Project VELAIA

The first part of my tour I cycled with my StreetMachine GT full suspension recumbent. Getting it used from the German HPV list (see hpv.org) with already 3000km I cycled more than 20.000 km with it without a major technical defect. So with the focus on quality the higher price was in no way lost money but a good investment. The benefits for long distance travel compared to a regular upright bicycle are big:

1. You have a much more comfortable sitting/lying position with a big and soft contact area which results in a painfree riding
2. You have a relaxed panorama view and the optional headrest is especially useful for long distance stages
3. Even on wash board dirt roads the full suspension makes the ride comfortable and enjoyable
4. You can use the seat pad as a sleeping pad and save some weight
5. More attention resulting in advantages (getting access, help) in some places
6. Easier to get back when stolen and in many places not a target of thieves because it can’t be sold

The components on the recumbent were:

• HPVelotechnik StreetMachine steel frame
• Rohloff Speedhub 500/14 gearing system (14 gears in one hub)
• Magura H33 hydraulic rim brakes (back)
• Magura Louise 2001 hydraulic disc brakes (front)
• special light setup and Forumslader batter/mobile/GPS charging unit
• Schwalbe Marathon Plus tires
• Busch & Müller light (have extended that with DIY dual Seoul 3.5W star LED front light – thanks to Ulli Horlacher!)
• additional Lucido 1 watt Luxeon light mounted to the top – with red blinking function for additional safety in tunnels, at night and bad weather conditions
• SON (Schmidts Original Nabendynamo) hub dynamo – extremely efficient maintenance free

(using the recumbent at home with front and tail fairing)

(detailed shots with special parts and modifications)

But the upright also has some advantages compared to the recumbent and that’s why, beginning in Australia, I continue with an upright MTB:

1. Lower weight, allowing you to go faster especially in mountain terrain, and be more flexible when off the bike
2. Higher flexibility when cycling in the city (going on (empty) sidewalks, cycling between cars, not having to get off when waiting, etc.)
3. Higher agility and therefore more fun
4. Less attention (from the police (some countries), crowds, interested touch-everything people)

The MTB is equipped with these components:

• Rohloff Speedhub 500/14 gearing system (14 gears in one hub, sponsored)
• Shimano Deore XT Disc brakes
• DTSwiss 4.20 rims
• Manitou Sliver suspension fork
• Centurion Backfire 40 frame (want to get a better, lighter one!)
• Schwalbe Marathon Supreme tires (changing depending on terrain, using the Marathon XR for long off-road parts)

I can’t make a final conclusion about what bike is better for extreme long distance tours at this point. The fully suspended recumbent is far ahead as long as you don`t leave the road/gravel road/dirt road/any kind of road. Going on paths and trails over mountain ranges is definitely better done with normal touring(mountain)bikes

I’m Daniel, I’m 21 years old (at the beginning of my tour), 1,83m high an weigh about 70kg. These are my interests, hobbies, habits and so on in the order of crossing my mind:

• cycling (mountainbiking, recumbents and velomobiles, cycling culture, cycling physics, commuting, …) – bicycle enthusiast
• hiking (in the Alps and the German Black Forest) and jogging
• reading (online and real books) and searching (the internet)
• renewable energies (mainly photovoltaics, solar thermal) and sustainability
• vegetarianism, alcohol-free and non-smoking advocate, of course CARFREE, mass media free with few exceptions
• environmentalism and creative and constructive solutions to environmental problems
• efficiency and sufficiency in everyday life and efficiency techniques
• philosophy (ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, transcendentalism, Thoreauvian, skeptics, discordianism), pacifism and physics, mathematics
• computers, open source and interactive models and modern tools, especially their social and societal implications
• cooking and baking (cakes)

Here’s a not biometrically suitable picture showing me on a downhill on the Rallarvejen, Norway

I want to thank the following sponsors very much for the equipment they’ve supplied:

