“Your bike is discovery; your bike is freedom. It doesn’t matter where you are, when you’re on the saddle, you’re taken away.”
Today was a wonderful day, a sort of perfect day full of high highs that come with cycle touring, and with it, Kevin and I realized how much we had missed this lifestyle during our six week pause in Turkey. We were surprised at how bored we got in Turkey during our vacation month, and how little there was for us to see or explore when we no longer had the help of our bicycles, and so along with adventure and entertainment, here are the top five things we missed most about the cycle touring lifestyle.
The Freedom: this is a huge one, and Kevin and I talk about it time and time again because there is nothing quite like the freedom of cycling, eating, and sleeping wherever you happen to be whenever you want to do it.
Jumping for joy at the top of a very difficult pass in Georgia.
The Nature: staying in hotel rooms, eating at restaurants, and taking busses means that you are indoors everyday, and Kevin and I really missed living outside with nature as we are so accustomed to doing. Of course it can get miserable when it rains for days on end, or when it’s too hot out, but for the most part, we love that this lifestyle has forced us to live in nature.
My kind of road! Ladakh India.
The Camping: along that same note, we really missed our tent – which for us is home – and the whole routine of camping that comes along with it. We missed cooking dinner at sunset and watching the stars come out before crawling in our sleeping bags. We missed sleeping in a dome so close to nature, and we missed waking up in the morning to a bright blue sky right there in front of us. We love camping, and we both agree that if we weren’t ever able to camp, we probably wouldn’t even bike tour as its one of the most fun aspects for us.
Camping in Tierra Del Fuego last week.
The Community: all over the world and particularity in South America there are thousands of us cycle tourists and I absolutely love meeting each and every one of them as they always have some sort of interesting story to tell, and as we always have something, a very big something, in common right off the bat.
The French couple (traveling for three years already and will go on for many more).
The Country Roads: tourist busses don’t take you down small country roads and into villages that don’t even appear on maps, which is precisely why I love cycling as a way of travel. With our bicycle, we can go down those small dirt paths that may not lead anywhere in particular, but are sure to lead to a grand old time.
So what does the perfect day for us look like? Well it can look like many things: beautiful mountain passes, cooking dinner at sunset, or an easy day with the winds in your favor, or it can look a whole lot like what today looked like for us.
We were on a road without any sort of town for hundreds of kilometers on end, meaning that only a handful of cars passed us during the entire day. We spent our day amongst the guanacos, silly looking curious creatures who watch you as intently as you watch them, and with our only two companions on the road, two cow boys and their sheep. We all cooked and ate together, four like minded friends who enjoy the outdoors and living life to the fullest, before all cramming into our small tent for a movie night under the stars. We ate popcorn, cuddled, and then went our separate ways before falling into a deep sleep, the sort of sleep you only ever get once you’ve exercised all day.
Cycling through the sheep.
Swimming in a sea of sheep,
These two cow boys had their hands full with their thousands of sheep.
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