were reluctant to send items to us and import duties meant it was cheaper for us to fly to the UK for new kit rather than buy in local shops or risk getting stung by high customs charges.

So, we’re almost off and we are as prepared as we will ever be. It’s when you’re on the road that you realise that all of your carefully laid plans and preparations, or lack thereof don’t really matter as the world will choose what to throw at you with neither rhyme nor reason (…and if it all goes tits up, we can always hitch a lift!)

We hope our experience will be of use to others trying to plan a similar route and may help you avoid some problems we faced along the way. Check out our post about the basics of Russian Visas for details of application requirements.

Our experience in Istanbul

After much research and consideration we decided the six month multi-entry business visa would be most suitable for our needs. It would give us a wide window to get into the country and allow a degree of flexibility about how many days we could spend in Russia.

We hoped to get this in Istanbul, where we’ve been waiting for winter to disappear before heading on. We had read that visas were only being accepted for people in their home country but some consulates were flexible in some situations. We’re dual passport holders (New Zealand and British) but decided to try with our New Zealand passports thinking the consulate might be more willing to bend the rules for travellers who couldn’t return home easily.

On two separate visits to the Russian Consulate in Istanbul we had verbal confirmation that applications on a New Zealand passport would be possible. The Russian Cycle Touring Club would arrange for our letter of invitation to be issued from the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs which was the first step in obtaining the visa. We were sorted.

Just 12 days after our payment was accepted the letters were FedEx’d to us in Istanbul and I took them to the Consulate on a Friday morning. The scrum of bodies outside the consulate wasn’t a good sign, neither was the obvious preference given to the tour operators with large wads of American dollars and clear packets of passports.

Along with a few other solo applicants I was eventually let in, called to a counter and told that as a New Zealand citizen it wouldn’t be possible to get a Russian visa in Turkey. I explained that I had asked previously and was told (“by that man, over there at that desk”) that it would be possible. I was asked to wait.

Four hours and several repeats of “I’m sorry, we can’t help you” later, I got my final answer…

No visa would be possible in Istanbul with either a New Zealand or UK passport unless we had a residents permit.

We were stuck with letters of invitation addressed to the Istanbul embassy with support from a New Zealand business on them and New Zealand passport details on them. Hmmm.

Gambling, man

Without Russian visas we would have to dramatically rethink our plans and after five easy months in Istanbul suddenly time was against us. In order to get to Mongolia overland we would need to find some way to get those Russian visas. Some quick fire internet research gave us three possible options.

New Zealand: It would cost a significant amount of cash and take five days to courier our New Zealand passports home. From traveller reports the Russian Embassy in New Zealand seemed like they were likely to play to the letter of the law and weren’t so keen on business visa applications. If they said no, we’d still need to courier everything back to Istanbul and try another option. The odds were stacked against us.

United Kingdom: Justin spoke to Sally at Real Russia who explained it would have been much easier if we had used our British passports for the visa, however as we had dual citizenship we should be able to apply in the UK by presenting both passports to the consulate, recent bank statements and a cover letter explaining the many differences in application versus our letter of invitation. We rang another respected UK based travel agency to double-check her advice and they confirmed the same information. The result we were after wasn’t guaranteed but applying in London was definitely an option.

Russian travel agency in Istanbul: The next day we decided it would be worthwhile trying people who could plead our case in Russian and visited a Russian Travel Agency in central Istanbul. I think the poor manager was bemused by our request but he promised to help if he could. We left copies of our documents with him and he asked us to ring his English speaking colleague on Monday afternoon for an answer.

Deciding that couriering four passports to London was too much of a risk, having me fly back would be our best option so we checked flight times and costs and set deadlines for our Russian contact in Istanbul to respond. He wasn’t able to come up with an answer quickly enough, so we booked the next flight back to London. I landed at midnight on Monday night.

