THANK YOU! More plans! Summary!
Day: 95
Total kilometers:
2987.32 Km
First and foremost, we would like to thank the many readers of our daily journal. According to the evaluation, over 15,000 people visited our website in October alone. For me, the writing, i.e. the documentation of our journey, is just as important as the journey itself. It is important for us to be the eyes and ears for many people who for whatever reason cannot, are not allowed or do not want to travel. I’m often on the verge of despair, I don’t think I can muster the strength to record our experiences during the expedition. The conditions are often catastrophic. But every time a new update is completed, when we have launched it into the satellite sky and then find out that it actually lands on our website, we feel liberated. It’s as if a heavy weight has fallen from your shoulders and at the same time it’s a feeling of freedom. It feels as if body, mind and soul are now ready to absorb further adventures and experiences, to inhale them and then bundle them up again to be sent into the satellite sky. This is and remains one of our most important tasks. But what does it mean to bundle experiences and turn them into letters if nobody is interested? It would be bad for the person who has taken on this work. But the fact that we were able to register 15,000 readers on our website in October alone gives us an enormous amount of energy. More than enough to continue working on our life project. Once again, we would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your interest and hope that you will stay with us. In the next few weeks we will publish the pictures of the stories and put an English version online. We are definitely looking forward to seeing you again, even if it is often just the knowledge that we are not alone, which often helps us overcome one or two challenges. THANK YOU!!!
More plans!
We have now happily and successfully completed the first part of our TRANS-EASTEXPEDITION. Although this time we “only” followed the Danube, i.e. not a spectacular destination such as 7000 kilometers with camels through the Australian outback or the crossing of the Taklamakan or with horses through Mongolia, it was an exciting journey for us and the start of an extraordinary bicycle ‘journey’. Horses – Elephants ? expedition that will last around five years. The TRANS-OST will therefore take up a considerable amount of time in our life project of the “Great Journey” of the 30-year expedition.
According to our current plans, we will be traveling to Romania by train again in April 2006 to start the second part of the TRANS-EAST EXPEDITION. We plan to cycle from Romania to the Ukraine, continuing through Russia and Siberia. In Siberia, we are thinking of crossing the length of Lake Baikal, which is frozen over in winter, on our bikes. At the moment it is not possible for us to determine the exact procedure. The planned duration of the journey for stage two is approx. 1 ½ years.
What happens next is still in the distant future, but we are planning a horse expedition to the Tsataan, the reindeer people on the Russian-Mongolian border, with whom we would like to spend a winter. Everything that follows will be published in good time on our homepage under the heading TRANS-EAST EXPEDITION diaries.
Summary
Over the next few days, we will try to digest our experiences of the last few months. It was a fantastic trip with highs and lows. We would never have thought that cycling could be so strenuous. Over the past 15 years, we have covered many thousands of kilometers on camels, horses, elephants and on foot. Each time we thought that an expedition trip like this could not be topped in terms of performance and now we are exploring another interesting part of our Mother Earth on bicycles. Once again, we have learned that you should never evaluate, judge or, even worse, condemn anything you don’t know. I actually thought cycling was much easier than paddling, running, riding elephants or camels, or navigating a caravan through the most dangerous deserts. On the contrary, we would like to pay tribute to every long-distance cyclist at this point. Although this sport is practiced by a relatively large number of people, it is in no way less challenging, exhausting to the mental and physical limits and sometimes demands everything a human body has to offer on an hourly basis.
We had to contend with one or two injuries. Thank God everything went well. Tanja was able to heal the injuries from her fall without any consequences. Our sore bottoms are already being forgotten, only the tendon attachment of my knee is still inflamed and my back whines from time to time. On the next 7000 kilometers to Siberia we have to be very careful not to catch a chronic injury. But you can plan as much as you want, things usually turn out differently than you think and that’s part of the appeal, part of the adventure. We are definitely looking forward to experiencing more adventures and getting to know other peoples, their religions and countries. But we are also looking forward to learning more about ourselves, to the interesting journey into our inner selves, but above all to being allowed to touch the ground, to be a part of all that is and hopefully to many enlightening conversations with Mother Earth.
