In the previous post, long time ago , I promised that if nothing surprising will happen, I would write a few words about life on the road. "Nothing surprising will happen." ha ha
Well, it's really not surprising, because anyone who knows me knows that my time management is appalling, and I've just been busy chasing my tail, the miles I need to complete and the completion of the journal, which, with all due respect to the blog, always takes precedence.
But I took off for a trip almost three months ago, and more importantly, my odometer just crossed the 4000 kilometers of riding*, so I thought it was a good time for a temporary summary post, we'll call it the 4000 post, in honor of the mileage and in honor of the fact that it is very likely that it will easily cross the 4000 words.
*Although it is likely that 10-15% of them are "administrative" kilometers, that is, errands and wanderings in the cities. Only in Ljubljana I rode 82 km around the city in three days.
So I found/created some free time for myself, and it seems to me that it's time to write a little about how things have been going with me in the last two months, and what thoughts have been going through my mind lately. In fact, one of the reasons I write is because I've found that until I write them down, I tend to go back to the same thoughts, or rather, how I'm going to tell them to other people, and it's time to make room for new thoughts.
Since this post has swelled to a monstrous size even by my standards, I decided that in order not to discourage the reader, I will divide it into three parts, which I will publish over the next few days – the first part (what you are reading now) will be about where I was and what I did, what I plan to do onward and what a "dramatic" change I'm going to make from now on in my trip (dramatic announcement, everyone!). The second part will be more about everyday life, as I promised, and will be made up of parts of thoughts and experience, and may be a little less coherent than usual, but I will try to be interesting as much as possible. And the third part will be about my central experience from the Balkans – Yugo-nostalgia.
Where was Oren and where is he going?
So the last time I wrote here, I was sitting in a hostel in Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro and trying to summarize Macedonia (oh, Macedonia…). From there I went up the next day in a heat that threatened to melt me down to Centia, the original and much nicer capital of Montenegro, and Mount Lovcen, the national mountain of Montenegro that also gave it its name (the Black Mountain). From there I glided down the stunning serpentines to Kotor, which is touristy as they say, but I really like it and its story, and if I have time I will expand on it. From Kotor I rode to the Dormitor Park in northern Montenegro, one of the most impressive and beautiful parks I've been to. Friends, go to Montenegro. It's not the most interesting country in the world if you're into urbanism (despite the decent bike paths in Podgorica) but in terms of natural Wow per square meter, it doesn't seem like it has much competition. So many beautiful mountains in so little space! Perfect for a bike, but also perfect without.
From the north of Montenegro I crossed into Bosnia, most of which I rode with Anna, an Italian cyclist* whom I met through a friend, who rides a long and winding road from Vienna to Central Asia. Bosnia is admittedly less impressive than Montenegro in terms of natural treasures, but it also has nothing to be ashamed of, and above all it is interesting and complex and tragic and thought provoking. I have many thoughts about Bosnia. Also, it was nice for a change to ride with someone else. Not only that my default is to ride alone because who else would do such nonsense with me, I am also a big believer in the fact that every person owes himself a serious solo trip once in his life, and i'll talk about it in detail when the opportunity arises. But it was very fun to ride with another person, to talk not only to myself (which I do a lot), to see how someone else sees the things I encounter along the way, to share experiences from the journey so far and to let someone else make decisions sometimes, because deciding is tiring.
*(German-speaking Italy from South Tyrol, to be precise. It's not exactly Italians there. On the other hand, they haven't been Austrian for a long time either. It's complicated)
From Bosnia I continued to Croatia, where I visited Split, which is also quite touristy, and this time in a way that I was less comfortable with (Split's promenade reminded me of Eilat, and not in a good way), but hey, Diocletian's palace is there, and he is one of my favorite Roman emperors. I befriended Tomislav, the tour guide who may be mentioned later, started from an argument about whether Diocletian is one of the five great emperors (of course he is, but Tommy is a big fan of Marcus Aurelius). And from Split I went on a route called the Adriatic crest which was very beautiful and kept me away from the crowded and terribly hot beach on the one hand, but it was also very challenging and it all brought me to a significant decision regarding the nature of the trip, and more on that later.