Real Russia London

Because of the number of inconsistent pieces of information in our application, we decided against trying to get the visa in London independently and we felt that Real Russia were worth the extra money to smooth the process. We paid extra for a two day turn around to avoid us waiting too long for the decision.

I took our documentation into the office after sorting out additional paperwork on Tuesday morning. They delivered the applications to the London Russian Visa Application Centre that afternoon and I was emailed at 4pm on Wednesday saying they were ready to pick up.

It had taken a lot more time, effort and money than we had expected but our first major bureaucratic hurdle had been cleared. We could go to Russia!

Types of visa

Tourist visas only allow a one month visit, while Business visas can cover three, six or 12 months (usually allowing a maximum of 90 day within 180 days). That’s straight forward enough, but bear in mind there are limits to where you can apply for each visa and how far in advance you can make your application.

You can find a good overview of the options and requirements for each type of visa on various websites including Way to Russia. Some Consulate websites can be useful for this as well.

Invitation

All categories of Russian visas require a letter of invitation. Tourist visas need a fixed itinerary listing accommodation for the trip verified by a tourism agency.

Business visa applications must have the support of an organisation in your home country as well as in Russia to allow you to apply. The cost is higher than a tourist visa but they allow more flexibility so you don’t need to specify where you enter and exit and exactly where you will stay.

There are plenty of companies on the web which will help you get an invitation for both types of visas. Ask advice on the Lonely Planet forums for a reputable company.

Timing

With all Russian visas, timing is everything. You can apply for a Tourist visa up to 90 days before you visit, but you can only start the process of applying for a business visa 45 days before your trip start date.

Tourist letters of invitation are usually quite straight forward and seemingly quick to process, but the Business ones need to be sent from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Russia and can take up to three weeks to process unless you pay significantly more for a fast service.

This can be a real headache for long distance cyclists who are unlikely to be at home when that letter is delivered.

Russian Consulates

At the moment, all travellers to Russia should apply for a visa in a country where they are legally resident which normally means residing in a country for a specific period of time (typically more than 90 days). However some consulates are reported to apply a little leniency in specific circumstances.

Frequent Thorn Tree forum contributor Everbright has compiled a list of traveller reports from consulates around the world which seems to indicate that exceptions are now rare. Additionally some consulates stick closer to the letter of the law than others.

From a New Zealand travel agency 2010

If you really want to go for more than a month and will not be considered resident in the countries you are travelling through, it is probably best to make your application via the Russian consulate in the country your passport is from. This does add the expense of couriering your passports home. Check out our experience for what not to do.

The only sure advice we can give is to check the current situation at the embassy you want to apply through and assume it’ll cost you a fair whack of money to get that visa in your passport.

As we travel away from Europe the list of diseases we are at risk of encountering seems to increase in steady increments in line with the increased density of bug life. We are hoping to get through most of our planned Russian cycling before the the insect world wakes up from its winter slumber, but as we head first east, then south into warmer climes flying and biting things (not to mention flying biting stinging things) will be unavoidable.

Now we’ve nailed down a little more of our route, we’ve started looking into what we’ll need to arm ourselves against in the bug world over the next twelve months.

Please note: We’re not travel health professionals. Go see a travel health doctor before you head away.

Awareness

I’ve spent some this winter reading through the relevant country information pages of the following travel health resources:

• NaTHNaC country information
• Promed archives

If you’re planning on cycling through a potential malaria risk zone, its worthwhile looking at the WHO malaria map (or the more detailed Travax one) to get a clear picture of actual risk in the areas where you’re likely to be travelling.

We checked our travel health vaccination records against recommendations and ensured that all vaccinations that were recommended were up to date. When we returned to London to pick up our tent we checked in with a travel health nurse.

