Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

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Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

A legacy of love, kindness, and adventure

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

Though Jay and Lauren are no longer with us, their memory lives on in the words they’ve left behind and the many lives they’ve touched. Jay and Lauren chronicled their adventures here as they cycled the world together, sharing their experiences with the intention of inspiring and empowering others. Their stories and insight continue to inspire people around the world.

Some of Jay and Lauren’s belongings were held by law enforcement for over two years after their deaths. When they were returned, unpublished entries written for this blog were discovered. All of these entries have now been posted and can be read below. All entries posted in 2018 and before were posted by Jay and Lauren, and all entries posted afterwards were posted posthumously. Some of the entries posted posthumously are incomplete drafts but have been posted as is.

May their stories and their legacy of love, kindness, and adventure continue to make this world a better place.

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

A big guide to bike touring southern and eastern Africa

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

Draft — Jay Austin

In July of 2017, we loaded our bicycles onto a plane and flew to Cape Town. Over the next five months, we cycled thousands of kilometers through South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Malawi, and Tanzania, flying out of Dar es Salaam in December (and continuing our journey in Europe). . .

We learned a lot. We learned plenty about the places we visited and the people we met. We learned about how to pack and prepare for a very-long-distance bike tour. We learned about the difficulties and challenges and joys and rewards of cycling across southern and eastern Africa. We took some notes about what we learned.

These are our notes, intended for those planning a similar journey. Truthfully, if you're planning a similar journey, you don't really need them. Get a bike, get a tent, and go have fun. None of this information is terribly essential, and all can be figured out on the way.

But sometimes it's nice to have an idea of what to expect. Your experience might (and will) differ from ours. This is not a definitive guide to bike touring Africa; it is simply a really big collection of things we've written that will present one (or two) perspective(s). Here it is.

The first section is a lot of links to other pages on this site. Specifics on countries and stories of our travels. Down below, the second section provides a general overview of what we found on our travels. There's a third section with a few details about the route we chose, too.

Questions, comments, enthusiastic disagreement with what we've captured? Leave us a comment way below (or send us an email).

Happy trails!

SECTION 1: LOTS AND LOTS OF LINKS

1A: Getting started

Visa guide

Gear used

1B: South Africa

Country guide

Expenses

Post 1

Post 2

1C: Namibia

Country guide

Expenses

Post 1

Post 2

1D: Botswana

Country guide

Expenses

Post 1

Post 2

1E: Zambia

Country guide

Expenses

Post 1

Post 2

1F: Malawi

Country guide

Expenses

Post 1

Post 2

1G: Tanzania

Country guide

Expenses

Post 1

Post 2

SECTION 2: WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN BIKE TOURING (SOUTHERN AND EASTERN) AFRICA

Overview

2A: Weather

2B: Cycling

2C: Sleeping

2D: Eating

2E: Drinking

2F: Communicating

2G: Spending

2H: Seeing & doing

2I: Staying safe

SECTION 3: A FEW OTHER THINGS ABOUT OUR ROUTE

3A: Route maps

3B: Route statistics . .

SOUTH AFRICA

South Africa was the first country we cycled through on our 'round-the-world bike ride. We had plenty of fun at times, but were downright miserable at other points. It's tough to say how much of this was the tough adjustment to life on a bike, the (rather difficult) route we chose, and/or the challenges of South Africa in general. But for better or worse, here are our cycle-centric thoughts on the (western edges of) the country.

Where we went: Smitswinkelbaii - Cape Town - Veldriff - Elannsbai - Clanwilliam - Doringbos - Loeriesfontein - Niewoudtville - Pofadder - Onseepkans

When we went: July 2017 .

[INSERT KOMOOT BLOCK]

What we liked: There's a tremendous diversity of scenery (and people!). The Cape Town area is just beautiful. There are plenty of peaceful, quiet roads in the northwest.

What we didn't like: The unpaved roads are in terrible condition. Winter riding means long, cold nights. Lots of land is fenced off, making wild camping difficult.

What we wish we'd done differently: Taking the Garden Route east of Cape Town would probably have been much more scenic and enjoyable. We should have drank more South African wine. Our route through the Cederbergs and the Karoo was pretty and quiet, but the roads were really rough for the very start of a long-distance journey.

Weather

From the Cape to the coast to the arid, elevated Karoo, the weather in western South Africa varied a bit. Generally, the days in July (winter in the southern hemisphere) were warm (between XC and YC) and the nights just about freezing (OC). South Africans we met en route seemed gravely concerned about our ability to survive the frigid nights in a tent, but we stayed fairly comfortable in our -XC sleeping bags and a few layers. Generally, the temperature plunged as soon as the sun went down, and climbed quickly after the first few hours of daybreak.

Winds on our northbound route were never unreasonable, but (as is often the case) we noticed more headwinds than tailwinds. Prevailing winds appeared to be slightly southbound, and gusts were stronger on the coast than inland. We only experienced rain once, overnight while camping right on the beach.

Despite the brisk evenings, July seemed a good time to bike western South Africa, as the (often cloudless) days remained cool enough to cycle comfortably. Our main gripe with the season was sunlight; in winter, South Africa gets very little of it. Sunset is about 5:30PM, and as things don't start to warm up until a few hours after sunrise, we were only left with eight or nine hours of daylight for riding (and many long nights in the tent).

Cycling

Western South Africa had a wide range of road conditions. We avoided the busy N7 to Namibia (though paved, it offers no shoulder and seemed unsafe for cycling), opting for a more meandering route from south of Cape Town to the Onseepkans border crossing. The sealed roads in and around Cape Town were well-maintained but terrifying to bike through, with plenty of traffic and no way out of the city other than on major highways. Later on, bike paths emerged, and those tar roads without bike lanes offered a decent shoulder.

Gravel roads became more common east of the Cederbergs (around Doringbos), and were generally pretty atrocious all the way to the border. Expect lots of corrugation, fist- and melon-sized rocks scattered about the road, and (particularly in crossing the Great Karoo), lots of deep sand. The 280-kilometer stretch from Loeriesfontein to Pofadder was remarkably quiet, and at times we went a full day without seeing a person or vehicle. The final fifty kilometers from Pofadder to the border were absolutely horrendous.

It's difficult to cycle from Cape Town to Namibia without doing a fair bit of climbing. Our 889-kilometer route included 6,190 meters of ascents and 5,860 meters of descents.

Bike shops are plentiful in Cape Town and the surrounding area. While even the smallest towns in northwestern South Africa still had a mechanic that might know how to fix a bike, one would be hard-pressed to find replacement bike parts crossing the Karoo.

Probably due to the strange, remote route we traveled through South Africa (compared to the more popular Garden Route), we met no other bike tourers on our ride.

Sleeping

Wild camping: We camped most nights. Finding wild camping spots was more difficult in the populated area around Cape Town (we were told to move once after camping too close to a power plant; another night, we were kindly granted permission to camp right behind an Engen petrol station). Throughout western South Africa, virtually all land was fenced off in large-scale farming operations. Some fences were low enough to haul us and our bikes over; others were barbed. At night, most of the minor roads don't get much traffic, and it was easy to camp right near the road under the cover of darkness. South Africans told us we were surely be murdered if we wild camped, but we never felt unsafe

Campgrounds: The campgrounds we stayed at were very empty, but well-kept and pleasant. Pricing was per person (the rate for two people was twice the rate of one person), and a site for two typically cost between 100ZAR and 200ZAR total. Most towns we stopped in had at least one campground (occasionally attached to a guesthouse or hotel).

Guesthouses and hotels: Like campgrounds, pricing was per person (usually about 50% more for double-occupancy). Towns tended to have a few guesthouses not listed online that were cheaper than those searchable on Google Maps. We were able to haggle a little on guesthouse pricing (getting a better deal for staying two nights), but not at the one hotel we stayed at. Both were a little over-budget for us, with a night at a basic self-catering guesthouse coming out to about 400ZAR and a night at a hotel around 800ZAR.

Warmshowers and Couchsurfing: The Cape Town area has some really wonderful hosts. Hosts were either nonexistent (Warmshowers) or non-active (Couchsurfing) the further north we went.

Communicating

South Africa's a big, diverse place, and we can't possibly generalize about all its people. We met many who were astonishingly warm and friendly (including our hosts in the Cape). As we traveled further north (and into less-visited areas), people were perhaps less outgoing, but then again, we were a pair of strange-looking, strange-smelling Americans in the middle of the desert on bicycles. We didn't necessarily forge any lasting connections during most of our time cycling the country, but we never found anyone hostile or mean toward us.

It's important to note that South Africa is still grappling with a host of racial, political, and socioeconomic issues stemming from centuries of colonialism and apartheid. The issue of race came up constantly in casual conversations with South Africans, and white South Africans appeared to harbor tremendous fear and distrust toward non-white South Africans (the inverse also seemed true). As white travelers, we weren't given any hassle about wild camping or just moving about, but the experience of travelers of color, unfortunately, might vary quite a bit.

South Africans speak a tremendous array of languages. In the western regions, whites generally speak Afrikaans and blacks generally speak Xhosa (and, often, Afrikaans as well). Almost everyone we met spoke enough English for us to communicate.

South and west of the Cederbergs and the Karoo, cell service and wifi was pretty common. Further north, both could be more difficult to come by.

Eating & drinking

As a vegan and a vegetarian traveling on a budget, we missed out on most of what South African cuisine had to offer. Brai (barbecue) was everywhere, and supposedly delicious. Though Cape Town had plenty of non-meat options, these became much rarer the further north we cycled. Restaurants served french fries or not-so-great pizza, but not much else that we could eat.

Most towns had a grocery. The Spar chain usually presented the largest and best selection (though also the most expensive). Our easy-to-find staples included bread, peanut butter, spaghetti, sweet potatoes, onions, marrows (baby zucchini), and chips. We powered our multifuel stove (an MSR Dragonfly) with unleaded gasoline, unable to find white gas anywhere (though we never searched too hard). We were told South Africans called white gas benzine (but not benzene, which is different and very hazardous).

The tap water was safe to drink wherever we went.

Spending

Our budget in South Africa was 270ZAR (about 20USD) per day for the two of us. We were able to stay under-budget by mostly cooking for ourselves and camping the majority of nights (including wild camping), but had to remain very cost-conscious throughout the country. Groceries were affordable (50ZAR for an 800g jar of peanut butter, 18ZAR for a loaf of bread, 12 ZAR for a pack of spaghetti), and wine was very inexpensive.

We paid for things mostly in cash, and didn't have too much trouble finding ATMs in town. Even in more remote areas, credit cards were generally accepted at larger businesses.

Here's a day-to-day record of what we spent while we were in South Africa. [LINK]

Seeing & doing

The Cape is just beautiful, and we hear wonderful things about the Garden Route east of Cape Town. Our route north was scenic along the coast and within the Cederbergs, with occasional stretches of plain, sandy desert further north.

There's plenty to do in Cape Town, and tons of vineyards to visit just a little east of town (which we missed out on). Venturing north, there aren't very many sights or activities: just lots and lots of sand, gravel, and hills. If you're looking for game drives, wildlife, and breathtaking coastal views, east from Cape Town is probably a better direction to go.

Entering & exiting

As Americans, we were granted free ninety-day entry to South Africa upon arrival at the Cape Town International Airport. We stayed 23 days and crossed into Namibia, at the quiet Onseepkans border, without any trouble.

Staying safe

South Africans seemed very concerned for our safety, and we were repeatedly cautioned about the country's crime rate (which is, indeed, higher than most others). That said, at no point in South Africa did we feel in danger or threatened.

The regions of western South Africa we traveled through didn't have any large wildlife to worry about. We saw rodents, horses, cattle, and plenty of sheep, but nothing that kept us from camping (or, for that matter, leaving food in our tent).

Outside of Cape Town, drivers were fast but courteous. Most would give us some room when passing and a quick beep of the horn to alert us of their presence. In the more remote stretches of northwestern South Africa, roads were empty for hours at a time, and we often stopped right in the middle of the road without worrying about traffic.

In quieter areas, carrying enough water was important. Rivers noted on maps all ran dry during the winter, and the only reliable resupply points for food and water were towns. The distances in between could be vast and slow-going.

We drank water from the taps and never had any problems.

Bike touring across borders: a country-by-country visa guide

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

June 23, 2018 — Lauren Geoghegan

On a cross-continental bike journey like ours, crossing borders can sometimes be pretty easy and can sometimes be a complicated, expensive, confusing ordeal. Visa rules and travel stipulations are constantly changing, almost always poorly communicated, and often inconsistently applied from border to border, month to month, and agent to agent.

