Preparation for the e-bike expedition

Location:
Germany

Latitude N:
49°30’264”

Longitude E:
011°04’453”

“It will take a miracle to make it all happen,” I said before our Mongolia expedition, which we set off on in 2011. And this time, ahead of perhaps the longest e-bike expedition yet, I could start our upcoming adventure with the same words. It’s strange that you can start preparing for a big trip so early and yet things always get tight just before you set off. The fact that Tanja broke her collarbone a few months ago was not planned. With the right treatment and lots of training, she managed to get fit again within a few months without an operation.

Tanja & Denis Katzer and their dog Ajaci during a test drive in Franconian Switzerland.

I think it’s hard for an outsider to understand what it means to say goodbye to Germany for at least 1 1/2 years. Even for us, who have been through such a process many times in the last 25 years, it is always amazing what you have to think about. It’s actually exactly the same as emigrating. The paperwork is soon unbelievable. Many of the insurance policies have to be canceled and others, such as international health insurance, have to be taken out. In our case, however, we didn’t emigrate because we want to return to our home country and therefore keep our base. So we are emigrants on the one hand and travelers with a functional German household on the other. The reason for this dual existence lies in our way of life, which has developed in this way since we set off on our Great Journey, i.e. since 1991.

Some of our travel stages take up to two years. Then we return so that we don’t lose contact with our sponsors, the media and, above all, our family. Once we have refreshed our social relationships, clarified the financing and many other organizational matters, we return to the exact place where we last interrupted our life project and continue our expedition from there. Over the decades, the longest documented expedition in history is to be created.

Well, the financing for the e-bike tour is in place and although we have almost everything together, three weeks before departure we are still missing the camera equipment, a laptop and important components with which we want to charge our e-bike batteries. It would be a lie to claim to be relaxed about this. “Why don’t you organize your technical equipment earlier?” I hear reasoned voices. Unfortunately, the laptop had a defect and is currently being repaired. The cameras are new on the market and a lens will only be delivered in a few days. And the missing components for our solar system are in the development department at Bosch and are also waiting for special parts that a supplier has long promised. Well, that’s how it goes with planning. You’re not always in it and things usually turn out differently than you think. But somehow we will make it again.

The train tickets are definitely booked. From Nuremberg to Augsburg, then change to an overnight train to Berlin. There we take a train from France via Berlin and Warsaw to Moscow. In Moscow we have to cycle about 20 km to another station. There we load our belongings onto the Trans-Siberian Railway. Having already cycled the entire route from Germany, through Russia to Mongolia, we are now allowed to cycle the route to Lake Baikal on the Transsib. A dream comes true. However, we still don’t know how many kilograms of luggage we have and whether we are even allowed to load our bikes and trailers onto the Transsib. There are no regulations for this. At least they couldn’t tell us that beforehand. One reason why we booked four tickets for the route.

I estimate that we will have to cram a total of 260 kilograms into the compartment. One of the heaviest pieces of luggage weighs 35 kg, is as white as fresh snow, incredibly hairy and is called Ajaci. “Are you crazy?” I said to Tanja when she told us to take our beloved dog with us. He was actually supposed to stay with friends while we were away. But when Ajaci turned out to be quite stormy, we didn’t want to do that to them. Then some friends of ours agreed to take him. But that also came to nothing. When our last option, professional accommodation, wanted 6,000 euros for the 1 1/2 years, Ajaci obviously whispered to Tanja that he wanted to go on the trip. “Let’s think about it constructively and decide tomorrow,” Tanja suggested. After thinking about it for 24 hours, I thought the idea of taking our dog with us on the trip wasn’t so bad. Now we had to clarify everything we needed to take a large Canadian shepherd dog with us on a bike trip. It’s all about the various quarantine regulations in the different countries, vaccinations, international vaccination certificates, compulsory muzzling on the train, a special dog trailer with a large load capacity, test drives with a dog and trailer, and so on. But where to put the luggage that Tanja used to have in the bike trailer? Flea, an inventor friend of ours, looked at the trailer and said: “You have to build a roof rack for the dog trailer, then you can strap the bag that Tanja used to carry in the trailer on top. The decision to take Ajaci with us has put some stress on our schedule, to say the least, but it looks like it could work now.

Visa

Day by day we are getting closer to our departure, but we still don’t have our visa for China. Because we want to travel through the land of the dragon for at least 6 months, we need a special visa. Normally, a traveler only gets four weeks. He is obliged to show a hotel booking for each day. For us, that would be the end before the beginning. On 28.06.15 I have been invited by the Chinese Embassy for an interview. I don’t know what the ladies and gentlemen want from me, but one thing is for sure, it depends on this conversation whether we are allowed to travel to China or not. It’s crazy to think that we’ve been planning this tour for about two years and a stamp in our passport decides whether we can realize our dream or not. Once again it is clear that free long-term travel is becoming increasingly difficult because politicians are blocking each other with restrictions. But that is also part of the planning and, above all, the excitement of such a tour. Tanja and I are definitely very curious to see what happens next…

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