• Rohloff has checked my gear hub and supplied me with replacement parts, lubricants and repair tools at tour start. Continuing the tour after Beijing Rohloff always supplied everything necessary to keep me shifting properly.
• Brando has sent me a foldable bluetooth keyboard and a case for my Dell x51v PDA at the beginning of the tour. Several times Brando subsidised when I had to purchase technical stuff, like the Canon Digital EOS 450D camera. After the tour Brando sent me a smart phone with GPS where I am doing OpenStreetMap cartography with.
• Ortlieb Waterproof gave me a waterproof camera bag and two Front Roller Plus bags (GREENPEACE) edition. After finishing the first part, they gave me new panniers, a handlebar bag and later on a new camera bag and sleeping pad. All the supplied gear is still in usage either by myself or my father, great, waterproof and durable stuff.
• Schwalbe has supported me with kilos of tires and tubes. They have been very generous and also given tires for my father. I came to appreciate especially their Marathon XR tires in the rough Andes and had incredible experiences with the slightly heavier Marathon Plus (22,500 km to the first puncture with the first tire!)
  For commuting and ongoing tours I will get a new and specially for recumbents designed set of waterproof bags from Ortlieb.
• From the Adventure Company in Heilbronn I got a 200€ gift card. I’ve encashed it through a sleeping bag inlet, a biwak sack, Luxeon headlights and a knife. Due to a tight budget they couldn’t continue supporting me.
• From the Radhaus Ilsfeld I got a pair of long windstopper and one of short trousers, an undershirt, new cycling shoes and clips for the shoes. They put together the mountain bike I was riding with for the second half of my trip and sold it to me for just above trade price.
• Magura has sent me spare parts and brake pads for my brakes and shirts, long-arm shirts and trousers. They also wanted to send me a replacement for my 2001 front disc brakes which I denied because I’m completely content with them. They couldn’t continue sponsoring me after I had reached Beijing due to used up sponsoring budget.
• HAIDS gave me a discount on the GPS receiver WINTEC WBT-201. Unfortunately I lost the cute little device in Iran.

Some call it “pedalers’ paradise”, but to get that you have to leave the main roads! One big question when cycling in New Zealand is, how to divide the time between the two countries and when you do not have a lot, whether to visit the North Island at all.
I had 2.5 months, so I decided the first 1.5 months exploring the South Island and the one month left in the north.

There are two small books, “pedalers’ paradise”, one for the north and one for the south. I got both of them from my friend Olly in Adelaide, the chief desorganizer of the Beijing to Paris 2007 Carfree Rally, born in Kiwi country. They are written in a very basic way but contain all the necessary information and are easily obtainable in book and map shops throughout New Zealand as I have seen while I was there. Additionally there is a good book about mountain biking in New Zealand which I had bought a copy of, nice for the occasional off-road ride and for contacting land-owners who’s country you’ll be crossing.

The traffic in New Zealand can be deadly as I’ve heard several times … a lot of cyclists are dying on the roads every year, so try to avoid traffic, maybe wear a reflector west and some cyclists even prefer to ride with a little mirror attached to their helmet so they can keep an eye on the traffic from behind and get off the road in emergencies. My main strategy was to avoid the busy streets as much as possible and it was fine.
So equipped with these information you can set out to explore the two islands and enjoy the wonderful countryside of New Zealand. Camp on the DoC (Department of Conservation) camp sites, they are cheap and can be found in many places. Wild camping was possible for me as I had been traveling in a small, green tent, but there’s a lot of barb wire and sometimes it’s quite tricky to find a campsite. Whenever I’ve asked a farmer or a local they were extremely friendly and nobody ever said “no” when I asked to camp on one of their fields – instead they invited me in to sleep in their guest bed!

Going off-road into the gravel you often find DoC huts which I’ve only used once, but which can be a great thing after a long and cold day on a bike. They work with a ticket system where you have to buy the tickets before or get a season pass if you intend to stay more often (it’s more economic when staying more than 10 times as I’ve been told).
The main season, New Zealand summer, can be very crowded with cyclists, but I somehow arrived too late for that and didn’t get to see the cyclist masses others have told me from. Instead the weather got a bit worse in places, but I didn’t even get any of the 14 000 mm rain on the West Coast of the South Island.
The East Cape on the North Island was also a remarkably nice ride with very little traffic, and Rotorua is definitely the MTB el Dorado of New Zealand, you can hire bikes there.

I left Tashkent in the noon with some3 remaining diarrhea but the way to Angere was mainly flat and I rested for some time in the cooling shadow of a tree after having Tashkent left behind.

When I entered into the valley of Angere I saw this gigantic coal power station and it has not been the only one as another followed directly after the city of Angere, located next to a big coal mine under a dam which kept the water away. The air in the valley should therefore not be called air any more; the congestion was way too strong!

I spent the night under apple trees and found a way to hide my bicycle by putting the green biwak sack over it.

In Angere I changed another 10$ to SUm and began the long ascend to a 2400m pass where I was stopped by the military and have shown a card of Georg Gotzler, Schorsch, who had passed here just a few weeks earlier on his recumbent. The mountains on the uphill from Angere looked really bad as there were streets and even more streets in the building phase everywhere.

The downhill that followed endured for 70km but I stopped in between to get a meal which they wanted to get 4000 SUM for; I told them that I was willing to pay 2000 and gave them this sum – after 2 minutes of discussion they accepted and apologized for trying to cheat on me.

The remaining 200km to Osh were mostly flat and so I camped in the evening only 10km away from the border.

Crossing the border the next day was nearly hassle free and on the Kyrgyzs site I only got a stamp into the passport – I think the Uzbeks can learn quite a lot from the Kyrgyz

After changing some money I visited an internet cafe but realizing that the connection was too slow I didn’t upload the pictures I had taken but left for finding a place where I could get some sun cream. In a pharmacy thez sold me something that made my skin yellow but I didn’t want to risk a sun burn and used it only once. Instead I got sun cream from my friends, Goska and Herve from www.develotour.fr. I met them at the beginning of the uphill to a smaller 2406m pass just before Golcha and together we continued through the magnificent valleys.