In figuring out where our bikes could and could not (legally) take us, we relied a bit on embassy and immigration websites but a lot on the collective experience of the internet, scattered bits of first-hand knowledge not just about how these things might work in theory, but how they're actually applied in practice. In return, we're sharing the (pretty tedious) details of our travels: how we entered each country, how much it cost, and anything else we thought folks on trips like ours should know.

A few caveats before we get started.

First and most importantly, we're Americans. Our visa requirements and costs are typically the same as a whole host of other countries, but often they're a bit more restrictive and more expensive (in reciprocity for our own restrictive and expensive visa process). Sometimes they're less restrictive (though rarely less expensive). Your mileage may vary.

It may vary quite a bit. Even fellow Americans crossing the same border a few days after us could have an entirely different experience. Borders are finicky places, and discretion is often left up to agents who may or may not be having a bad day. Things change. Some of this information may be hopelessly out of date (which is why our dates are listed). If something is no longer accurate, let us know and we'll update it. Don't treat what you read here as the final world. If it's important, get a second (and third, and fourth) opinion.

We're just posting this once and will go in and add new countries as we enter them. So the URL will stay the same, but if you're subscribed to receive email updates, you won't be notified of changes to this page.

All prices listed are in US dollars and per person.

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

After riding the Salsa Marrakesh around the world for a year, here's a review of the bike

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

Draft — Jay Austin

A while back I wrote a kinda-sorta review of the Salsa Marrakesh, a bike I didn't yet own. "Here are the bikes we'll be pedaling around the world" was the gist of it. "Here's why we chose them." It wasn't a very hands-on review.

For one reason or another, the dark magic of the web pushed that post up and up in search results. Google "Salsa Marrakesh," and it'll be like the fifth or sixth hit. It gets some traffic.

After twelve months on the road, we've gotten to know our Salsa Marrakeshes pretty well. It seems like a good time to update that review. Here are my thoughts.

This is my bicycle.

It's a 2016 Salsa Marrakesh. The flat bar version, back when Salsa was making flat bar Marrakeshes, but converted to a drop bar for a few complicated-and-not-entirely-relevant reasons. Stock frame, stock rims (WTB i19) and hubs (Shimano XT) and spokes (Swiss DT), stock brakes (Avid BB7s) and gearset (Shimano Deore). The rest of the parts have been swapped out:

Tires: Salsa lists the Marrakesh as coming with Schwalbe 700c x 40mm Marathons, but both my bike and Lauren's were being sold with Panaracer tires. Either way, we wanted something that could handle gravel roads a little better, so we started our trip with brand new 700c x 50mm Schwalbe Marathon Mondials.

Saddle: As a vegan, I didn't want a leather saddle (nor one that couldn't really get wet). I switched to the Brooks Cambium C17 Carved. It doesn't look comfortable, but it is.

Seatpost: I took the saddle from my other bike, one with a nice chrome seatpost, so I just brought that with it. No reason other than it's shinier.

Rack: I'll talk about this more below, but we were both underwhelmed by the weight rating of the stock rack. We already owned much beefier Tubus Logo racks, so we fit those on instead.

Handlebars: I bought my Marrakesh with a flat bar but knew that I wanted to swap it out for drop bars from the start. I didn't love the look of Salsa's flared Cowchipper bars, and knew that Lauren (who still uses them) had trouble rolling her Marrakesh into her narrow-doored DC apartment without smacking them into the doorframe. I chose a pair of Ritchey handlebars that I'm happy with.

Shifters: Coming from a flat bar, I needed new shifters. The Microshifts that come stock on the drop bar Marrakesh seemed good. I put them on the downtube where they're not in the way.

And a few add-ons:

Basket: Every respectable touring bike needs a basket. We're both riding with a Klickfix Mini.

Bottle cages : I have five: a basic cage on the bottom of the downtube (for a one-liter bottle), a sideload cage on the top of the downtube (for a one-liter bottle; currently rigged up with a hair tie to hold a wide-mouth one-liter Nalgene), an adjustable cage on the seat tube (used to hold my Nalgene; now holds a 750-milliliter thermos), and two oversized cages on the fork (in Africa these each held a two-liter soda bottle; since Europe they've each carried a 6.5-liter plastic jug filled with food or occasionally water).

Odds and ends: Front light, back light, cable lock, kickstand, panniers. I had a bell but it died in a bike crash in Zambia.

PHOTOS

This is Lauren's bicycle.

It's a 2016 Salsa Marrakesh, but the drop bar version. It's fairly similar, though with fewer modifications. Lauren swapped out her rack (for a Tubus Logo), tires (for Schwalbe Marathon Mondials, 700c x 50mm) and saddle (for a Brooks Cambium C17 Women's Carved). She traveling with the same basket and roughly the same set of bottle cages and odds and ends.

PHOTOS

Here's what I like about my bicycle.

It's pretty much up for anything short of full-on mountain biking, and it can carry a whole lot. Specifically:

So many braze-ons.

We knew we'd be traveling long distances through deserts and mountains and great plains. Eyelets for bottle cages was a must.

For reasons I just don't understand, the Surly Long Haul Trucker (the Marrakesh's main competitor, though both brands are actually owned by the same company, and the go-to touring bike for years) really skimps on eyelets. The Marrakesh does not. In addition to the standard two within the frame's triangle, our bikes can fit another bottle cage on the underside of the downtube, plus, very importantly, two bottle cages on the fork. That affords capacity for another three to five liters (once or twice, I've carried an extra fourteen by filling my front jugs with water) over the Long Haul Trucker.

Sure, front braze-ons aren't that important if you're traveling with a front rack. But if your bike can handle oversized bottle cages on the fork, a front rack isn't so necessary.

Good tire clearance.

We're currently riding on 50mm (2") tires, and they fit just fine (without fenders). There's a small bit of additional clearance on each side, but you probably couldn't go much wider. Two-inch tires, for us, has been more than enough to handle the terrain we've covered.

Great disc brakes.

The Salsa Marrakesh is the first bike I've owned with disc brakes, so I wasn't sure what to expect. They've been just wonderful. Better braking performance than rim brakes, better handling in bad weather, and much easier to adjust. Our Avid BB7s have led us safely down dozens of mountain passes, and at the time of writing—one year and over ten thousand kilometers in—I'm still on my first pair of brake pads (we changed Lauren's out after maybe eight thousand kilometers of riding due to a few busted retaining clips).

It's worth noting that the new (2018) Salsa Marrakesh no longer comes with Avid BB7s. I can't comment on the Hayes brakes Salsa's replaced them with.

Lots of gears for the world's many ups and downs.

The stock Shimano Deore nine-speed (11-32) cassette and the stock Shimano Deore 48/38/24t crankset make a great pair for loaded touring. Traveling with about fifteen kilograms of gear each and maybe another five or ten kilograms of food and water and fuel, it's enough to get us up 12% grades; anything higher becomes a real slog. We're not all too interested on going very, very fast, so I don't think I've ever been in my top gear. Whenever our cassettes wear out, we'll probably replace them with 12-36 sprockets for just a little more reach into the lowest gear.

A kickstand plate (and spare spoke mount).

Lots of touring bikes (like the Long Haul Trucker) don't come with kickstand plates. And so lots of people decide that kickstands are stupid and unnecessary. They either lean their bikes against buildings and trees or lay them on the ground or buy a Clickstand, which is a clever but tedious workaround to something that should just come standard on touring bicycles.

Kickstands are very useful. You may survive without one, but you'll never regret having one if your bike will support it. Lauren and I both use basic, single-legged Greenfield kickstands and probably engage them ten to twenty times per day. It took us a few weeks to learn how to make it work without having the bikes fall over, and sure, they definitely get knocked down in a strong gust every now and again, but we still love them. I wouldn't really travel without one. The plate itself is well-built and has survived plenty of bike weight and many bike topples.

(The spare spoke mount is a cute little feature. Unnecessary but fun. The mount can fit three spokes but our bikes each came with just two. Salsa may be getting stingy with spokes nowadays.)

It's steel.

We've taken the bikes on boats and trains and planes and buses and ridden them hard and our frames show almost no sign of wear, spare a little paint damage here and there. No dents, no bends, no cracks. Steel is stronger than carbon fiber, absorbs vibrations much better than aluminum, and in a pinch, can be welded in just about any village the world over.

Here's what I don't like about my bicycle.

I had a few complaints about the Marrakesh before I even bought it. These have mostly held true. They're minor gripes, but worth mentioning.

Ready-to-ride isn't so great.

Salsa sells the Marrakesh as a world touring bike that's ready to ride around the planet right out of the shop. And this is pretty much true. For someone starting from scratch, it's a really great bundle of parts for a really good value. It comes with a rack, it comes with touring tires, it even comes with a name-brand saddle. Everything but the pedals, panniers, and bottle cages.

Ready-to-ride makes a lot of sense for urban commuters and BMXers and beach cruisers, maybe. But touring is a long game. People are different and places are different and requirements are different. Not everyone needs or wants 40mm tires, or the standard Brooks saddle (which, by the way, is a men's saddle made for a male's anatomy, which kinda-sorta leaves female customers stuck deciding between riding a saddle that's probably going to cause some problems or selling it to someone who can use it for a steep discount; also, it's not vegan, which leaves vegans like myself in a similar situation).

Or that rack. I'm still baffled by Salsa's decision to sell a world touring bike with an aluminum, 15-kilogram-weight-limit rack bolted to the back of it. We're traveling fairly light, and even our gear exceeds that on a good day. The Salsa Alternator can probably handle a little more weight, but even so, when an aluminum rack breaks it's kinda-sorta toast. The (chromoly steel) Tubus Logo Evo racks we opted for instead (pricey but so worth it) are rated for 40 kilograms.

Even swapping things out for a few new parts, the Marrakesh is still an excellent value. I was lucky enough to trade everything I didn't want (rack, seatpost, saddle, shifters, tires) back to my local bike shop at fifty-percent-off-retail in store credit. It was still cheaper to do this and buy the new parts than build the bike from the frame up. But for me, and for Lauren, and maybe for you, it means you're buying a bike with several hundreds of dollars of pretty nice stuff that might not be perfect for you. It'd be nice if Salsa, like its competition, outfitted the bike with cheap tires, a cheap saddle, and no rack, and left upgrades to the consumer.

The wheels have had a few uh-ohs.

Our bikes have had almost no troubles. If you're curious, there's a full list of all the troubles they've had a little further down. A number of those issues have been with the stock wheels they came with.

Specifically: three busted spoke nipples (two on my bike, one on Lauren's) and one very cracked rim. The broken nipples were no big deal and we fixed them pretty easily, but my cracked rim was a surprise, because I'm not carrying all that much weight on the back, I ride fairly gently, and the rims (WTB i-19s) are supposed to be pretty hefty.

I called Salsa and they passed the buck to WTB, the rim manufacturer. To WTB's credit, they were really, really helpful in getting a replacement, covered under warranty, shipped from their international plant in Europe to us in Italy. The European factory didn't even make the 36-spoke rim I needed, so they drilled it custom and sent it out express.

Neither Salsa nor WTB would cover the cost of building that wheel—all I got, to be clear, was a new rim. So I read a few articles and learned how to transfer the old spokes and old hub to the new rim (not too difficult) and did it all myself.

So, if you're taking off on a long tour on a Marrakesh, it may be good to know how to pull the rim tape off a wheel and replace spoke nipples. Just in case.

The decals have grown on me, but not that much.

Salsa likes their decals. Big and plentiful. There's a large Salsa splashed on the down tube, a Marrakesh and series of constellations on the top tube, a compass on the fork, and an ADVENTURE BY BIKE on the chain stay.

I think they're a little ugly. If they were on top of the clear coat (like Surly decals), I'd yank them off. But they're not, so I just learn to live with them.

And, if you're really curious, here's a full list of things that have gone wrong.

This list isn't a criticism of the Marrakesh. Take any bike on a long tour and it's going to have some problems. All of these issues we fixed ourselves, with a pretty small toolkit and spare parts (plus the replacement rim). But, if they're things that happened to our bikes, they're things that may happen to your bike. Maybe things to prepare for. So here they are (current as of 11.5 months into our trip).

LIST

For anyone curious: yes, a Tubus rack can fit onto a Salsa Marrakesh.

I've gotten many, many emails this past year from folks who heard a rumor that only a Salsa rack can fit on a Salsa Marrakesh. I get it. I was one of those folks. I heard that rumor.