Bite prevention

We’ll be increasing efforts to reduce bites on the rest of this trip if only because there are a few nasty insect spread diseases which we would rather avoid. The insect bite prevention fact sheets from NaTHNaC provides detailed information about measures travellers can take. Here are the specifics we’ve considered:

• Insect repellent – We will get a resupply of DEET based Bushman insect repellent sent out from New Zealand.
• Permethrin-treated camp clothing – We’ll carry a clothing spray which contains Permethrin which we’ll spray on a designated set of camp clothing for evening protection as soon as the mosquitoes get fierce. Each application should last up to 6 weeks however the container failed the first hurdle by leaking in our luggage on the flight back from London. I’ve also swapped out a pair of dark green woollen trousers for light brown hiking pants for camp wear.
• Mosquito nets and hats – We tried on mosquito net hats during our flying visit to London but decided against purchasing them as we have stuff bags made of similar netting which should be as effective if needed. We’ll look to purchase a mosquito net in China or South East Asia but also anticipate we’ll be able to afford hotel rooms with adequate protection in that part of the world.

Anti-malarials

With the South East Asia part of our trip still in the far distance, malaria prevention has left us scratching heads a little. We might be in risk areas in Southern China, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam for up to six months depending on where our travels take us, but we’re still not planning to fix this part of the route until we’ve made it out of Mongolia.

For the areas that we are going through it looks like Doxycycline is the most suitable malaria prophylactic. While this research from HPA reassures that long term travellers could take the appropriate anti-malarial for the length of their trip, travel health clinics in the UK and Turkey are unable to prescribe for that length of time.

We’ve had a prescription written for this in Istanbul but it should be possible to pick up the same tablets from reputable pharmacies in China or South East Asia. We may still take a small supply from Istanbul but we’re concerned they’ll bake in panniers over summer.

Perhaps cost and bulk of tablets required put some cycle tourists off, but we’ve been unable to find many mentions of cycle tourists taking malaria prevention tablets while touring. Amaya and Eric have shared their experiences over at World Biking but the majority of cycle tourists we have asked have said they just relied on bite prevention to keep them out of trouble.

Travel health should be taken seriously, so if you’ve decided to  go travelling talk to a travel health professional, research your chosen destinations and take precautions fit for where you’re headed. It may not be the most exciting part of your trip planning but it may just help you stay healthy while you’re on the road.

We had three primary aims for our trip:

• One action packed days of shopping and chores
• To see friends who we had expected to miss for the next twelve months
• To eat and drink at a variety of our favourite London establishments

Shopping & chore day

With only one working day in London, a new camera to experiment with and a lot of ground to cover this is how our day was organised:

07:30am – We eat BACON! + eggs for breakfast prepared by Graham. Yum!
08:30am – Justin leaves to collect new watch strap from Casio warehouse
10:00am – We head to Travel clinic for vaccinations
(I know not seeming too rushed so far)
11:30am – Leave travel health clinic with sore arm and lighter wallet
12:00pm – Visit Paramo shop to exchange Justin’s rain jacket
12:30pm – Visit various outdoor stores searching for Primus priming pads
13:00pm – Go to Stanfords to collect pre-ordered Mongolia and Russia maps. Pick up maps of China and a few phrasebooks
13:30pm – Justin buys new sunglasses in longest ever shopping transaction due to problems finding price of pair he wants
14:30pm – Lunch as we walk towards Oxford St where we part ways for a little while
15:00pm – Justin buys a new camera case while Emma is shopping for sports bras
15:45pm – Justin finally finds Emma after getting hopelessly lost in Marks and Spencers 16:00pm – We head to Velorution to test out a replacement Brooks saddle for Emma
16:45pm – Quick rest in HSBC comfy chairs after insurance cheque deposit
17:00pm – Emma heads to old work for Friday drinks and Justin is off to meet a friend for dinner
23:00pm – Both meet up at temporary home for a few quick games of Xbox Kinect

Catching up with friends

Having the opportunity to see our London friends again even if only for a few hours was wonderful.