In the evening just before it got dark we arrived at the pass and because of them speaking Russian we could spend the night in a yurt where we could even put our bikes inside! We had much fun and interesting conversations: Goska (28) is a environmental journalist and Herve (33) a teacher and studied glacierologist; both have already traveled a lot and Goska speaks 6 languages.

The next morning we continued together first on the downhill to Golcha and then along a river bed towards Taldyk pass. The street changed from pretty good to miserable and back from time to time. In the noon we met Nicola, a French guy who goes from KZ to Afghanistan by horse and we had a pretty long chat.

We continued and took a bath a few kilometers further where the horseman met us again and the two cyclists gave their water filter to him because his one had broken due to overusage in dirty Uzbek water.

The discussion with Nicola was really interesting and opened my eyes to another way of sustainable traveling and the logistical differences to my choice (and to the way Samuel from samu.cat is traveling) – he rides the horses for 35-45km a day and always has to provide enough water and food (grass mainly).

On the way up to the pass we had a one hour lasting race with 2 harvesters that were in our opinion in the completely wrong place as we couldn’t make out any fields that could be harvested.

The night was spent 200 meters away from a small restaurant over a river with a bridge that was not really latest bridge building technology but more like stone age coupled with old Soviet metal. In the restaurant we could get warm tea in the morning and evening and even toilet paper and bread were available.

On the next day we set the target to the 3615m high Taldyk pass and because I wanted to write my travelogue in an inspiring environment we agreed on me going my own speed.

The way up became steeper and steeper and I met some shephers and cowboys who brought down their animals for the winter that was not too far away any more.

Up on the pass it was too cold and windy to type anything on the keyboard and so I took out my Thermarest and sleeping bag and slept for an hour or two until the two French cyclists arrived.

Together we went down 200m and found a nice yurt to sleep in for the night.

The next morning should bring us to Sary Tash, but first I had my first puncture after more than 11000 km! But the hole was only small and so I only pumped up and we continued to Sary Tash.

There we met Claude and Nathalie from YakSite.org who got stolen during the night (the cycling shoes). Together we exchanged information and stories, had chai, cola and cookies and from Claude I got a replacement for my Marathon Plus (with more than 21000km lifetime), a Marathon XR.

We left Sary Tash and I decided to leave Goska and Herve and continue a bit faster towards the Chinese border. I pitched up my tent on 3500m that night and got some problems because the down sleeping bag touched the walls of the tent and lost some of its insulation function. So I got up early in the morning to get moving and therefore warm and took these wonderful pictures of the Pamirs and even managed to get me on the picture somehow (remember I only have a 10second timer!?).

After a Kyrgyz army post in the mountains the road got phenomenally good and so I arrived at the border during noon and had to wait 2,5 hours for the personel to come back – I changed my tire during that time and got my stuff dried.

So I delivered the recumbent to the WORLDTRANS office in Beijing – a 25km ride even though I was still a bit ill. I took a few shots during the ride (Panda style) and went back with the metro – quite exhausting. I wouldn’t have done that if there had been another option.

I prepared everything for the flight and left Beijing at 15:40 local time (as the flight had an hour delay).

We had a nightly stop in Shanghai and left Shanghai for Melbourne.

Crossing the Australian continent took several hours by plane and before arriving in Melbourne we first had to go through a carpet of clouds – not the weather I had expected.

After another 2 hours waiting in Melbourne I cought the final flight to Sydney and was happy to be picked up by my friend Alfred.

I met Isabel, his wife, and after a short visit and guided tour through his factory, after putting together the new bike which had arrived just the day before, we went home.

Again I want to thank my sister Verena for picking up the bike from the dealer, organizing a special carton and packing all the stuff into it in nearly no time! You are great and without you I would be walking now She also got a flickr Account – check it out (with some pics of my disassembled bike)!

(on the right is our ferocious dog called Sydney – he likes women and to snarl at me )

In the evening I attended the opening party of the Bicycle Film Festival (BFF) but was a bit too tired and therefore left quite early (as I also had to do quite some km to get out of the city-center).

(motivating message at 1am on my way out of the city center

Many of the screenings at the BFF were really amazing and I met quite some cool cyclists there who could also give me tips for the exploration of the continent and where to find MTB terrain.

The cinema was just a 5 minute walk away from the famous Opera House of Sydney and I would have taken really beautiful pictures if the weather had not been that bad (but the locals are happy about every single raindrop).

My TODO list is still quite long but after I have finished all tasks I will leave Sydney and ride along the east coast to the Goldcoast near Brisbane.

(I got the flowers from Jackie, who works at the factory – thanks!)