From northern Croatia I moved to Slovenia. For me, Slovenia is the gateway to Europe. The Croats tend to see themselves as part of Europe more than the Balkans (I understood that they like to say that Zagreb is located more westward than Vienna…), but how to say it politely, they are indeed in the EU politically, but culturally they are still on the Balkan continuum. In Slovenia, on the other hand, you feel the change – in the infrastructure, in the driving culture, in the character of the people. They do have a foot here, a foot there (after all, they were part of Yugoslavia and speak a Slavic language, although it is somewhat different from the Serbo-Croatian that everyone will understand from Montenegro to Zagreb), but they are part of Europe in the sense that is most meaningful to me on a personal level, and that is that at the Slovenian border I entered the Schengen area . Which means the stopwatch started on July 7th, and I have three months to get out the other side, to the UK. Out of these three months, I have already used 11 days for a great tour in Slovenia, where I had time to drive on a beautiful Roman road, visit Ljubljana and be nostalgic about my visit here in 2013, and settle the score with the ascent that knocked my knee on that trip.
And that's it, now I'm in Nova Gorica, a Slovenian town on the Italian border (meaning New Gorica, because the Italians got the original Gorica in the agreements after WWII, even though they literally lost to *all* sides in that war, but the Allies were more worried about the communists than the fascists at the time this one), preparing for a mounted invasion of Italy. After all the mountains I've ridden, it's going to be interesting to ride in the plains of the Po valley, although it's not expected to be too easy – the temperatures here continue to rise, and those who don't start riding at six in the morning will find themselves sweating their souls out at 12 noon.
From there I'm going to continue on some combination of ways to Switzerland, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and of course a pilgrimage to my personal mecca, the Netherlands. From Amsterdam I will surf along the coast to Calais, and from there barge to Dover.
Slovenia is quite the halfway point from Istanbul to London, and also clearly marks a significant change in how the journey will look from now on, in a variety of ways. And since the journey is changing, I've decided it's time to change a few things, and let's talk about it-
Bikepacking – the good, the bad and the sweaty, or – why I'm back to touring
So I think the first thing to talk about is if my bike so far has looked like this-
So now they look like this-
For those who need an explanation, which is probably most people – the tires have become smaller, and the rear bag has been replaced with two Ortlib carrier bags. In other words – I'm back in Touring mode, friends. The bikepacking experiment was cool, and gave me some great experiences, but I'm coming home.
So first of all, it should be said that riding in the style of bikepacking is a great thing, if it is done properly. The ability to drive (theoretically) in all terrain conditions allows, as I wrote in a previous post, not only to drive deep in nature, away from the cars, but also to drive on the dead end roads, the roads where there is no passing traffic because they don't get anywhere at the end, which is wonderful. And what does it mean to do it right? This means planning correctly. For example, I got to know through Tristan Ridley's blog a site called ride with GPS (or RWG, for short), and I sat on it while preparing for the trip and sketched a route. The beauty is that you can sometimes look at an aerial photo and identify where there are dirt roads or unmarked passages that connect marked roads, and connect the unconnected. Sometimes it turned out that I marked to myself to ride through a railroad or a water carrier, but for the most part it worked quite well, and a few times it worked really well. But it requires very thorough planning. And this is perhaps my first problem with this style of travel – in order for it to pay off, it requires much more planning per kilometer, and allows for much less fluidity, and my entire trip is a very fluid in time and space. It's a great thing to do if you're traveling for three weeks, but planning a good itinerary for six months is almost impossible.
But the fundamental problem with planning a good bikepacking route, at least for me, and probably one of the main reasons I return to touring, is the basic uncertainty, or simply put – you never know what dirt road you're going to meet. There are things that simply cannot be seen in an aerial photograph. Asphalt, say what you will, it is predictable. I know what speed I will be at on the plain, I know at what speed range more or less I will go uphill. I can say with pretty good certainty that I will get up in the morning, ride, depending on the topography, between 70 and 100 km and arrive at the city/camping/random point I chose to finish at.