So, for the record: yes, a Tubus rack can fit onto a Salsa Marrakesh. Here. See for yourself:

PHOTO

A few caveats. First and foremost, it's going to sit a little higher up. It'll leave a few inches of space underneath the rack. Your panniers will have a slightly (probably imperceptibly) higher center of gravity. It make look strange, if you're really, really paying attention.

Second, you may need to get new rack stays. Mine fit just fine, but Lauren's came up at a steep angle from the rack mounts to the rack (on account of the rack sitting higher). Our local bike shop gave her a few spare stays, cut them to fit, and they've worked just fine ever since.

Third, they bolt into the brake on one side and into just the eyelet on the other side. The bolts you use may need to be different lengths. You may need a few spacers.

Finally, your mileage may vary. Don't buy this bike based on my promise that the rack is going to fit. All that I can promise is that Tubus Logo rear racks have been bolted to our Salsa Marrakeshes for a full year (and reassembled several times after flights), and they're carrying our stuff just fine. If you have any questions about this that these photos can't answer, drop a comment at the bottom of this post and we'll try to help.

After a year on the bike, I'm plenty happy with the Salsa Marrakesh.

It's a good bike. A really good bike. I don't have anything new or novel to say about it since the last review a year ago: the features that made us pick them have been great, and the things we didn't really love to begin with are still minor gripes. One year and ten thousand kilometers in, the bikes are still going strong. We'll check in on them again in another ten thousand.

Until then, here are a few more photos of the Marrakesh out in the world:

PHOTOS

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

EXPENSES: May 2018, Croatia and Montenegro and Albania and Kosovo and Macedonia and Bulgaria and Greece and Turkey and Kazakhstan

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

To shed some light on the costs of long-term bike travel, we're publishing monthly reports of all our expenses. Here's a full list of all spending posts to date [link].

Overview

Food: 285 EUR ( USD)
Lodging: 114 EUR ( USD)
Total ordinary expenses: 399 EUR ( USD)
Daily expenses: 13 EUR ( USD)
Daily expenses, per person: 7 EUR ( USD)

Additional expenses: EUR ( USD)

Total cost, May 2018: EUR ( USD)

Ordinary expenses

Eating in Spain was much more expensive than in Morocco, but still affordable. Mostly we bought groceries, but occasionally (especially in Andalucia, where beer costs under two euros and comes with a tapa) we enjoyed a drink at a bar or cafe. We did plenty of cooking with our (many) hosts. In some cases, we were able to purchase the ingredients; other times, they insisted on using what they had in the pantry.

Sleeping in Spain was lovely. We traveled through the country in the dead of winter, so camping could be a bit cold. We never paid for campsites and had little trouble finding a suitable place to wild camp when needed (though it could be trickier on the coast). Mostly, though, we were tremendously fortunate to be welcomed into the homes of a number of really wonderful people: folks we met through Warmshowers and Couchsurfing and earlier travels.

During the month of March, we were hosted for 9 nights, wild camped 9 nights, and stayed in a hostel/Airbnb (using credit for most of our Airbnb nights) 13 nights.

Overall, our monthly budget of 700 USD total (recently increased from 600 to give us a little breathing room) felt more than adequate for our daily needs and a few unforeseen expenses. In the middle of January, a few good friends visited us from back home in Barcelona. We splurged a little (relatively speaking, for us) on food and lodging during their visit (and thankfully, they were very graciously understanding of our financial constraints).

Our day-by-day costs (and where we slept) are below. All values are expressed in Euro (as of April 2018, 1 HRK (HRK) = 0.17 US Dollar (USD).

Airbnb in Dubrovnik (paid for by Lauren's parents).

3 food / Wild camping in Montenegro.

8 food / 13 lodging / Campground in Albania.

5 food / 4 lodging / Campground in Albania.

20 lodging / Guesthouse in Albania.

13 food / Free camping in Kosovo.

Free camping in Kosovo.

10 food / Hosted in Kosovo.

4 food / Wild camping in Macedonia.

Wild camping in Macedonia.

11 food / 25 lodging / Motel in Macedonia.

10 food / 25 lodging / Motel in Macedonia.

Wild camping in Bulgaria.

16 food / Wild camping in Bulgaria.

4 food / Wild camping in Bulgaria.

14 food / Wild camping in Bulgaria.

Wild camping in Greece.

12 food / 17 lodging / Hotel in Turkey.

3 food / Free camping in Turkey.

1 food / Free camping in Turkey.

17 food / 10 lodging / Airbnb in Istanbul.

36 food / Airbnb in Istanbul (paid for by credit).

8 food / Airbnb in Istanbul (paid for by credit).

22 food / Airbnb in Istanbul (paid for by credit).

8 food / Airbnb in Istanbul (paid for by credit).

9 food / Airbnb in Istanbul (paid for by credit).

5 food / Airbnb in Istanbul (paid for by credit).

17 food / Airplane to Almaty.

13 food / Hotel in Almaty (paid for using points).

24 food / Hotel in Almaty (paid for using points).

12 food / Hotel in Almaty (paid for using points).

Other expenses

We got caught in a snowstorm deep in Spain's interior. We had to meet friends in Barcelona by the middle of the month, and so we took a bus to Valencia to get out of the storm and ensure we'd make it to Barcelona in time. We also purchased some new gear for the colder weather, mainly thermoses for hot drinks and new gloves to replace the terrible "waterproof" ones we were using. My Google cell service, which doesn't roll over neatly at the end of each month, also cost a little bit.

All values are expressed in Euro (as of April 2018, 1 Euro (EUR) = 1.23 US Dollar (USD).

Bus tickets: 64
New/replacement gear: 40
Cell service: 20

As always, tons of thanks to the many, many friends (new and old) who showed us such generosity and kindness this January and made our time in Spain so wonderful. We certainly couldn't have done it without you.

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

EXPENSES: April 2018, Croatia and Bosnia and Montenegro

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

To shed some light on the costs of long-term bike travel, we're publishing monthly reports of all our expenses. Here's a full list of all spending posts to date [link].

Overview

Food: 1700 HRK ( USD)
Lodging: 1630 HRK ( USD)
Total ordinary expenses: 3330 HRK ( USD)
Daily expenses: 111 HRK ( USD)
Daily expenses, per person: 56 HRK ( USD)

Additional expenses: 363 HRK ( USD)

Total cost, March 2018: 3693 HRK ( USD)

Ordinary expenses

During the month of March, we were hosted for 9 nights, wild camped 9 nights, and stayed in a hostel/Airbnb (using credit for most of our Airbnb nights) 13 nights.

Our day-by-day costs (and where we slept) are below. All values are expressed in Euro (as of April 2018, 1 HRK (HRK) = 0.17 US Dollar (USD).

46 food / 54 lodging / Airbnb in Makarska.

97 food / 111 lodging / Airbnb in Makarska.

278 food / 111 lodging / Airbnb in Makarska.

86 food / 111 lodging / Airbnb in Makarska.

111 lodging / Airbnb in Makarska.

37 food / 111 lodging / Airbnb in Makarska.

285 food / 111 lodging / Airbnb in Makarska.

23 food / 111 lodging / Airbnb in Makarska.

28 food / 111 lodging / Airbnb in Makarska.

111 lodging / Airbnb in Makarska.

174 food / 111 lodging / Airbnb in Makarska.

111 lodging / Airbnb in Makarska.

89 food / 104 lodging / Airbnb in Makarska.

25 food / 104 lodging / Airbnb in Makarska.

21 food / Wild camping en route to Muo.

Wild camping en route to Muo.

146 food / Wild camping en route to Muo.

10 food / 74 lodging / Campground en route to Muo.

103 food / 74 lodging / Campground en route to Muo.

VRBO in Muo (paid for by Lauren's parents).

254 food / Airbnb in Dubrovnik (paid for by Lauren's parents).

Other expenses

363 We got caught in a snowstorm deep in Spain's interior. We had to meet friends in Barcelona by the middle of the month, and so we took a bus to Valencia to get out of the storm and ensure we'd make it to Barcelona in time. We also purchased some new gear for the colder weather, mainly thermoses for hot drinks and new gloves to replace the terrible "waterproof" ones we were using. My Google cell service, which doesn't roll over neatly at the end of each month, also cost a little bit.

All values are expressed in Euro (as of April 2018, 1 Euro (EUR) = 1.23 US Dollar (USD).

Bus tickets: 64
New/replacement gear: 40
Cell service: 20

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

EXPENSES: March 2018, Italy and Slovenia and Croatia

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

Draft — Jay Austin

To shed some light on the costs of long-term bike travel, we're publishing monthly reports of all our expenses. Here's a full list of all spending posts to date [link].

Overview

Food: 2082 HRK (354 USD)

Lodging: 693 HRK (118 USD)

Total ordinary expenses: 2775 HRK (472 USD)

Daily expenses: 90 HRK (15 USD)

Daily expenses, per person: 45 HRK (8 USD)

Additional expenses: 181 HRK (31 USD)

Total cost, March 2018: 2956 HRK (503 USD)

Ordinary expenses

Eating in Spain was much more expensive than in Morocco, but still affordable. Mostly we bought groceries, but occasionally (especially in Andalucia, where beer costs under two euros and comes with a tapa) we enjoyed a drink at a bar or cafe. We did plenty of cooking with our (many) hosts. In some cases, we were able to purchase the ingredients; other times, they insisted on using what they had in the pantry.

Sleeping in Spain was lovely. We traveled through the country in the dead of winter, so camping could be a bit cold. We never paid for campsites and had little trouble finding a suitable place to wild camp when needed (though it could be trickier on the coast). Mostly, though, we were tremendously fortunate to be welcomed into the homes of a number of really wonderful people: folks we met through Warmshowers and Couchsurfing and earlier travels.

During the month of March, we were hosted for 9 nights, wild camped 9 nights, and stayed in a hostel/Airbnb (using credit for most of our Airbnb nights) 13 nights.

Overall, our monthly budget of 700 USD total (recently increased from 600 to give us a little breathing room) felt more than adequate for our daily needs and a few unforeseen expenses. In the middle of January, a few good friends visited us from back home in Barcelona. We splurged a little (relatively speaking, for us) on food and lodging during their visit (and thankfully, they were very graciously understanding of our financial constraints).

Our day-by-day costs (and where we slept) are below. All values are expressed in Euro (as of April 2018, 1 HRK (HRK) = 0.17 US Dollar (USD).

Hosted in Muggia.

642 food / Hosted in Muggia.

Hosted in Muggia.

Hosted en route to Rijeka.

148 lodging / Hostel in Rijeka.

24 food / 184 lodging / Hostel in Rijeka.

23 food / Couchsurfing host in Rijeka.

73 food / Wild camping en route to Zadar.

60 food / Wild camping en route to Zadar.

70 food / Wild camping en route to Zadar.

76 food / 167 lodging / Hostel in Zadar.

Wild camping en route to Split.

59 food / Wild camping en route to Split.

147 food / Airbnb in Split (paid for by credit).

Airbnb in Split (paid for by credit).

363 food / Airbnb in Split (paid for by credit).

Airbnb in Split (paid for by credit).

179 food / Airbnb in Split (paid for by credit).

Airbnb in Split (paid for by credit).

152 food / Airbnb in Split (paid for by credit).

Airbnb in Split (paid for by credit).

158 food / 97 lodging / Airbnb in Split.

97 lodging / Airbnb in Split.

57 food / Wild camping en route to Makarska.

Wild camping en route to Makarska.

Other expenses

All values are expressed in Euro (as of April 2018, 1 Euro (EUR) = 1.23 US Dollar (USD).

Bus tickets: 64

New/replacement gear: 40

Cell service: 20

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

EXPENSES: February 2018, France and Italy ($556)

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

Draft — Jay Austin

To shed some light on the costs of long-term bike travel, we're publishing monthly reports of all our expenses. Here's a full list of all spending posts to date.

Overview

Food: 301 EUR (370 USD)

Lodging: 3 EUR (4 USD)

Total ordinary expenses: 304 EUR (374 USD)

Daily expenses: 11 EUR (14 USD)

Daily expenses, per person: 5 EUR (6 USD)

Additional expenses: 148 EUR (182 USD)

Total cost, February 2018: 452 EUR (556 USD)

Ordinary expenses

Eating in France and Italy was surprisingly affordable when sticking to grocery stores (and we still managed to indulge in French breads and pastries!). We shared many of our meals with our wonderful hosts. In some cases we prepared the food, in others they shared their delicious home cooking, and, sometimes, we enjoyed cooking together. At times we were able to purchase the ingredients; other times, they insisted on using what they had in the pantry. We had some very generous hosts during the month of February!