We managed to squeeze in a couple of social evenings at pubs seeing different groups of old friends and between this we stayed with our good friends Cat and Graham, catching up on everything that has happened since they visited us in Istanbul in November last year.

Graham also arranged for us to head along to the Kinetica Art Show where we checked out all manner of weird, wonderful and movable art before racing across central London on the new (to us anyway) London hire bikes. The hire bikes made it a pretty cheap (£3 total) and quick (Fitzrovia to Notting Hill in around 40mins) journey.

Food & drink

It won’t surprise you that while we aren’t gourmet chefs we do have a liking for good food and decent beers. Over the last six months in Turkey we have been missing some of our favourite UK eateries and ales. Tasting our first pints of nicely settled Guinness we were surprised to discover that we had lost our taste for it a little. Other beers, ciders and ales sampled (in moderation) over the weekend were very much enjoyed however.

Eating wise in no particular order we managed to squeeze in the following eateries (plus of course some great nosh at mate’s places):

• Battered sausage and chip supper courtesy of Alex’s Plaice, Kilburn
• Indian curry in Great Missenden for Justin (Thanks to Laurie)
• Indian curry at Vijays, Kilburn for Emma (thanks Cat and Graham)
• Proper English Breakfasts (inc Eggs Benedict) at Nona, Kilburn (Thanks to Andy)
• Pork Burrito from Benito’s hat, Fitzrovia
• Pancake stacks at the Diner, Kensal Rise
• Asian style soups courtesy of Banana Tree, West Hampstead

It was a whirlwind visit but we returned to Istanbul happy we decided to make the trip. Post visit we are now wondering how our extra 10kg of new kit and food is going to fit on the bikes.

Most hiking sandals are as ugly as they are practical but I found a compromise in the Pretty Rugged 2 Teva sandals which I brought based on Teva’s reputation in the water sports world coupled with a leather upper which didn’t immediately scream outdoor pursuits. If it was good enough for people clambering up and down slippery rocks all day, I figured they would have enough grip for wet pavements and should be durable enough for cycling.

After one particularly hot day in Croatia we packed our cycling shoes away and wore sandals exclusively until the hills defeated us in Turkey three months later. After wearing real cycling shoes for the first few months, it was sweet relief for sweaty feet, but my relationship with my footwear has been far from a love affair. There are a few things I wish I had known when I took these to the sales counter twelve months ago:

Despite being advertised as having waterproof leather uppers, this doesn’t mean you should submerse the Pretty Rugged 2 sandals.
This definitely rules out going swimming wearing them. Even if you’re crossing a slippery ford to see if the camping on the other side looks better. Or in the sea if you can see through a borrowed snorkel set that there are hundreds of spiky sea eggs underfoot. You really shouldn’t laugh at your partner when wearing these and brag about your superior grip while he hobbles barefoot across a rocky foreshore.

Why? For this model at least, its something to do with the cushioning ‘waterproof leather’ fabric under foot. Apparently that doesn’t stand up to a soaking, eventually absorbs water, starts to rot and smell. According to Teva they’re not meant for full time river or backpacking use. Wish I’d researched that first.

Teva sandals are well documented for getting stinky
Here I was figuring out that weeks of sweating into sandals and questionable showering habits might have been the cause of a little foot stink. But Google it and you’ll find a whole sleuth of complaints from people who haven’t done anything out of the ordinary with their sandals.

Why? According to comments by a scientist in the comments of this article its a problem with the materials used in manufacturing:

Richard T on June 23rd 2010

Personally I’m surprised that this is the case with my sandals because according to the box they were protected with “Microban” which provides zinc-based anti-microbial protection. That’s supposed to “inhibit the growth of microorganisms that can cause stains, odors and product degradation” according to the Microban website. It certainly sounds like it should keep sandal stink at bay but I’ve emailed Teva to ask about this and haven’t heard back

Once they’re stinky its pretty hard to get rid of that smell
Unfortunately for me and others around me, the bad news doesn’t end with giving them a good scrub. I tried a number of solutions over the summer – scrubbing body soap into them, repeated rinsing, soaking them in chlorinated water and leaving them in the sun as often as possible. Nothing seemed to work for more than a few days.