With a dirt road you don't have that certainty. You can ride on a dirt road at 20 km/h and have fun, and you can meet a dirt road that 8 km/h is a struggle. You can do 80 km easily, and you can find that today you are going to fight all day and still do 45 km (say, as a theoretical example, if you cross the Rhodopes through mud and snow). The day I wrote the first draft of this part of the post I was in Croatia, and the first part of the day was on a nice and wonderful white dirt road that overlooked the Adriatic Sea and made me think what a wonderful thing bikepacking is, and how glad I am that I do it. But an hour later I found myself on a gravel road with stones and rocks that I struggled with every meter of the road. And that's assuming I'm still riding. Quite a few times you just find yourself, especially on the uphills, especially on the loose gravel, dismounting and pushing, cursing profusely. On the asphalt, the gradients will almost always be reasonable (minus some tough side-roads that I encountered specifically in Slovenia).
And that's another part of my problem with bikepacking- when you're riding on asphalt, the amount of suffering you're going to experience is pretty predictable and known in advance.
It is not that there is no suffering in Touring. In Laos I went up a murderous climb, 1500 meters by 15 km (which is 10% gradient *average*, in reality there were much steeper parts), which pretty much broke me, and was the only time on that trip that I went down and pushed part of the way. After I finished it I said to myself that I'm doing *that* again. I can do 1500 meters of climbing, but over more kilometers (and I did), or 10% gradient over fewer kilometers, but not both both at the same time.
But it was a rather one-time event, and that it was an old and non-standard road. Most of the time the level of suffering you face, if you neglect wind and rain and other annoyances, is quite predictable and measurable. In bikepacking, on the other hand, you never know how much you're going to suffer (or as I put it to myself- "How much do you like to suffer from one to Hanoch Redlich ?"), and honestly, I'm tired of guessing.
So in Ljubljana I bought myself new and relatively narrow tires (the so-called gravel tires, 47 mm, and oh, do i roll now), and now I got myself a pair of second-hand panniers from my host (Ortlib Vintage!) and come on, let's see what Europe has to offer 🙂
It's not that I won't ever go on dirt roads again, my tires aren't called gravel tires for nothing, but it seems to me that if it's roads that require more serious tires than the ones I have now, I'm not that interested in riding them anyway.
And I think this is the stage where people might ask themselves what the connection is between what roads I ride and what equipment I have – if I don't want to ride on dirt roads, that's fine, don't ride on dirt roads, what does that have to do with tires and bags? So the point is simple – to ride on rough roads, you want wide tires with good grip, and bags that are able to take hits, that is, soft and not hard connections (meaning straps and not plastic clips). Side bags have rigid attachments, and while they're incredibly durable, they're not meant to be ridden in singles.
And where is the problem with that? So at the tire level, the equation is simple: wide tires = more friction = much more effort per meter. In the end, even when I was supposedly backpacking, I found myself 80-90 percent of the time on paved roads while riding. And when I ride with thick tires on the road, I ride slower, and I get more tired at the end of the day, and mostly feel a little stupid about the whole thing. On the side of the bags, the bikepacking bags (especially the rear bag) are very limiting in space and in your ability to pack quickly – everything has to be compacted and packed carefully, and removing them from the bike is much more complex and slow. Side bags are a wonderful invention that allows me to easily shove all the equipment I ever need (or a week's shopping at the market) into two large bags and simply hang them on the bike. Everything is accessible and available. When I have to pack in a bunch of small bags, every morning takes longer, and when I get to the hostel, I need a lot of time to unpack bags instead of just pulling out two side bags. It's a lot more hassle and effort, and feels silly.