Sleeping in France and Italy was comfortable (for the most part!). Traveling through the countries in the middle of winter, we had some pretty cold nights and mornings camping. We never paid for campsites and managed to find a suitable place to wild camp when needed (although we often waited until sundown to set up camp!). Most of our nights, though, we spent indoors with some really great hosts, who generously welcomed us into their warm homes and shared their wonderful company. We met these hosts primarily through Warmshowers and Couchsurfing, however, we also met a host in the bike lanes of Nice. Our host in Muggia was a family friend of Lauren's.

During the month of February, we were hosted for 21 nights, wild camped 5 nights, free camped 1 night, and stayed in a hotel (using points) 1 night.

Overall, our monthly budget of 700 USD total felt more than adequate for our daily needs and our unforeseen transportation expense during the polar vortex.

Our day-by-day costs (and where we slept) are below. All values are expressed in Euro (as of April 2018, 1 Euro (EUR) = 1.23 US Dollar (USD).

Wild camping en route to Montpellier.

8 food / Warmshowers host in Montpellier.

18 food / Warmshowers host in Montpellier.

Warmshowers host in Montpellier.

54 food / Warmshowers host in Montpellier.

19 food / 3 lodging / Hotel in Montpellier (paid for using hotel points with the exception of city tax).

2 food / Wild camping en route to Arles.

7 food / Wild camping en route to Miramas.

14 food / Warmshowers host in Miramas.

Warmshowers host in Les Pennes Mirabeau.

16 food / Warmshowers host in Cassis.

20 food / Warmshowers host in Cassis.

24 food / Warmshowers host in Cassis.

7 food / Couchsurfing host in Le Pradet.

13 food / Hosted in Hýeres.

Hosted in Hýeres.

17 food / Wild camping en route to Nice.

10 food / Wild camping en route to Nice.

13 food / Hosted in Nice.

9 food / Free camping in Ventimiglia.

7 food / Hosted in Muggia.

Hosted in Muggia.

31 food / Hosted in Muggia.

Hosted in Muggia.

13 food / Hosted in Muggia.

Other expenses

Our major "other" expense in February, almost 30 percent of our total expenses for the month, was the purchase of train tickets from Ventimiglia to Trieste to escape the polar vortex. We were disappointed to adjust our cycling plans for Italy, but we also wanted to avoid cycling in the especially cold temperatures, strong winds, and rain and snow (we're glad we bought those tickets!). My Google cell service, which doesn't roll over neatly at the end of each month, also cost a little bit.

All values are expressed in Euro (as of April 2018, 1 Euro (EUR) = 1.23 US Dollar (USD).

Train tickets: 125

Cell service: 20

Other: 3

As always, tons of thanks to those who showed us such generosity and kindness this February and made our time in France and Italy so wonderful. We certainly couldn't have done it without you.

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

EXPENSES: January 2018, Spain ($747)

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

June 22, 2018 — Jay Austin

To shed some light on the costs of long-term bike travel, we're publishing monthly reports of all our expenses. Here's a full list of all spending posts to date.

Overview

Food: 421 EUR (519 USD)

Lodging: 101 EUR (125 USD)

Total ordinary expenses: 522 EUR (644 USD)

Daily expenses: 17 EUR (21 USD)

Daily expenses, per person: 8 EUR (10 USD)

Additional expenses: 84 EUR (103 USD)

Total cost, January 2018: 606 EUR (747 USD)

Ordinary expenses

During the month of January, we were hosted for 22 nights, wild camped 5 nights, and stayed in a hotel/hostel (using past credit or points) 4 nights.

Overall, our monthly budget of 700 USD total (recently increased from 600 to give us a little breathing room) felt adequate for our needs, even covering most of an unforeseen (and pricey) bus ride. In the middle of January, a few good friends visited us from back home in Barcelona. We splurged a little (relatively speaking, for us) on food and lodging during their visit (and thankfully, they were very graciously understanding of our financial constraints).

Our day-by-day costs (and where we slept) are below. All values are expressed in Euro (as of April 2018, 1 Euro (EUR) = 1.23 US Dollar (USD).

Warmshowers host in Jaen.

27 food / Warmshowers host in Jaen.

12 food / Warmshowers host in Jaen.

5 food / Warmshowers host in Jaen.

20 food / Couchsurfing host in Linares.

Hotel in Valencia (paid for using hotel points).

Warmshowers host in Valencia.

19 food / Warmshowers host in Valencia.

12 food / Warmshowers host in Valencia.

17 food / Hosted in Moncofa.

Wild camping en route to Barcelona.

17 food / Wild camping en route to Barcelona.

7 food / Couchsurfing host in Salou.

3 food / Couchsurfing host in Casteldeffels.

23 food / 34 lodging / Hostel in Barcelona (partially paid with Booking credit).

16 food / 34 lodging / Hostel in Barcelona (partially paid with Booking credit).

43 food / 34 lodging / Hostel in Barcelona (partially paid with Booking credit).

12 food / Couchsurfing host in Barcelona.

20 food / Couchsurfing host in Barcelona.

18 food / Couchsurfing host in Barcelona.

9 food / Warmshowers host in Sant Pol.

5 food / Wild camping en route to Barcelona.

11 food / Hosted in Girona.

13 food / Hosted in Girona.

7 food / Hosted in Girona.

24 food / Hosted in Girona.

18 food / Couchsurfing host in Figueres.

8 food / Wild camping en route to Narbonne.

12 food / Wild camping en route to Narbonne.

26 food / Couchsurfing host in Narbonne.

17 food / Couchsurfing host in Narbonne.

Other expenses

All values are expressed in Euro (as of April 2018, 1 Euro (EUR) = 1.23 US Dollar (USD).

Bus tickets: 64

Cell service: 20

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

So, where do we sleep (Europe)?

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

Draft — Lauren Geoghegan

Where did we sleep in Europe? Let's start with an overview.

We spent 157 nights cycling across the European continent, from Algeciras to Istanbul. Of these 157 nights:

We slept outside 44 nights (28%) and slept inside 113 nights (72%).

We paid for lodging 29 nights (18%) and did not pay for lodging 128 nights (82%).

We spent 4 nights (2.5%) in campgrounds.

We spent 33 nights (21%) wild camping.

We spent 7 nights (4.5%) free camping (with the landholder's permission).

We spent 4 nights (2.5%) staying with hosts we met through connections.

We spent 1 night (0.5%) in guesthouses.

We spent 29 nights (18.5%) staying with hosts we met online.

We spent 8 nights (5%) staying with hosts we just met (typically in asking for a place to camp).

We spent 16 nights (10%) staying with hosts we already knew.

We spent 6 nights (4%) in hotels/motels.

We spent 6 nights (4%) in hostels.

We spent 33 nights (21%) in Airbnbs.

We spent 10 nights (6.5%) in VRBOs.

Our total lodging cost in Europe was $647 (USD).

Over 157 days, our average nightly lodging cost was $4.12 (or $2.06 per person). Factoring in only the days we paid for accommodations, our average nightly lodging cost was $22.31 (or $11.155 per person).

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

How far do we cycle each day (Europe)?

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

Draft — Lauren Geoghegan

We get a bunch of questions pretty often, but we get this one particular question a whole lot. People we meet always want to know one thing: how many kilometers are we pedaling each day?

We don't exactly count our kilometers. We aren't traveling with an odometer or cycle computer or live Strava tracker. We just bike, with a very rough sense of how far we've come since morning. And so our answers have always been a little vague. Depends on the roads: up or down, gravel or paved. Depends on the winds: bad, or really bad. You mean in general? Uh, between zero and one hundred kilometers per day?

We calculated the numbers below (Lauren actually did all the calculating) for our five months in Europe pretty simply. We just took the total distance we cycled in each country (an approximation of our route, give or take maybe 5%, pulled from the app we use for our maps and directions) and divided by the number of days we spent there (double-counting a few of the days we crossed borders) to find our average pace. We then created a second set of averages excluding rest days—days when we did no biking at all (or very little biking around town). These two numbers (expressed in kilometers per day) aren't necessarily exact, but they're a little more precise than what we've had to work with so far.

Anyway, here they are, by country and in total.

Spain (19 rest days)

1,000 kilometers / 38 total days = 26 km/d

1,000 kilometers / 19 cycling days = 53 km/d

France (11 rest days)

700 kilometers / 27 total days = 26 km/d

700 kilometers / 16 cycling days = 44 km/d

Monaco (0 rest days)

10 kilometers / 1 total day = 10 km/d

10 kilometers / 1 cycling day = 10 km/d

Italy (12 rest days)

25 kilometers / 14 total days = 2 km/d

25 kilometers / 2 cycling days = 13 km/d

Slovenia (0 rest days)

30 kilometers / 1 total day = 30 km/d

30 kilometers / 1 cycling day = 30 km/d

Croatia (30 rest days)

700 kilometers / 45 total days = 16 km/d

700 kilometers / 15 cycling days = 47 km/d

Bosnia (0 rest days)

10 kilometers / 1 total day = 10 km/d

10 kilometers / 1 cycling day = 10 km/d

Montenegro (11 rest days)

140 kilometers / 15 total days = 9 km/d

140 kilometers / 4 cycling days = 35 km/d

Albania (1 rest day)

100 kilometers / 4 total days = 25 km/d

100 kilometers / 3 cycling days = 33 km/d

Kosovo (0 rest days)

165 kilometers / 4 total days = 41 km/d

165 kilometers / 4 cycling days = 41 km/d

Macedonia (1 rest day)

127 kilometers / 5 total days = 25 km/d

127 kilometers / 4 cycling days = 32 km/d

Bulgaria (0 rest days)

363 kilometers / 5 total days = 73 km/d

363 kilometers / 5 cycling days = 73 km/d

Greece (0 rest days)

30 kilometers / 2 total days = 15 km/d

30 kilometers / 2 cycling days = 15 km/d

Turkey (7 rest days)

245 kilometers / 11 total days = 22 km/d

245 kilometers / 4 cycling days = 61 km/d

TOTAL (92 rest days)

3,645 kilometers / 158 total days = 23 km/d

3,645 kilometers / 66 cycling days = 55 km/d

So. How far do we cycle each day? In Europe, on days we were actually cycling, we rode about fifty-five kilometers per day—sometimes uphill, sometimes into headwinds, but also sometimes in perfectly good conditions. In Africa, unpaved roads, headwinds, and heat were our biggest cycling challenges. In Europe, our biggest challenges were inclement weather, climbs, and general fatigue from being on the road for a more extended period of time.

How far do we cycle on average? In Europe, for every ten days on the bike, we took about two weeks off. December/January holidays, visits from family and friends, generous hospitality from great hosts, planned breaks, inclement weather, and health issues all contributed to the number of rest days we took. We enjoyed many days off the bikes during our time in Europe.

Practically speaking, over a series of weeks or months, we really only moved about twenty-three kilometers each day, or a pretty measly one hundred and sixty-one kilometers per week. One could certainly pedal plenty more (and we've met other cyclists pushing a hundred kilometers each and every day), but we enjoy taking it slow and stopping often, and a quicker pace would probably feel a little too rushed for us. Another thing to keep in mind when looking at these numbers is the very minimal cycling we did in some of these countries. We cycled less than 30 kilometers in Monaco, Italy, Slovenia, Bosnia, and Greece. On the days we cycled through these countries, we spent the majority of the day cycling in other neighboring countries. These days have been double-counted (and in two cases triple-counted; we cycled through France, Monaco, and Italy and then Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia each in the course of a day) and included in our day count for all applicable countries.

So anyway. If you were wondering how far we went each day in Europe, now you know!

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

So, where do we sleep (Africa)?

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

Draft — Jay Austin

It's raining here in the South of France. It's raining quite a lot. Or at least it was at the moment I was tapping away at these keys, somewhere inside, somewhere warm. And so we've been staying out of the rain and drinking tea and crunching some more numbers from Africa, which means another set of words and calculations below.

Where did we sleep in Africa? Let's start with an overview.

We spent 168 nights cycling across the African continent, from Cape Town to Zanzibar and Casablanca to Ceuta. Of these 168 nights:

We slept outside 95 nights (57%) and slept inside 73 nights (43%).

We paid for lodging 68 nights (40%) and did not pay for lodging 100 nights (60%).

We spent 34 nights (20%) in campgrounds.