I have recently read about this scientifically tested solution: Marmite. Why?

Richard T on June 23rd 2010

Worse than the thought of sacrificing some of my marmite for the cause, is that treatment may only work for about three months before needing to be reapplied. At my typical marmite consumption rate, I’m unlikely to have any left by the time the smell returns.

On the whole, marmite smothering seems a little extreme. Instead I’ve coated the offending items with baking soda and left them in a plastic bag for the last few weeks. If that doesn’t last I may have to mark my foray into the hiking sandal world as failed experiment and throw them away. I might finish this trip with a pair of cheap plastic jandals after all.

This month we were lucky to host Amandine and Mike, a French cycle touring couple who had travelled to Mongolia last year. We asked lots of questions about their experiences while they were with us and this has only fuelled our dreams further.

As we continue our preparations towards the next leg of our trip here are a few of the things we have learnt recently about travelling in Mongolia.

1. Three month visa

Our initial research into visas lead us to believe that the only option available was to get a one month visa and then extend it within seven days of your entry into Mongolia for a further month. As the extension is only possible in Ulaanbaatar this would make entering in the west of Mongolia around 1700km from Ulaanbaatar impossible.

After further online digging we found a few mentions of a longer three month visa and finally details about how to get one on this blog from Mike and Jen who cycled in Mongolia in 2009. We contacted the Mongolian travel agent they used and were assured that we should be able to get a three month visa. This will give us a lot more flexibility and makes entering through the Western Altai mountain region border then cycling east to Ulaanbaatar and south into China possible.

2. Food & climate

We already knew to expect warm days and cold nights when we arrive in Mongolia (most likely in June or July). Amandine and Mike confirmed that the evenings were near freezing during their trip, especially when they were hiking near Khovsgol Lake. Advice from Tom at Ride Earth and watching his recently put together movie confirmed the unpredictable nature of the weather as he encountered storms and freezing night-time temperatures in eastern Mongolia during May.

Recent blog reading has resulted in us developing a sense of dread towards the food available in Mongolia.

Ann Cunniffe & Diarmuid Cunniffe on November 5th, 2009

Talking with our French guests did little to alleviate our worries with them explaining that the food available is not so terrible just boringly the same. As regular readers of our blog will know food is a BIG part of our travel so in order to keep our spirits up in Mongolia we plan to dream of all the wonderful food on offer once we reach China and South East Asia. We are also looking forward to our Mongolian day of food blog maybe filled with three identical meals!

3. Mapping products

Our on road navigation when cycling is mainly done using paper maps for high level planning and day to day navigation. When we enter a city or need to locate a specific address we then switch to using a GPS. For Mongolia we wanted to make sure we had access to both reliable paper and electronic maps.

Paper maps proved to be fairly straight forward as there were only two major publishers we could locate via Stanfords in the UK. We decided to go with the Reise Know-How Verlag map as Reise seem to have a good reputation and we had already decided to use their Russian maps. Amardine and Mike had used the same Reise map and said it was as accurate as could be expected.

Again with electronic maps there seemed to be two main options for our Garmin GPS either using the Garmin produced MapSource World Map or going with OpenStreetMap (OSM) of Mongolia which I downloaded from Cloud Made. I actually decided to try both maps and found that the Garmin version was more detailed than the OSM version.

I was also able to get hold of a useful Points of Interest (POI) data set from Chris at sainyavaarai.blogspot.com and another set by emailing Bernard at the Mongolian Maps website.