But in the bottom line, these two things come down to one thing – time. Starting to move takes longer, and riding takes longer. And in the end, it means that I progress more slowly, and mostly I have less time for the experiences that I do want to have. I took a long time for this journey, but it is not endless.
I don't regret trying bikepacking, the ability to go deep into the land gave me some great rides (I especially remember a wonderful descent in eastern Montenegro, pure happiness), and I also learned quite a bit from it, especially how to manage with much less equipment than I thought possible. Relative to other people I've met doing similar trips, I'm very thin on gear, and don't feel like I'm lacking too much. I think I'll buy another pair of underwear and a shirt, and flip-flops, and maybe carry a little more food with me, but with all that, now that I have two side bags, one of which will fit my backpack, I'll still have more storage space than I need.
It was a successful experiment for me, I learned a lot from it. I unequivocally see myself returning to Montenegro sometime in the future with a mountain bike and minimal equipment for a couple of weeks of intoxication and aching legs. I also don't think it's improbable that when I continue after London, I'll return to this mod, with slight changes (if anyone says to themselves "wait, what's going on after London?" – well, keep reading), because there maybe there will be a justification for a bikepacking setup, or at least for a setup that can handle difficult terrain. But right now, for the second half of the Europe, I'm going back to my roots. It will take time to find a new and proper arrangement, (and probably lose an item or two, because that's when it happens) but I'm undoubtedly back in familiar territory.
And now, let's talk about moving on to less familiar territories.
After London
When I wrote the first post, I wrote that I was riding from Istanbul to London, and then I wrote "Some of those reading this have heard from me about more grandiose plans, and they are still within the scope of 'the plan', but it seems foolish to me to make big announcements before I have even left the borders of Greater Constantinople".
Well, since I not only left the borders of Greater Constantinople, I left the domain of the late Ottoman Empire, and even close to the borders of Byzantium at the height of its power, and after 4000 km, it seems to me that you can say what 90% percent of those who read these lines already know, and that is that I not planning to finish in London. there is "after London"
The goal is to move on, well, as long as I'm enjoying the journey and as long as I can. But to be more specific, the plan is this – since I will arrive in London at the end of summer, so after a few weeks of rest with friends in Cambridge, I intend to fly to the southern hemisphere and from there slowly make my way back to Istanbul. During the winter months I'll probably be in Australia, New Zealand and then I'll start riding and boating along the big Pacific islands (Papua New Guinea? Philippines? Taiwan? Definitely a homeland visit to Korea). And when spring in the northern hemisphere will return again, I want to reach Beijing and hopefully, together with another friend, ride back to Istanbul. And then I have crossed Eurasia on a bicycle – Tada!
The word "hopefully" is important here, because first of all, I recognize myself that this is a very, very ambitious plan, which depends on many factors. Will China, for example, allow tourists to enter again in 2023? Not clear, because currently it's not. And of course there can be many things that will change along the way. And beyond all the unknown variables, there is the most important variable and that is how I feel about the whole thing. It's definitely an ambition and a dream, but I don't intend to marry this decision – as I said before, I intend to continue as long as I can and especially as long as I enjoy the whole thing. Right now, in the overall scheme of things, I'm having a lot of fun. There are miserable days of horrible heat, cruel mosquitoes that don't let you sleep, torrential rain that catches you just before the campsite, or just a day when nothing goes right. But overall, I'm getting so much out of this journey right now that I have no thoughts of stopping.
But maybe I'll get to London and decide I've had enough. "Because I decided I'm crossing Eurasia" is not a good enough reason in my opinion to do what I want to do (although it is a cool title). I think many people can testify that I am a stubborn person sometimes, for better or for worse, but I also try to listen to myself from time to time.
In the following posts – life on the road! And if I ever get to it – Yugoslavia!
post Scriptum. – This post is the first post written entirely on the keyboard and the cell phone. It was a little challenging, but we did it! And many thanks to my sister Nirit and brother Amir for proofreading and helping with things that cannot be done from the cell phone. How lucky to have siblings…
יצאתי לשאוף קצת רוח 