We spent 31 nights (18%) wild camping.

We spent 28 nights (17%) free camping (with the landholder's permission).

We spent 27 nights (16%) staying with hosts we met through connections.

We spent 25 nights (15%) in guesthouses.

We spent 7 nights (4%) staying with hosts we met online.

We spent 7 nights (4%) staying with hosts we just met (typically in asking for a place to camp).

We spent 4 nights (2%) in hotels.

We spent 3 nights (2%) in Airbnbs.

We spent 2 nights (1%) on overnight transit (ferries).

Our total lodging cost in Africa was $912.

Over 168 days, our average nightly lodging cost was $5.43 (or $2.715 per person). Factoring in only the days we paid for accommodations, our average nightly lodging cost was $13.41 (or $6.705 per person).

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

#44 (Murghab, Tajikistan - )

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

July 15, 2018 — Jay Austin

Murghab, Tajikistan. Population: not very many. More than Karakul, whence we came, and certainly more than Alichur, where we're headed. A few thousand, maybe.

Elevation: high. Very high. Too damn high to cook pasta properly. Too high for trees to grow. The lowest spot on the Pamir plateau, but still too high to stand up quickly without getting woozy from the lack of air. Three thousand six hundred meters, technically speaking: four-fifths the oxygen you'd find at sea level; three times the ultraviolet rays.

Sights: well, there's a dusty smattering of old Russian shipping containers repurposed into small bazaar, I guess. A sun-bleached statue of Lenin down on the main street, arm outstretched in a theatrical fashion. Behold, Murghab. There is the mountain backdrop, which is pretty. There is the sky, which is very blue.

Accommodation: a few basic guesthouses and homestays, sure. Drop toilets and plov dinners and thin mats on the floor. And then, in a league of its own, there is the Pamir Hotel. It is the gem of Murghab.

Everyone stays at the Pamir Hotel: overlanders, Russian military, cyclists keen for their first taste of Western comforts since Osh or Dushanbe, depending on which direction they're headed. With a polished wooden lobby and a faintly Wes Anderson aesthetic, one's first steps into the Pamir Hotel certainly feel familiar. Here, for the first time in weeks, a bed. A hot shower. A flushing, sit-down toilet.

But. This is Murghab. Despite the power lines running down the street, there is no electricity. The Russians took that with them when they left. Just generators, for a few brief hours per night. And outside those hours, all is still. No water heaters. No water pumps. No way to flush those fancy Western toilets when they fill up between the hours of midnight and six in the evening.

At least there is a bed.

** *

Lauren and I do not stay at the Pamir Hotel. I find Lauren instead on the edge of town, at a small guesthouse, where the ambulance-shuttle dropped her off this morning. It is quiet and spacious and offers a standard Tajik outhouse, the kind that never clogs nor breaks nor goes out of service when the generators run down. I am sore from my ride, and Lauren is still recovering from her bowel issues. We agree to take a few days off. We explore Murghab.

TRANSITION

Kim, Rene, Hector, Lauren, and I set off from Murghab early the next morning. We ride south, and then west, and then south again. We camp

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

#43 (Kyzyl-Art, Tajikistan - Murghab, Tajikistan)

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

July 8, 2018 — Jay Austin

Lauren cannot breathe and there are fifteen people shouting at me in three or four different languages and it is still snowing.

We are at 4,100 meters, maybe, and this is too high for Lauren's lungs right now. They've had a hard day. They need to get down to lower altitude.

But we're now in Tajikistan, and there isn't really anything much lower for hundreds of kilometers. We are on the Pamir Plateau. Elevation: 3,600 meters and up.

The best we can do is Karakul. It's fifty-five kilometers from here, two hundred meters lower, probably not snowing. The organizer of the Czech cyclists' trip has a vehicle—this is the vehicle carrying all the cyclists' gear—and he's willing to rent it and its driver out to us for the ride to Karakul. Lauren is in no state to cycle, and thus it's the only way.

There's only room for one. One body, a few panniers squeezed into the back of the truck, Lauren's bike tied to the roof. I help the driver and the fixer load Lauren's things and tell Lauren I'll be right behind her. I'll see you tonight. The truck pulls away with Lauren in the passenger seat.

I look around as snow flurries to the ground. It's about 5PM, elevation 4,100 meters. I have no tent and no interest in bivoaucing out on the Pamir Plateau tonight. I have fifty-five kilometers, and one more pass, between me and Karakul. Me and Lauren.

I step on the pedals and crunch down onto the gravel. No sleep 'til Karakul.

***

I ride fast. I ride relentlessly. I bump down the washboard descent and make peace with braking a spoke or two. I soar past other cyclists and shout a frenzied sorry I can't stop to chat! behind me.

It's beautiful, the Pamir, but I don't stop to take any pictures. I don't stop for anything. I ride about forty kilometers straight, tearing up the second pass, and only slow when the vehicle that brought Lauren to Karakul approaches from the opposite direction.

"Homestay Aguiden!" the driver shouts out the window.

"Спасибо—thank you!" I call back, the truck already behind me. Homestay Aguiden, I repeat to myself, partly not to forget the name, partly a mantra to carry me across the final gusty fifteen kilometers. Homestay Augiden. Homestay Aguiden. Homestay Aguiden.

I needn't have worried about not finding Lauren. I collapse into Karakul a little after seven and Homestay Aguiden is about all there is in the dusty little village, the words inscribed in blue paint on the first building along the road. Romain, Sophie, and Nathan wave me down from outside. They'd arrived just minutes earlier. Parched, frazzled, I sputter out, "Where's Lauren?"

"She's okay," Sophie reassures me. "She's inside resting."

***

I find Lauren weak and fatigued, but with more measured breathing. By the next morning, she's doing much better.

There will be no cycling today. The body naturally acclimates to higher elevations, and time is the only way to acclimate. There are no tricks, no shortcuts, no medicines that do anything but mask symptoms of altitude sickness. We were planning on a rest in Karakul anyway, and this gives us a very good excuse to take a few days off.

Our bikepacker friends are ready to carry on. They're on a tighter timeframe—Romain has a flight back to France at the end of the month—and anyway they're taking a different route through the Pamir, peeling off from the main road just twenty kilometers south of Karakul. You form close friendships on the road like this, cycling and cooking and camping, sharing rooms and sometimes tents together, and though we've only known them for a week, we're really sad to say goodbye to the three of them. Big hugs, well wishes. See you in Dushanbe, maybe?

We wave them off. We lumber back inside and lie down and chat with the other cyclists who arrive—it's almost all cyclists here. We sit out at the long communal table and watch the road and wave at anything that passes. When the sound of crunching gravel drifts in from outside, us and the other guests all make for the curtains to see who's arriving.

Mid-afternoon, the gravel crunches. Three silhouettes on bikes roll by the window. "New cyclists," one of our fellow guests says.

Lauren and I peer out the doorway at Nathan, Sophie, and Romain. What are you guys doing back here?

***

They'd cycled twenty-five kilometers to the Bartang Valley and into ever-worsening conditions. Snow and cold and clouds so thick they block the views. They'd passed a cyclist coming the other way who'd mentioned a mean weather front moving in these next few days. They'd stopped for lunch and discussed whether to forge ahead, to trudge through what would otherwise be the best few days of their ride if not for the grim conditions. They'd decided, wisely, to take a few days off and tackle the Bartang under clear skies.

And so they're back, and we haven't much moved, and as the day crawls on about a dozen more cyclists and a few overlanders pour into the small homestay on the edge of the glistening Karakul Lake. It's a convivial atmosphere, everyone eating together and sharing sleeping space on the floor, and the next morning about half of us decide to take another day off.

Lauren's doing a bit better. She's anxious about the road ahead, and for good reason. Up ahead is Ak-Baital, the Pamir's highest and fiercest pass. It measures 4,650 meters—closer to the altitude of a cruising 747 than an umbrella on the beach—a full thousand feet higher than our last pass together.

Lauren's worried about the altitude and she's also worried about her stomach. Tajikistan is notorious for stomach troubles. Almost everyone is bound to catch Tajik tummy at some point. Sophie and Lauren got it early; Romain and Nathan are dealing with more intestinal rumbling than they're used to. (I'm somehow doing just fine—but I'm only on day two of our forty-five day visa.)

We plan to make for the pass tomorrow, but as our second rest day unfurls Lauren's anxiety and stomach worsen. She inquires about taking a ride to Murghab, the next town on the Pamir Highway, and our friendly homestay hosts arrange an early-morning ride for her and her bike in the back of an old Soviet ambulance now doing trips as an intra-Pamir passenger bus. While she's debating whether to skip cycling Ak-Baital, she vomits about a liter's worth of bits and bile into a Tupperware, and then it's pretty much decided. Lauren will be taking the ambulance to Murghab.

There is, theoretically, room for me. I consider going. But Lauren's okay, and Lauren will just be resting anyway, and this stretch, from Karakul to Murghab, is one of the Pamir's finest. At daybreak the next morning, I wave to Lauren as her ride pulls away into a gorgeous golden sunrise. See you in Murghab.

I am once again on my own. It's a strange feeling, having spent the virtual entirety of the past year with a person, to suddenly be alone. It is Day 366 on the road—Year 2, Day 1—and I'm not sure if it feels silly to have parted ways with Lauren just to cycle this stretch, or silly to feel guilty for parting ways for just a day or two. Lauren will be in Murghab. Lauren will be safe. I will be in Murghab soon.

Just 134 kilometers. Just one 4,650-meter pass. Just one long, barren wasteland, then Murghab.

A few hours later, I follow the ambulance's dusty tracks out of Karakul.

***

I don't start off alone. Nathan and Sophie and Romain are all headed for the Bartang, take two, and another pair of cyclists, Della and Tucker, and going my way. We all ride the first twenty-five kilometers together, during which time the bikepackers persuade Della and Tucker to consider the Bartang, which, though shorter, will certainly be more adventurous and remote. Della and Tucker chew on it for a little, take a good look at the map once we all reach the Bartang Valley turnoff, and in a lovely display of on-the-road spontaneity, agree to totally reroute their way through Tajikistan at quite literally the very last moment.

Cheers erupt from Nathan, Sophie, and Romain. I'm happy for them too; the Bartang spur seems like a really great alternative. "Jay, you want to come along too?" Nathan jokes.

It's tempting, a few more days in a lovely valley with these friends. It's tempting, but of course, Nathan's just kidding. It's tempting, but it's not going to happen. I give my five fellow cyclists big hugs—see you in Dushanbe, maybe?—wish them luck, and tear off for the horizon.

I have to go see about a girl.

***

Traveling alone, you take fewer breaks. You move at your own pace. I ride quickly. Not so much to get to Murghab tonight, because that is very far and more than likely not going to happen. I ride quickly because I want to be damn sure I'm not stuck at 4,650 meters when the sun sets.

The road turns bumpy. Gravel, washboard, sand. It peels upward and I click into my lowest gear. My surroundings are desolate, like Nevada on its darkest day. Black clouds threaten the road ahead. You, turn back now. I lean forward and begin to climb.

4,100 meters. No switchbacks, just a long, wicked uphill. I suck in and push hard, but my calves and my lungs and my heart can't handle these grades at this altitude. I get off my bike and begin to push over the stones.

4,300 meters. Snow. Whenever anything on the bike gets so challenging that you think to yourself, this can't possibly get any worse, you are destined for some precipitation any moment. I pull on my rain gear. The road levels out, some but not much, and I cycle on.

4,500 meters. I have passed five other cyclists, all headed the other direction. Not far to the pass? I ask optimistically. Oh, still a ways, and very steep, they reply, a little too honestly for my taste. You're definitely going in the more difficult direction.

4,600 meters. I am back to pushing. I can see the pass right in front of me but I cannot will my body to move toward it. My bike feels like a tank and my legs feel like they are ensconced in concrete. My lungs are like, wait, wait, what the hell is this? Put me back down this instant.

I have skydived from lower altitudes than this. It'd be a shorter walk to the peak of Everest than back to sea level. 4,600 meters is not even that high, as far as mountains and mega-mountains go, but for a place with a road it feels absurd. People should not be cycling this high.

An overlander truck beckons from the top of the pass. Well, serves you right, it seems to boast. I push forward toward the truck. It looks so very close. I grunt, take five steps, stop, and measure my progress. Almost there. Under normal circumstances, reaching this truck might take three minutes. These are not normal circumstances, and so it takes forty-five.

