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- Day Of Food – Thailand
- 23,000 Kilometre Photo
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- The Hot South
- Day Of Food – Cambodia
- Cycling Flat Out
- Quiet Times At Angkor Wat
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Croatia By Numbers
Arriving in Croatia to a new language, currency and climate (read very very hot) we weren’t sure what to expect. Like the rest of Europe we enjoyed some holiday time in Croatia finding small family run campgrounds, quiet beaches for swimming and many shady spots to sit out the heat of the day. – Posted by Emma
Sarajevo Stole Our Hearts
We didn’t even know we were going to Sarajevo until we started looking over maps in Croatia and a route through Bosnia and Serbia stood out as the path for us. As we cycled the last 15 kilometres from our Camp Oaza in Ilidza to the city, we planned to stay in Sarajevo for a maximum of three days before heading for the Serbian border. – Posted by Emma
Bad Things Happen
This cycling lark, its not all good. We’re not sure if its because of the incessant evening mosquito brawls (usually the mosquitoes win), the sticky-strength sapping heat or just from travelling onwards for almost five months, but we’ve had a fair share of ‘chucking your bike off a cliff and walking away from it’ moments of late. – Posted by Emma
Serbia By Numbers
We cycled into Serbia through a national park, spending our first night as guests in a tiny farmhouse just outside Mokra Gora. The hospitality of our first night was repeated many times throughout Serbia whether by people buying us coffee, campsites offering free pitches and breakfast snacks, or an international canoeing group welcoming us to their campsite. In Belgrade we learnt a lot from our great hosts Aleksander and Milica. We left Serbia after a loop around the Danube which, despite bugs and breakages we’d started to grow quite attached to. – Posted by Justin
Bulgarian Backwaters
As we passed through the empty border crossing into Bulgaria I wondered what the nurse wearing hospital scrubs was there for. Maybe she was a vet checking incoming livestock, or perhaps Bulgaria was afraid of some kind of zombie flesh eating disease from Serbia? However she left us alone and after our customary request for a stamp in our passports we were in the sleepy border town of Bregovo searching for a cash machine, a map, some cheese and a shady place for lunch. – Posted by Justin
Learning Bulgarian Phrases
With old castle ruins towering over it, Lovech was the halfway point in our path across Bulgaria. Its a sleepy little town with just a few ‘tourist attractions’ and we feel immediately at home. Our hotel room is huge, and so reasonably priced we can afford dinner at the restaurant below us. We amble along the river and up to the castle at sunset, marvelling at the lack of tourists here compared to hilltop towns in Italy.. – Posted by Emma
Greece By Numbers
An empty highway with extra wide shoulder, a border town filled with cafes and restaurants and a road through a river with people camping on either side. This visit to Greece was a quick hop through to avoid a busier road from Bulgaria to Edirne, Turkey. We learnt no Greek and saw no sights, but our time here was as sweet as the coffees we tasted before exiting the country. – Posted by Emma
Team Turkey
The border crossing from Greece to Turkey was the most militarised border we have seen yet with age old tensions still much on display. Despite the soldiers having sandbag emplacements and large guns, a smile and wave from us was enough to light up their faces. Leaving Greece we had switched to travelling on our New Zealand passports and were no longer British meaning no visa required for Turkey and forcing the border guards to check a reference guide for these passports from a distant land. – Posted by Justin
8000 Kilometre Photo
The excitement of cycling on from Istanbul towards Cappadocia almost made us miss the 8000 km milestone. We took this photo arriving in the town of Bilecik after a morning spent darning holes in our tent mesh from hungry ants. The road to Bilecik was busy with trucks ferrying marble from quarries (like the one in the background) while after Bilecik the rain closed in for a wet afternoon of cycling. The passing truck drivers kept our spirits up with much horn tooting and waving though. – Posted by Justin
Misdirection
Its about 10:30am and we’re leaving a tiny hamlet when I catch sight of the name – ‘Oluklu’. I absentmindedly check the map mounted on my handlebar bag. The village is just one street, so I’m not expecting to see it on our 1:800 000 scale map, but my heart jumps just a tiny bit – I can see the road, but not on the D665 which we should have been following. Last night’s continual climbing after Sogut, muddy hunt for a free camp and the incident with the pack of five wild dogs circling our tent in the morning could have all been avoided. – Posted by Emma