Route change in Asia

It makes us want to pull our hair out! We are on a 11-month tour and obviously have enough time ... but well, believe it or not, we would love to have even more time! China is such a big country that we have to get off the bicycles and make use of public transportation. Now being in only one single province of China, i.e. Yunnan, you would think that we could see all sights and interesting places. No! It's a hard decision but we have to ditch many things. Initially we planned to cycle along the Myanmar border from Tengchong to Jinghong via Ruili and Menga, but as we are running out of time, we'll cycle straight from Dali to Jinghong via Lincang. 

Also Vietnam has to come someday later. Instead of cycling from China into Vietnam and then to Cambodia, we'll cross Laos on the way to Cambodia. Why is that? Well, we heard so many times from other travelers that Laos is a lot nicer than Vietnam, that we got convinced. Stories about cycling in Laos sound even better, so we'll give it a try. One more advantage: we don't have to go to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, to get the Vietnamese visa, Laos issues visa on arrival.

That's the plan at the moment. We wish we had more time :-)

Route change in Central Asia

We are back from the 10-day Pamir Tour since last Saturday, 7th August. During these 10 days we had no internet access, so we are trying to catch up the with the blog.

Due to the situation in South Kyrgyzstan around Osh we decided to drop that part from our itinerary. At the same time this meant that couldn't cycle the Pamir Highway any more. The Pamir Highway ends in South Kyrgyzstan and leads to Osh. So we would have gone through Osh and its surroundings. As we still wanted to see the Pamirs, we opted for the a jeep tour and return to Dushanbe.

Our plan B, that we already worked out at home, looks like that: from Dushanbe we cycle through the Fan Mountains. We'll cross the Tajik-Uzbek border at Penjikent and continue to Samarkand. From Samarkand we'll go to Tashkent and enter Kazakhstan there. In Almaty we'll apply for the Chinese visa. Meanwhile we could enter North Kyrgyzstan if the situation is ok.

Before we started the Pamir Tour we had applied for the Uzbek visa in Dushanbe. Today we have got the visa in our passports! Lonely Planet Thorntree forum considers the Uzbek embassy in Dushanbe as one of the worst, but luckily it worked out quite well for us.

Tomorrow we'll be back on our bicycles ... finally! You'll probably hear more from the Pamir Tour and the Fan Mountains when we are in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, if there is internet - inshalla!

Route change in Scandinavia

You probably have noticed it, but we don't follow our initial route plan for Sweden and Finland anymore. The initial idea was to head north as far as possible. The best would have been to cycle from Sweden into Finland at the very top where both countries come together. This was our initial idea, our rough guideline. We did not refine this idea because we were missing estimations like how far we could cycle in a week time. At home we already checked out alternatives how to arrive in Finland if the northern route turn out to be impossible. We came up with two possibilities. Either we could have taken (a) the ferry from Umea to Vasaa or (b) the ferry from Stockholm to Turku. Apart from Umea - Vasaa there is no other ferry connection north of Stockholm.

We quickly realised that our initial plan wouldn't work out. The distance for 3 weeks was too much. We then considered to ferry across to Finland from Umea, but heard and read on the road so many great stories about Gotland and Aland as exceptional places for cyclists. In the end we found a different, more exciting, route that we did follow instead. So we visited Gotland, then Stockholm. From Stockholm we hopped to the Aland islands and from there to a harbour on the Finnish mainland close to Turku. And there we are, in Finland now.

Our plan for Finland is now to head north-east as far as possible via Tampere and Kuopio, turn south and going through the eastern lake land. Depending on our legs, weather, sights on the way we may turn south earlier and head for interim destination Helsinki.