4,650 meters. Ak-Baital. It's an unceremonious pass. One sign on the way up, one sign on the way down, but nothing to mark the top except for the gentle cresting of a very ferocious hill. A shout comes from over by the truck. "Good job!" a man calls. "You want some tea? Coffee?"

"No thanks," I say. "I just need to get down."

"You want a peach?"

I think for a moment. "Yeah. I'll take a peach."

***

It's 4PM. I am eighty kilometers from Murghab. I am far enough that it is ridiculous to try to make it there by Murghab by nightfall—particularly after a day like today—but I am close enough that it is possible to make it there by nightfall. I can make camp and spend the next fifteen hours in a tent, or I can get to Murghab and see how Lauren's doing. Or I can just start on the long road down and see how far I get.

My head is pounding. Every time I hit a pothole, which is often, I feel a sharp pain in my cranium. I pop a few too-late-to-be-of-much-use ibuprofen and plunge downhill.

Down, into the valley, into the wind, into the dry Pamir Plateau. Down, legs turning, gears turning, wheels turning and vibrating against the rough asphalt. Down, and then not so down, and then mostly just wind from all directions. 5PM, 6PM, 7PM. Sixty kilometers to go. Forty. Just twenty left.

Were it a little further, a little longer, I'd just stop and make camp. But I have two hours of daylight left and one hour of cycling at most. 134 kilometers to Murghab, and I'm almost there.

I round a mountain and there it is, humble and diminutive in the distance. White, low-lying buildings, one road, a small airport off to the side. A village, growing slowly larger.

The winds pick up. It takes as long to cycle these last five kilometers as the past fifteen. Head down, I push on. Up ahead, at the Pamir Hotel, Lauren is waiting.

I told Lauren not to expect me today. I did not expect me today. I'll see you at the Pamir Hotel tomorrow, I said when Lauren rode away this morning. And so I duck low and cycle for the Pamir Hotel.

A Tajik child waves from up on the hillside. Many Tajik child wave, and so I do what I always do: I wave back and pedal on.

The child waves frantically. The child shouts something. The child runs inside a guesthouse and runs back out. The child waves some more.

I stop and stare for a moment. I pull out my camera and take a photograph of this strange, tall child desperately trying to get my attention. I look at the photo on my camera and zoom in until the pixels get all blurry. I can't make out the details, but I can make out the broad strokes. Green Patagonia jacket. Shock of curly brown hair. A face that is certainly not Tajik.

I look up, and Lauren is rushing down the hill to greet me.

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

#42 (Akbosaga, Kyrgyzstan - Kyzyl-Art, Tajikistan)

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

July 8, 2018 — Jay Austin

It works out, sort of. I manage to half-fix the pump well enough to half-pump the tire. It already takes a few hundred strokes to properly inflate our two-inch tubes with our puny mini-pump, so working at half volume it takes a few hundred more. Twenty minutes later my hands are raw and blistered, but Lauren's wheel is once more ready for the mountains. (Five minutes later, once all the half-pumps are done, I figure out how to full-fix the pump.)

We summit the pass, eventually. We celebrate at the top and high-five with a cyclist coming in the other direction and speed along to Sary-Tash before dark. We descend into a gorgeous valley, catch our first sight of the imposing Pamir just behind the small town, and pull up next to Nathan, Sophie, and Romain's bikes outside a small guesthouse. The bikepackers spill out onto the porch. More high-fives. Who wants a beer?

We're all pretty exhausted from our three long days of climbing—over 4,000 meters in 180 kilometers—and anyway, we're at a high enough altitude (3,600 meters) that we need to start giving ourselves some time to acclimate. We take a rest day.

The guesthouse swells with cyclists. A few we'd met earlier and plenty more coming from different directions. Sary-Tash is something of a crossroads: fork right for Tajikistan, fork left for China.

While the road to Tajikistan is derelict and bumpy, the road to China is smooth and paved. The whole road to Osh, in fact, was all recently redone by the Chinese. China is in the midst of a well-publicized global trade expansion, building roads all over the world, and Kyrgyzstan is just right next door. Sary-Tash, though tiny and unassuming, is the gateway from China to Central Asia. Build a good road through Sary-Tash and your goods can reach Osh. Build a good road to Osh and your goods can reach Uzbekistan. Make it to Uzbekistan and, well, you're well on your way to the Caspian Sea. Make it to the Caspian and you're practically in Europe.

It's a big investment, and China isn't keen to let all that tar go to waste. These new trade routes from China's coastal factories to central Asia—folks are calling it the New Silk Road—must pass through China's remote, ethnically diverse western provinces, which have long felt intermittently ignored and persecuted by the ruling class. Some there don't think the government has done very much for them at all. Some there think maybe they should separate from China, and take their land with them.

Break off a chunk of western China and you've broken off China's path to Europe. The Politburo isn't willing to give up that access. And so in years the government has come down hard on its western minorities. We talk to some cyclists who have come that way and they describe something between an Orwellian police state and an active genocide. People think it's bad what's happening in Tibet, they say, just look at what's happening to the Uighur Muslims.

China doesn't want its new trade partners to hear about what's happening (nor, to be fair, do its new trade partners really want to know). Arrive at the Chinese border on a bicycle and your passport will be confiscated. You will be put in a cab and driven hundreds of kilometers through the desert until the first place the Chinese government has decided it is okay for you to see, and only then will you get your passport back. You are not to talk to locals and you are only to stay in hotels approved for foreigners. Every day you will pass a checkpoint—sometimes one, sometimes ten—and here you may wait up to four hours to have your documents and belongings inspected, and re-inspected, and re-re-inspected. Take a photograph of the wrong thing and you'll have your camera seized and your body thrown in jail.

And all this is what you might cal the special foreigner treatment.

***

So, no China for us. Nathan, Sophie, Romain, Lauren, and I roll out of Sary-Tash after a day off the bikes and fork right toward Tajikistan, toward big snowy peaks with heavy grey clouds overhead. It's gorgeous and it's daunting.

We stop for photographs and for pee breaks. We stopped on the road by a small group of children on donkeys who invite us into their yurt for some chai. We look at the clouds up ahead. Sure, we could go for some chai.

Yurts are temporary domed homes endemic to central Asia, and particularly the nomadic Kyrgyz people. They're made of wood and hemp and hide and fur, designed to be deconstructed in the spring and moved up to the cooler mountains in the summer, then brought back down in the fall and reconstructed in low-lying valleys during the brutal Kyrgyzstan winters.

Inside, they're surprisingly spacious and surprisingly warm. We've been guests in a few yurts during our time in Kyrgyzstan, and here, just a few dozen kilometers from the border, we know this will be our last. We introduce ourselves to the children and the quiet matriarch, sit down on colorful cushions on the ground, and take small, grateful sips of the warm, black tea put in front of us. The kids speak a little English, though not much, so our conversation lists from English to Russian to a bit of Sophie's Kyrgyz and returns, always, to the universal language of hand gestures and smiles.

While we chat with the children, their mother bakes bread over a small stove in the corner. She pours dough onto a pan and shovels dried cow dung into the first and the bread bakes, bubbles, and browns. хлеб, the eldest daughter says. Bread!

We are keen for some bread. It's been hard to find since leaving Osh, and these loaves both look and smell delicious. They come off the fire too hot too touch—the daughter fumbles them as she tries to break off of pieces without burning her fingers—and we all swoon at the crunch of the crust cracking apart. "I love the sound of fresh bread breaking," Nathan says in his charming French accent, and we all agree it's the Frenchiest thing one could say.

Hail begins to beat down on the yurt. The winds pick up outside and we're very thankful we're not out there on the bikes, but in here with this lovely family urging us to stay. We curl up in the corner and watch the goats push each other out of the way for the warmest spot next to the stove.

***

There's a no-man's land between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. A difficult, windy pass that no customs official wants to be stationed atop, so instead you get stamped out of Kyrgyzstan at a relatively low-lying 3,500 meters, travel twenty or thirty kilometers along a bumpy, muddy, winding road to about 4,300 meters, then plummet down to the Tajik immigration office somewhere around 4,100 meters.

It is a few hours later and the last bits of the yurt's warmth have left our bodies. We managed to buy some bread from the family (Russian translation: I'll have bread in bicycle; I pay you money?) , and so maybe that's still marginally warm in Sophie's rack sack. But it's now snowing, and we're at the Kyrgyz exit post, and warmth feels very far away. We discuss amongst ourselves whether to camp here or try a little further in the no-man's land. There's a downed hut just before the crossing and the guard is, we think, trying to tell us he'd prefer we camp there, and the downed hut has a roof and walls and a pretty view, so we settle on that and all dash inside.

There's isn't really enough space for three tents inside, especially because our tent is big enough to fit a circus. It's still early, so someone suggests we pitch our tent and we can all hang out inside until the storm passes. We pitch it up and the five of us climb in.

Five grown adults, and we all fit. We inflate a few sleeping pads and cover the floor with Thermarests. We unpack our sleeping bags and slide inside. I lie horizontally along the foot of the tent, like the family dog, while Nathan, Sophie, Romain, and Lauren lie lengthwise like the Willy Wonka grandparents. We are two traveling with a tent that accommodates five. It is perhaps our Americanest moment this year.

***

The snow stops. We cook dinner. The bikepackers set up their tents outside, insisting its easier than having us move our tent to make room. We sleep, and it's a clear, chilly night.

In the morning, we leave Kyrgyzstan, our home for this past month. We are stamped out of on country and waved along to somewhere in between. You may collect your entry stamp at the other side of this 4,300-meter pass.

We ride. Nathan, Sophie, and Romain pull ahead and we get caught in a swarm of twenty or so Czech cyclists on a supported ride through the Pamir. They dash by on their light, luggage-free bicycles and then it's just me and Lauren and the mountain.

We take it slowly. The road isn't so bad, but it isn't good either. We roll through the mud and bump along the stones and by the time we reach the steep switchbacks of the final pass, we're exhausted.

Lauren in particular is having trouble. We're at about 4,000 meters—13,000 feet—where the air is about twenty percent thinner than at sea level. Each breath brings in a fifth less oxygen than the body is used to. Some bodies handle that better than others. Lauren's, for the moment, is flagging.

There are a few options. The first, of course, is to just stop here. Set up camp and try for the pass in the morning. But sleeping at 4,000 meters can be difficult. At night, the heart slows and breathing slackens. The body gets even less oxygen. The best way to avoid altitude sickness is to sleep no higher than 400 meters above where you slept the night before. Stopping here, it would be above that mark.

The second option is to turn back. This is not a very tempting option, because the road we've taken is bumpy and uphill, and we don't want to cycle it a second (and later third) time, and also we've already been stamped out of Kyrgyzstan and not sure if we would have trouble getting back in. Plus, an ominous layer of clouds have rolled in behind us, so pedaling back to Sary-Tash means pedaling headfirst into a storm.

The third option is the only option we really consider: continue ahead. Continue slowly. We dismount and begin walking our bicycles up the switchbacks. Take a few steps. Take a break. Take a breath. Take a few more steps. Walk, rest, repeat.

We climb higher. Lauren's carrying more snacks and thus more weight, so we switch bikes and I heave hers ahead. I spot the iconic statue of the Marco Polo sheep in the distance (thousands of years this sheep has wandered around central Asia and for some reason it's named after the first Italian to come for a visit) and rush toward it.

I drop Lauren's bike at the pass and turn around to help her bring mine to the top. It's so blustery (tailwinds, fortunately) that the second I turn around the wind rushes so far down my esophagus that I get the hiccups.

I meet up with Lauren a few hundred meters down the pass and grab hold of my bike. We walk together to the top and spend a few minutes sheltering from the wind at the base of the Marco Polo sheep. About a dozen of the Czech cyclists are posing for photographs, shirtless and hooting, at the sign for Kyzyl-Art Pass. Even at 4,300 meters, bros gotta take off their shirts and bro.

Lauren is still having trouble breathing. Descent is really the only thing that's going to help. Still a bit out of breath, we get back on the bikes and race downhill to the Tajik border. It's not very far down, but it should be a good place to rest until Lauren catches her breath. We arrive and Lauren sits on the ground. She is shaking and hyperventilating.

Cycling is an intensive activity. You ride up a hill and of course you're out of breath. You're exposed to the elements and so of course you're hot, and sometimes cold, and once you stop you're most definitely colder than when you were riding. Oh, and plus, it's now snowing—of course it's snowing—and so there's certainly going to be some shivering.

