Colorful pictures, funny stories, nice people.
One side of our journey. The reality, of course, is different.
I am annoyed and it bugs me how people keep talking to us even though we don’t understand anything. Often they just don’t stop. I’m annoyed by the truck drivers who drive past us grinning, waving, honking far too fast and too close, and I have neck pain from being so tense.
The cold and wet at night and the damned sun that shines mercilessly on us the next day, that bugs me.
Five days without running water and I know we no longer smell good. The clothes are so salty from sweat that they don’t dry anyway (just a thought: maybe these stinky clothes are even the best insect repellent). Streets of ants in the tent, ticks on our legs and mosquitoes. We are exposed to all that out there.
And then it’s going uphill, even the snails are faster. We are much too heavy with our luggage.
Our days are simple.
We get up, brush our teeth, the forests are our toilets, we make ourselves a coffee, there’s oatmeal and an apple or a banana. We check the route for the day on Komoot (avoiding busy roads is a priority, so we put up with the mud holes, wild dogs chasing us and the ticks), dry the tent, load the bikes and start cycling. The first shop to buy water is ours. At lunchtime we find a shady spot on the side of the road for our noodles with beans and tomatoes and continue. At 5 pm (something between 40 and 80 km) we find a place for the tent (which is still damp, of course, and the sleeping bags urgently need to dry as well). Crispbread and eggs for the evening. And off into the tent. We are dead tired. We read a bit and usually sleep around 7:30 pm.
And then the prospect of a shower at a Warmshowers place keeps us going.
Often we don’t know what actually drives us.
But there is not only “one truth”. When we sit on our little chairs and try to remember the last few days and realize how rich we are in experiences in such a short time. Of wonderful encounters with people, of fascinating impressions of nature that no painter could draw more beautifully, of flowery smells along our routes. We experience our beautiful earth so intensively. What a gift.