Bicycle Experiences

I am Danish and have all my life been very interested in bicycling, you can find more than 5 millions bicycle in Denmark for a population of 5 million.

Some years ago 2000-2001, I made my dream come true, a dream of travelling over land from Denmark to Australia, without" theating" by taking airplans or other theating items. I lived at that time in Finland,Helsinki and imported motorycle,bicycle and trekking equipment. My dream was to ride a motorcycle but got some info from other guys that have toured through China that it could be very difficult to leave China with a motorcycle without bribing the orthorities up to $6000, which was much more than my budget allowed. I went straight to plan B, due to, I didn't want to turn down my plan I have been working on for 7-years. I was importing bicycle so it was natural to take a bicycle. The choise was a mountain bike, without suspension front or rear and aluminium frame, which everyone I talked to said do not do, take a steel frame.

I knew quite well how to equip the bicycle with Ortlieb front and rear pannies and waterproof bags front and rear, all together 25kg off gear, from tent and sleeping bag to water purifire. The preporations take me some months and to find the bicycle was very easy, I took one from my own warehouse. I made some preporations tours before but was were clean that this is what I am going to do.

My plan was to bicycle over land without any form for help, airplans and boats but decided to take the Trans Sibiric train from Moskow to Beijing and bicycle home from Austalie throug a more southern path. I left Helsinki Monday 17th at 16:00 from the train station towards Moskow and arrived Tuesday Mornig in Moscow. On the 18th July at 21:03 I took the train to Beijing, after bicycling for a short while in Moscow and fighting with the ticket office, due to that they had sold out all the 2th class ticket and the only options left were either to wait another week, because I wanted the Chiniess train and not the Russian and the next one would first leave the week after. So the options was to buy a first class ticket insread and pay a bite more.
Which I did. On first class I got my own toilet and shower, only sharing with the cabin next door and my bicycle was safe in my room on the bed above.