But this time, with Lauren, it doesn't stop. The border guards serve her some hot tea and the mug shakes in her hands. I go into the customs booth with our passports, get our entry stamps, and when I come out she's still trying desperately to catch her breath. A small crowd is forming around and she's becoming less and less responsive. The border guards are looking concerned. Fellow cyclists are looking concerned. A few overlanders are shouting, panicked.

She needs to get down!

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

#41 (Osh, Kyrgyzstan - Akbosaga, Kyrgyzstan)

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

July 8, 2018 — Jay Austin

It is dawn in eastern France. In a dark, climate-controlled basement not far from the Alps, a server clicks online. A fan whirs and a light blinks and an invisible signal is shot into the airwaves.

Somewhere nearby, a sleepy forklift operator feels a buzz at the hip.

***

Osh is not a very pretty. It's Soviet-style, all big brutalist buildings and straight roads and an overzealous sampling of the grey-to-beige color palette. It's a bit hazy and a bit dusty and doesn't exactly enchant the senses in the way you might think an ancient Silk Road city would.

It isn't pretty, but it'll do. There's a large bazaar with cheap nuts and decent hostel with a clean double room and a really excellent coffee shop with strawberry banana smoothies and homemade veggie burgers. We have spent weeks without a bed and months without smoothies and maybe a full year without a decent veggie burger. We know there will be few comforts on the road ahead, and we're game for a little rest. We unpack our things, settle in, and look forward to a long week off the bikes.

***

It's afternoon in the French countryside. A van ambles slowly down a quaint dirt road. Possibly, there's an old castle in the distance. Probably, the driver is nibbling his way through a pan de chocolate. He slows to a stop, hops out of the van, and tucks something the size and shape of a baguette under his arm.

He knocks on the door of Number 47.

***

There is a cat at our hostel. Her name is Sunny, like the hostel, and she is really not so much a cat as an adorable kitten. She is three weeks old, presumably orphaned or otherwise sold at far too young an age, and she is too cute for words.

We take a liking to Sunny and she takes a liking to us. We have the only room on the ground floor, and she is too small to climb stairs, so every morning we wake up and bring her inside and spend an hour or two cuddling with her tiny, furry body. She is occasionally calm and at times quite rambunctious, and we get scratched more than a few times as she begins to learn the difference between play-clawing and oh-that-really-hurts-clawing.

When we're not boarded up in our room with the cat, we're out in the kitchen socializing with the other travelers. There are a number of overlanders—Europeans in Land Rovers and camper vans and big renovated eastern German ambulances, all headed for Mongolia or elsewhere, all headed far east—but most of the guests here are cyclists. The Pamir Mountains are one of the world's great cycling destinations (next to Patagonia, New Zealand, and the American West Coast), and late June is prime time for navigating the breezy four-thousand-meter-plus passes of Gordo-Badakshan, Tajikistan. We spend long mornings talking to the fellow bike tourers, comparing paths with those headed toward the Pamir and gleaning tips from those just descended from the mountains. It's fairly obvious who's coming or going by the length of one's facial hair, the amount they're eating, and their appreciation of the sit-down toilets in the hostel bathroom.

***

There's a gentleman in Moscow. He's seated in a not-terribly-comfortable chair in a not-terribly-comfortable airport, the same place he's been seated for the better part of twelve hours. He is waiting patiently, possibly scanning the Departures board above his head for flight updates, maybe with a few croissants from back home wedged in the pocket of his carry-on bag. Or maybe he's drinking a tall Russian beer, just eager to pass the time.

In any case, he's been waiting for a long time.

***

So there's the room, with the heart-melting kitten, and there's the hostel kitchen, with the hordes of other cyclists coming and going, and then there's Brio Cafe, where we spend most of our days.

Brio is what you might call a "Western" cafe. It's rather unremarkable in most respects. It is, with its wooden tables and its stylish baristas and its a-little-too-predictable music playlist, just like every other Western cafe: frictionless. Familiar.

But after a long time on the road, familiar is nice. The menu is English and the word vegan is recognized. There are muffins and smoothies and good coffee and those freshly-pressed veggie burgers, all things one might take for granted living in urban America but which one comes to dream about during long nights in a tent eating seconds or thirds of spaghetti with garlic for the second or third night in a row.

We meet Nathan and Sophie at Brio one day. They're traveling cyclists, like us, headed for the Pamir, like us. They're fun and friendly and interesting and, after we've filled our table with empty mugs and glasses and plates, the four of us go out for a beer to chat more.

We stay up late—anytime past midnight is well past our camping bedtime—and the next afternoon and evening we do it again, burgers at Brio then beers across the road. We make it to bed a little earlier this time, though a little earlier is not exactly early. The next morning, we cuddle up with Sunny and sleep late.

***

A man steps off a plane. He is tired and jet-lagged and has not lay down in many, many hours. He is whisked across a strange, unfamiliar city to a dark room with a small, unfamiliar bed. Maybe it smells a little funny. Most likely, it is not as comfortable as his bed back home. He sleeps and he rises and he feels a little better, but he probably go for a coffee.

He stuffs a parcel into his rucksack and steps out onto the dusty street.

***

We are at Brio for the umpteenth time. We have depleted the cafe's supply of veggie patties so they have begun to mash up more just for us. Despite its bougeious asthetic, this place is actually pretty affordable, so Lauren and order smoothies and fries and americanos and plenty of those burgers without fearing what it'll do to our budget. We eat well, cook little, and spend our days tending to our blog and desperately racing to not, once again, fall very far behind on these posts. Between our dashes to the counter to place another order and our long, lovely chats with Nathan and Sophie, we of course get very little done. We fall behind once again.

This particular afternoon, Nathan and Sophie—also frequent visitors to Brio—are late to arrive. I catch Nathan as he walks in and I wave. He comes over to say hello. Another man walks over with him. "This is Romain" Nathan says.

Romain flashes a friendly smile. "How was your flight?" I ask. "Long," he replies. "Oh! I have something for you." He fishes into his bag and pulls out a crisp new Thermarest sleeping pad.

***

So, we met Nathan and Sophie and Brio but we actually met Nathan and Sophie a few weeks earlier via radio signals bouncing off the Tian Shan mountains.

Nathan, Sophie, Lauren, I, and about two hundred other cyclists are all part of a big WhatsApp group for people traveling the world—though mostly central Asia—by bicycle. It's a place to ask questions (does anyone know how long it takes to get an Uzbek visa?), share tips (the pass to Issyk-Kul is now cleared of snow), or just socialize (I'm in Tashkent for the next few days; anyone want to grab a beer?). A few weeks ago, Nathan sent a mass text letting folks know that he had a friend coming in from France at the end of June with his bike, so there'd be a spare bike box in Osh in case anyone needed it.

If you recall, Lauren's sleeping pad has died catastrophically. She has spent most of the week or two before Osh camped on the ground. She can manage it at these elevations and these temperatures, but before the Pamir she will definitely need a replacement. A replacement in Kyrgyzstan is almost impossible to get. We are desperate, and exhausting all options.

And so, desperately, we reply to Nathan. Hi! We don't need a bike box, but were wondering if it'd be at all possible or your friend to bring a small package out with him, blah, blah, blah?

He responds within the day. Of course! Not a problem at all.

Lauren and I find shade underneath a gas station awning by the Toktogul Reservoir, connect to a Kyrgyz cell tower, and place an expedited order for a new Thermarest with Amazon France. Somewhere in a basement underneath the Alps, a server clicks to life.

***

We spend a little time with Romain. He's every bit as warm and friendly as Nathan and Sophie. The five of us are headed for the Pamir (Romain's joining Nathan and Sophie for the ride to Dushanbe), and we're all planning on starting the long climb in a few days, so we decide, for as long as it makes sense, to cycle together. We part ways and Lauren and I head to the bazaar to load up on way too much food. We haul it all back to our hostel, lay it out on the bed, and try to figure out just how we're going to fit it all on our bikes.

We manage. We pack it all. We fill up our water jugs and put some air in our tires. We say goodbye to Sunny—miss you girl—and we cycle our first few kilometers on the Pamir Highway.

We don't actually start out with Nathan, Sophie, and Romain. They're determined to beat the heat (it's blazing down here in the Fergana Valley), so they set off around five this morning. Lauren and I like our sleep and our late mornings, so we don't get on the road until after eleven.

It's uphill, all day. Sophie and I text back and forth and by six or seven they've made camp. We climb up our first of many, many Pamir passes a little ways behind them, fly down the other side, and meet Sophie on the side of the road. She walks us up the hill to their camp, and Lauren and I set up our massive, obnoxious four-person tent next to their svelte, earth-toned little shelters.

***

It's fun traveling as a pack. Not since Botswana have we actually met someone headed our way for any length of time; not since Teresie (who's just arrived in Egypt) have we cycled with someone else. With Nathan, Sophie, and Romain, we take nice long lunch breaks and make delicious dinners cooked on not one, but three separate burners. That means rice and lentils and vegetables. A proper meal.

Our new friends are bikepacking—no panniers for better off-roading—which means they're traveling light. Whereas Lauren and I have packed a huge, family-sized tent, they're each carrying something much smaller. Whereas Lauren and I are carrying enough food to get us to Afghanistan, the bikepackers are just hauling the essentials and filling up at small shops along the way. While our bikes look bulky and encumbered, like we're just out to the grocery, they're bikes look sleek and nimble.

And so the bikepackers are faster than us. They ride ahead and we fall a bit behind and we usually catch up a few times each day: when they've stopped for tea, or lunch, or at the river to refill their bottles. And, of course, when we're all ready to get off the bikes and set up camp.

Our second day from Osh is even more uphill than the first. We're all exhausted and set up next to a small creek before dark. I ask a man near the bridge if it'd be okay to camp there, and he says sure, это хорошо.

A little while later an old Lada sedan bumps up along the creek and stops near our small tent city. A family gets out. Father. Mother. Daughters. For a moment we're worried about a hassle, about someone maybe wanting us to move our tent. The family, the father explains, lives in a house just above the ridge behind us. We're more or less planted in their front yard.

But this family is not here to tell us to move. Most people in the world don't have the same this-land-is-my-land territorialism as us in the West. You want to camp? Sure, you can camp. But please, here, let us give you some fresh bread and hot tea and, if you need it, water for your bottles. We enjoy a special evening sharing chai and conversation with the family (as the strongest Russian speaker of our featherweight crew, I do my best to translate). Before they go, their daughter grabs an instrument from the back of the Lada and strums a beautiful Kyrgyz song for us. Would you like some of the dinner we've been making? we ask, the least we can do in exchange for their generosity. Politely, they agree to try a little of our rice-and-vegetable medley. The father feeds a spoonful to their youngest child and the baby curls up his face in disgust.

***

Another day, another climb. Over five thousand feet in fifty miles. The road gets steeper and steeper. The pass looms before us, angled switchbacks carved high into the mountainsides. Somewhere up ahead, a cell phone tower marking the highest point. It takes all day.

We ride with the bikepackers most of the way, but they begin to peel ahead at the base of the pass. We're right behind Sophie when Lauren gets a flat. Sophie offers to wait, but Nathan and Romain are already well ahead. We've fixed many flats. No, no, go ahead. We'll catch up.

She pedals around the corner as Lauren and quickly invert her bike, remove the punctured tube, and drop in a new one. I reach for the pump, start screwing it to the valve, and the entire thing just falls apart in my hands.

We are stuck in a creek, and we are without a paddle.

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

#40 (Ala-Bel, Kyrgyzstan - Osh, Kyrgyzstan)

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

July 8, 2018 — Jay Austin

I am shouting.
Lauren is shouting.
These two men—the ones who have been stalking us and harassing us and just pushed me off my bicycle—are shouting.

Everyone is yelling at everyone.

We yell in English and they yell in Kyrgyz. "вы не хорошо!" I sputter in Russian, piecing together a few of the small, few dozen words I know. You are not good!

Their eyes glint with amusement. One man walks toward me and I yell louder. They seem eager for a fight, like they're just bored and this is a fun way to spend a late afternoon. Broken vodka bottles litter the roadside. I wonder if they've been drinking.

One can only shout for so long when those they're shouting at don't speak the same language. So everyone quickly tires of raising their voices and Lauren and I figure it's not very productive to stick around. Nyet! we yell once more as we straddle our our bicycles and pedal away. Do not follow us.

Predictably, they follow. One kilometer down the road, their gold sedan pulls up alongside. One man is filming us on his phone out the passenger window. Pozhaluysta, he sneers. I finally think to take out my own phone, snap a photograph of their license plate, and it's enough to scare them off. They peel ahead into the mountains.