4. We aren’t the only ones

Although Mongolia is not as common a cycle touring destination as somewhere like France or Italy it is not as uncommon as our ever concerned parents might think. Here are a few blogs from others that have travelled through Mongolia by bicycle:

• Sain Yavaarai: Go Well
• A Honeymoon to Remember
• Riding East
• De Cadence

Dealing with differing visa arrangement is like setting up a domino fall – you can do as much preparation as possible but a piece of fluff on the carpet or other external forces can halt your game. Its not quite as difficult for our trip as people who are heading through the silk route, but restrictions on where you can get visas and what visas you can get will mean that we’ll only know for certain how much ground we can cover in each country a little before we get there. We’ll cover off the visa information in a future post.

With a few bottles of Efes to hand we sat at the kitchen table last night discussing the best possible scenario, and also looking at some of the changes we’ll have to make if we can’t find a way around some of the barriers in front of us. Justin has put together an overview of the various time we can spend in each country depending on the visa we get and then read on below for an overall sketch of the next leg of our trip.

Turkey

We’ll leave Istanbul in early April and make our way by ferry to Russia. There might be a ferry that goes directly from Istanbul to Novorossysk in Russia but we could also spend a few more weeks in Turkey cycling East to Trabzon and catching a ferry from there to Sochi which is slightly further down the coast.

Russia

We’d ideally like at least two months in Russia from late April to late June. We’d like to explore the Caucasus region, could train to Moscow and sneak in a visit to St Petersburg or leave the big cities alone and instead divide our time between bicycles and trains until the Mongolian border. The country is way too big to get any more than a sampler of it but the Altai Region, some smaller Russian towns in the upper reaches of the Volga, Lake Baikal and Tuva are all on the list depending on visa restrictions.

Visa issues: Can’t renew 1 month tourist visa in country. Need to apply for business visa 45 days before visit, ideally in home country. Will ask Russian Consulate in Istanbul if this is possible.

Mongolia

Two months would be great in Mongolia as well. In an ideal world we’d enter Mongolia in the west, spend a month heading towards Ulaanbaatar, pick up Chinese visas in the capital and head directly south to the Chinese border. If visa rules prevent this we’ll catch transport to UB so we can renew the shorter visa, pick an area to tour for a few weeks before cycling south. This is one of the countries we’re most looking forward to on the trip and we’d love to do it justice by spending a good chunk of time in it.

Visa issues: Most Mongolian tourist visas are issued for one month, extendable for two months if you reach UB within 7 days of the start of your trip. We’ve seen rumours of being able to get a visa issued for up to three months if you have tour agency support but hard to find detailed information about this.

China

We’re hoping to extend a one month visa once in China for a second month. From Mongolia we’re looking to head south, with a brief stop in Beijing before heading inland again. Like Russia we’ll use local transport to see a little more of the country while we’re there. We’re keen to get a sample of different regions of this immense land and also have a number of tourist sights we’re keen to hit, including giant pandas, great wall, terracotta army, leaping tiger gorge. We’re already excited about the food as well.

Visa issues: Whether you get your visa extended appears to be at the whim of the province where you apply so we’ll have to be a bit careful about where we end up when this needs to be renewed.

And then?

All of that adventuring should leave us a healthy six months or more to visit South East Asia before returning to New Zealand around March 2012. That is if everything goes to plan.

Books were out for starters, though I snuck in the walk guide, a Turkish phrasebook and a Time magazine. If I was cutting weight further, I’d just photocopy a section of walk notes and scrawl any needed words on a piece of paper, but I planned on reading up on the route and history en-route to Fethiye where the trail started.

There wasn’t room for cookware or sleeping kit, which reduced my overnight options to pensions and hostels, though there were plenty of gorgeous spots where it would have been cool to put up a tent. I took the set of clothes I was wearing, plus a rain jacket and a merino wool top, which I wore in the chilly evenings under my fleece.

I pared down our bulky expedition first aid kit to a handful of plasters, a strip of water purifying tablets, insect repellent, sunscreen and rehydration sachets. I only used the sunscreen. A small travel towel never left the bag and carrying swimwear in the short days of December was slightly optimistic. I washed my tee-shirt every night and was surprised that it dried before the morning without fail.

