Adventure Silk Road

I have been travelling the world for many years. I use a rather unusual mode of transport for today's world: the bicycle. People often ask me why I travel by bicycle, why I torture myself like this... there are much more comfortable ways to travel!

For me, there are many reasons to take the bike. First and foremost, this mode of transport allows me to travel for a long time on little money. When I'm on my bike, I force myself to travel slowly, so to speak. This allows me to experience things like wind, sun, rain and mountains more intensely than if I were sitting in a bus, car or, worst of all, above it all in an aeroplane. Cycling gives you very good access to people. ‘A cyclist cannot be a bad person,’ is how record-breaking cyclist Heinz Stücke, a German world cyclist in the truest sense of the word, sums it up when he gives his impression of how you are seen by people in foreign countries in an interview. Incidentally, Heinz has spent almost his entire life in the saddle of a loaded bike and has visited every country on earth. Over fifty years on two wheels and well over 600,000 kilometres in his legs.

A journey is very different from a holiday. It is usually much longer and you don't plan it down to the last detail, but rather have a rough idea of the time and space involved and have to leave many things open. Sometimes things turn out completely differently than planned. I always say: a journey is like life. You are born, so you set off, and then you move forward in time and space. On a journey, there are not only beautiful things to experience, but also tough lows that you have to live through. So, just like in real life, there are always ups and downs. And when you travel a lot, like I do, there are bound to be bad moments. I always hope that every tour will go well and that I will only have pleasant, enjoyable moments to report in lectures and books, but that is an illusion. On my travels, I have spent three nights in a remand prison, been brutally attacked three times, had an accident and been ill. When I talk about these things, it sometimes gives people an excuse to refrain from doing such things and stay at home. But the bad moments on a long tour are usually short-lived. The vast majority of experiences are positive, and I focus on those and tend to see everything in an optimistic light.

Well, I don't travel bit by bit like Heinz, but have developed my own travel philosophy.

Over twenty years ago, I quit my last job as a bicycle mechanic and salesman at our local bicycle shop to venture on a trip to Sydney for the 2000 Olympic Games. This turned into a trip around the world, which lasted three and a half years. After that, I was back home and felt very comfortable there. But after a while, I got the travel bug again and planned my next trip. When that came to an end, I was happy to be back home. In the meantime, travelling has become my profession. Since then, I have been giving lectures and writing books, such as this one. But I still commute between two worlds, if I may put it that way. So I'm not the classic dropout who makes a clean break with his old life and perhaps also tries to ‘run away’ from problems in some way, but rather the opposite. I need the stability of my parents' home and the stable social environment with friends and acquaintances in order to be mentally stable enough to go on a trip. I always compare it to our Earth and the Moon. It is only because the Moon exists that the Earth can move stably and rotate evenly, and conversely, without the Earth, the Moon would wander hopelessly through space.

Further trips followed, such as the Mongolia expedition, a trip to Cape Town, and the Vladivostok tour, during which I cycled overland to the last or first station of the Trans-Siberian Railway, before taking the same route back. This was followed by another long journey lasting twenty months. Here, I ‘took care’ of the very interesting double continent of America. In between, I fulfilled smaller travel wishes and visited Iceland, the Baltic States and the USA. But other, more normal hobbies are just as much fun. In the basement, a folding boat awaits short trips on the waters of Central Europe, or we drive to the local quarries on weekends during the summer months to ‘stretch our fingers’ while free climbing on beautiful rock faces. I also use my tandem bike relatively often for day trips through the local forests and fields.

But basically, almost everything is about being outdoors, being on the move. I've known that since my earliest childhood. Even when I was still in my mother's womb, I was housed in a tent in the summer. Later, as a little boy, I washed myself in the lake and fetched water from the swing pump. In the days of the GDR, most campsites didn't have electricity anyway. That means that from the very beginning, I was used to nothing else but being outdoors – de facto without luxury. Being on the move came later, at the age of eighteen, when, after much persuasion, I ventured on a backpacking holiday to Bulgaria by train with a friend. Now I had got a taste for it, as they say.

And when another trip is on the horizon, it often has a longer or shorter history, or in other words: first, an idea for a tour has to be born. These are usually inconspicuous events or encounters that then ‘plant the seed’ in my mind. This can also be a lengthy process, which eventually turns into a ‘plant’, or in other words, a travel idea. That's how it was with this Silk Road tour.

Central Asia has always been one of my favourite destinations in my travelling life. Mongolia, Kazakhstan and also western China – I have already been there on my bike and felt comfortable despite the often harsh physical conditions of travelling. The vastness of the desert and steppe, the special hospitality of the people there, their sometimes archaic way of life, the unspoilt culture that has not yet been influenced by the modern West – all of this fascinated me. I was also fascinated by the travels and reports of the two great globetrotters of the 14th century: Ibn Battu¯ ta and Marco Polo. Over many years, they explored the Arab and Eastern worlds and inspired subsequent travellers and people plagued by wanderlust to discover the world for themselves, and that continues to this day...

From my book ‘Abenteuer Seidenstraße’, Chapter 1: ‘Zu Beginn’, Mitteldeutscher Verlag GmbH, Halle (Saale) 2019
ISBN 978-3-96311-161-7 ,