I grabbed Justin’s camera, his GPS, our cellphone and my MP3 player and chucked in a head torch and a compass incase I underestimated daylight hours or got completely lost. The weight of all of these things doesn’t even make me blink on a bike (Justin says maybe because I don’t actually carry them) but if I was walking seriously long distances I would be a quick convert to a multi-function gadget.

I hefted the bag onto my back an hour or so before my overnight bus journey was due to depart and my shoulders strained at the unexpected weight. I immediately unloaded the bag to see if there was anything I could take out but when it included a bottle of water and a little food there wasn’t a thing in there that I didn’t deem important for the trip.

Out on the trail, I quickly got used to carrying a full bag on my back and with slightly better kit (a proper hiking pack for starters) I could have carried enough to allow me to comfortably camp out. It made me think about the load we carried across Europe, and if any of that will be chucked before we continue on next year. My thoughts were also with the people that we met who were walking across Europe this summer – one in particular was walking to Israel and kept on passing us as we cycled into Istanbul. How much must he have been carrying?

There are certainly parallels to cycle touring. When I first started multi-day cycling trips we carried minimum stuff and stayed in hostels or B&Bs along our route. When you’re unencumbered by stuff you can’t imagine carrying extra kilograms, but once you add items that make your trip independent of infrastructure or just generally more enjoyable, weight doesn’t factor in so heavily. But I carry hiking boots on a cycle tour, so I would say that wouldn’t I?

New supplies

We investigated getting our new supplies from bike stores in Istanbul where most things are available if you have the time to search them out. However the cost was so much more we think we have saved upwards of £200 by buying our new gear in the UK. So what did we buy and why?

• One pair of Smartwool micro-weight base layer bottoms for Emma. Her old leggings had a few holes.
• A cable each for our Ortlieb handlebar bags. I don’t know if we carry extra heavy loads in our bags but the cables seem to wear through kind of fast and are pretty much impossible to find in Turkish bike stores.
• Two 16GB SD cards for backing up our precious photos and data
• A pair of Endura Humvee shorts for Justin. I love my shorts for all the reasons mentioned on our cycling gear page but they had faded to grey and somehow I’ve grown or the shorts have shrunk around the waist.
• Two Deore M590 chain sets 22-33-44
• Two XT 9 speed Cassettes  11-32
• Three XT HG93 chains. We like rotating our chains every 1500km to reduce wear on the other drive train components.
• A full set of brake and gear cables for each bike
• Five Schwalbe MTB 26” Schrader inner tubes for our recently drilled rims
• One four litre Ortlieb water bag. This gives us one bag each which will give us extra flexibility for some of the drier cycling ahead.
• A replacement Ortlieb map case. Our previous case lasted about three years but the plastic had perished and our repairs to it were also failing.
• Four spanking new Schwalbe Marathon XR Travelguard MTB tyres. Our Panaracer tyres served us well with 12,000km cycled on them but they finally started giving up on the puncture filled road to Cappadocia.
• One alloy bottle cage for Emma’s bike
• Two packets of Park Tool Super Patches. We used up a lot when our tyres began to fail along the road to Cappadocia.

Logistics

We actually had our new gear delivered in two different ways. The tyres were vitally important as without them our bikes were unusable so we ordered these as soon as we returned from Cappadocia to Istanbul. They were shipped out to us in Turkey where we had expected to have to pay some kind of import duty but luckily avoided any extra charges.

The remaining gear we ordered from various UK websites and had delivered to Cat and Graham in London. They were planning to visit us in November and we offered to pay for the cost of checking a suitcase into the hold of their Easy jet flight. The suitcase cost us £18 return and fitted all our various bits and pieces inside. An unexpected benefit was that on the return journey they were able to take our tent back to the UK where it is being repaired for us. Thanks Cat and Graham!