***

Finally, we're alone. We're tired and cold and wet. We summit Ala-Bel an hour or two later and it's getting dark. We need to get as low as possible as soon as possible. We don all of our layers and as I'm buckling my pannier I notice another of my spoke nipples has broken on my back wheel. I am not about to change it up here. I pretend I don't see it and climb back onto my bike for the long ride down.

Brakes squealing, we descend. It's a gorgeous ride. We coast for a few dozen kilometers without turning the pedals once. The earth warms about one degree Celsius for every hundred meters of elevation lost (2.X degrees Fahrenheit for every 3XX feet), and we drop almost two thousand meters in a little over an hour. We are no longer freezing. In our jackets and hoods and mittens, we look a little silly.

Camping in the mountains can be difficult. We're deep within a gorge, flanked by cliffs just next to the road. There's a river to the left, swollen and flooding the few patches of flat land we can find. We descend lower.

Eventually we stop at a bee farmer's yard. Is it okay to sleep here? Lauren asks. Sure, he shrugs indifferently. There's space behind the hives. He points out a patch of grass and turns his attention back to the bee box he's carving.

We pack up our tent in the morning and I marvel at how lucky we are not to have been bothered by the bees, hundreds of them buzzing frenetically just a few feet away. As I lift a pannier onto my bicycle, I get stung in the back of the head.

The sting swells and my neck begins to cramp. We continue our ride downhill and I have to stop twice to take some ibuprofen. I think about our past few days and tally our recent misfortunes. Bee sting. A broken spoken nipple I still have not fixed. Mean men on the mountain. A delaminated Thermarest we have not figured out a solution for. It'd be really nice to make it to Osh without any more mishaps.

We ride another day or so. We're halfway around the pretty Toktogul Reservoir when Lauren's left pedal falls off.

***

It's odd for a pedal to fall off. But it's not really a big deal. You just screw it back on.

On the side of the road, in the rain, we screw Lauren's pedal back on. Good to go.

We make it another ten feet before it comes off again.

We take a closer look. The pedal isn't falling out because it's loose. It's falling out because all of the threading in the crank arm has been stripped.

This is a bigger deal.

***

There are bicycles in Kyrgyzstan but there aren't very many. There are a few bicycle shops in Bishkek but we are most definitely not going back to Bishkek. From here the next city is Osh, and Osh is both small (population 250,000) and far (still over three hundred kilometers). Even if we can find a bike shop, we need something specific: a crank arm compatible with Lauren's bottom bracket. A crank arm the length of Lauren's other crank arm.

Riding a bicycle with just one pedal isn't easy. Or so Lauren tells me once we've returned to the last village we'd passed, fortunately just a few kilometers back. That was difficult.

It's a small village, but there's an auto shop. We say hello to the two mechanics and communicate the problem, mostly by pointing. Suggestions?

The men confer in Kyrgyz. We help them remove the crank arm (that's the bit that holds the pedal in place) and one of the mechanics takes that piece and the pedal around a corner. We hear the buzz of a motor and the grinding of metal on metal. We walk to the front of the shop and he's seated on the cement, holding Lauren's pedal against the ground with his foot, sending a flurry of sparks into the air as he runs an angle grinder against the edge of the pedal. We sure hope he knows what he's doing.

Ten minutes later, he's fitted the pedal back onto the crank arm. For good measure he welds it all together, melted metal permanently fusing the two together. Lauren's left pedal will not be falling off again.

Спасибо! we say. Thank you! How much do we owe you?

Nyet, the mechanic dismisses the question with a flick of his hand. Don't worry about it.

There's a small booth outside the auto shop selling bread. We try to buy a few loaves, partly as a way of saying thank you, partly because we're very hungry, and they refuse to take our money for this, either. They hand us a bag of bread—for energy, they say—and wave us off. We pedal away, with four working pedals, looking back and smiling and the two friendly Kyrgyz men in their mechanic uniforms.

***

We ride for days. Along the reservoir, up out of the reservoir. We sweat up another pass and cycle through deep red gorges. We camp next to turquoise rivers and descend into the Fergana Valley.

The days grow hot and the roads grow bumpy. We skirt along the Uzbekistan border, a pair of barbed wire fences to our right. We're close enough to wave at Uzbek farmers and get barked at by Uzbek dogs.

With fifty percent of the roadside off-limits, it's a little tough to find a quiet place to camp. The left side of the road is densely settled, all small homes and concrete buildings and vegetable stalls and ramshackle shops. It's hot, and we've had a long day, and Lauren walks up to one of the homes to ask whether it'd be okay to camp in the forest behind the house.

The forest? comes the reply. If you'd like, we have a nice level spot in our yard right here.

***

The world is a big place. Travel around it long enough and you're bound to find something a little nasty. Maybe someone who thinks it's funny to follow you in his car, to push you off your bike because you won't take a picture with him.

You can choose to focus on these things, and you can say, See, the world is mean and scary. See, people are dangerous.

We have traveled the world for a year. We have cycled across three continents. And yes, this one single time, someone was a little mean to us. And yes, we are certainly a privileged pair, and probably the recipients of more generosity than most. Worse things happen than a man in a gold sedan.

But to focus on the bad is to ignore the good. We have traveled the world for a year and nearly every single person we've met has been wonderful and kind. For every pair of men blocking our path on a quiet mountain road, there have been ten thousand willing to fix our pedals, to fill our panniers with freshly baked bread, to offer us a safe place to spend the night.

We are fortunate to be on this journey we're on. To so intimately grasp the beauty and splendor of this world. We are fortunate to have shared so many special moments with so many of this planet's inhabitants.

Fortunate, but not lucky. To have luck is to beat the odds. To defy probability. To grasp the unlikely outcome. Yet here are the odds: it is a big world, and it is filled with many people, and most of these people are good. (You might say that, actually, all of them are good; some just make mistakes along the way.) Take a leap, trust the world, and chances are you'll receive much more kindness than malice. More likely than not, you'll be well taken care of. The probability of meeting someone wonderful is far greater than meeting someone not-so-wonderful. These are the facts of life.

And, well, that's not luck. That's just people.

***

We camp in the yard and we are given a bowl of tomatoes fresh from the garden. We're introduced to the family and the goats and the dogs and the chickens. Gul, our kind host, heats up a large bucket of water for us, and we're shown to a small wooden shack where we can wash off. We mix hot water and cold water and pour it over our heads, rinsing days of dust and grime from our sun-soaked bodies. It's a simple yet wonderful shower. We sleep.

We're woken early the following morning by the crow of the family's massive rooster, over two feet tall and rather mangy. He circles our tent at daybreak and screams.

We break down our tent and pack our panniers and, before we take off, are surprised by a lovely breakfast Gul has prepared for us. We sit outside and play with the children and do our best to communicate with our hosts.

Plenty of languages are spoken in central Asia: Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Tajik, ____, heaps more. Because we're traveling across a wide region, and because nearly all of the people we meet also speak Russian, I've been doing my best to pick up a little Russian as we cycle. It hasn't amounted to much yet, but it's getting better.

I never aspired to learn Russian. I never thought Russian would be my third-strongest language. Yet here I am, later that day, entertaining a few kids on bikes in a gas station parking lot with some basic, poorly-pronounced russki. Hello! What's your name? I like your bicycles! Do you live around here? Oh, us? We're coming from Almaty, headed to Osh, then the Pamir. Okay, bye!

Part of learning Russian is learning the sounds, and part of learning Russian is learning the alphabet. Russian is written in Cyrillic, which looks a bit like our Latin lettering but is actually quite different. Quite challenging. You look at a word in Arabic and, unless you speak Arabic, you think, I do not know these letters and thus I do not know this word.

But Cyrillic is tricky, because it looks a bit like Latin. There are familiar characters, old friends like A and M and P and C and near-doppelgangers like the backwards R (я) and the upside-down h (ч) and the boxy W (ш). And so you see a word like ресторан and you think, Well, I'm not sure what that means but it's definitely pronounced "pec-to-pah." Except it's not, because the Ps are Rs and the Cs are Ss and the Hs are Ns. And so this word is actually pronounced "restoran"—restaurant. Cyrillic is like this: though there are some letters that are the same as our alphabet, there are even more that look like they're part of our alphabet but are actually pronounced totally differently. And then, of course, there are some characters—д, ж, щ, и, г, з, л, plus a few more—that are just totally new.

For a while I avoided learning Cyrillic. I didn't plan on writing any Russian, just speaking it, and it seemed a whole lot easier to just learn a language through podcasts while cycling than to internalize a whole new alphabet.

But everything here is in Cyrillic. Road signs, soup cans, menus, types of petrol. I start simple, just guessing at the meaning of billboards while we pedal, and before long I know half the alphabet. I look at a шоколад bar and read chocolate or catch пицца on a menu and order pizza. By the time we're pulling into Osh, I see Ош on the big welcome archway and know that we've arrived (though certainly the big welcome archway made that clear enough on its own).

Osh: older than the Bible, ancient crossway of the Silk Road. Osh, the official start of the Pamir Highway and the long, uphill journey to Tajikistan. Osh, the biggest city (population: 250,000) we're going to see for months. Osh, Ош, however you spell it, pretty much the last time we'll be under three thousand meters for weeks to come.

We have reached Osh, and now it's time for some rest.

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

A tribute to Lauren & Jay

Jude Della Terra

May 29, 2021

On July 29, 2018, our dear friends Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan, authors of Simply Cycling, were killed in a senseless act of violence as they biked with other travelers along the Pamir Highway in Tajikistan. Everyone who loved Lauren and Jay was devastated by this tragedy. While we continue to grieve the loss of our friends, we take comfort in the legacy of love, kindness, exploration, and adventure that they left behind.

More than two years after our friends were taken from us, Jay’s sister Jude finally received Jay’s cell phone from international law enforcement officials and was able to access this website. She found a series of unpublished blog posts on Jay’s phone -- some finished, some incomplete -- which are now being published posthumously here. We mourn that Jay and Lauren weren’t able to publish these posts themselves, but we are grateful to be able to share their words now.

Below is a tribute to Lauren and Jay written by some of their friends in the days after they died. This incredible couple gained followers and supporters all over the world as they documented their travels on this blog and their Instagram accounts. In the aftermath of their death, we hoped that this tribute would give a glimpse into the Lauren and Jay we knew, and share a bit about how special they were for those who weren’t lucky enough to know them in life. We are finally able to share this tribute with you here.

You can also find a lovely tribute here from two fellow cyclists, Nathan Beriot and Sophie Boyle of @a_bicyclette_, who spent time biking with Jay and Lauren in Central Asia. Their tribute, published in August 2020, shares their memories of the time they spent on the road with Jay and Lauren.

///////

July 31, 2018

This is a post that, as Lauren and Jay’s family and friends, we never thought we would have to write. Our hearts are broken that instead of reading a post from Jay chronicling their most recent adventures, you instead are learning of their tragic and untimely passing. We hope you’ll enjoy learning a bit more about Lauren and Jay from the point of view of just a few of the many people whose lives they touched with their kindness, friendship, and love.

Lauren approached her life with passion and boundless energy. She never did anything half-heartedly, and she invested her entire soul in her relationships. To say that she cared deeply about her family and friends would be an understatement. Lauren was a brilliant conversationalist -- not necessarily for her own sake, but because she genuinely empathized with the joys and sorrows of those around her. Lauren never met a stranger, and she had a gift for making each person she encountered feel like the most important thing in her world. Lauren was a true kindred spirit, and anyone who met her was lucky to have known her bright smile and warm, inviting personality. The outpouring of love from people who knew her from every season of her life is a testament to the many lives she touched and how brightly her light shone.

Jay was larger than life. He thrived on deep conversations about every topic under the sun. He had strong opinions, and he walked the walk. He was an excellent case study in a commitment to a mindful, sustainable lifestyle, adopting a vegan diet and eschewing most material possessions so he could fit his entire life into a tiny house -- one that he built himself, with the support of friends and DC’s tiny house community. Jay could be found riding throughout the city on his beloved bike, which would also transport him on his many adventures around the country and the world. He was passionate about his work, while at the same time cognizant of the need to maintain balance in his life, even if that meant taking a month or more of leave to cross the country via scooter or travel across India or Iceland on his bike. He was fearless, and that refusal to back down from a challenge enabled him to see the world in a way that many others don’t, one ripe with opportunity for exploration. He made many friends throughout his travels, with whom he bonded over their shared love of adventure.

Central to Lauren and Jay’s relationship was their ability to challenge each other. They encouraged each other to take the plunge and turn a passion (cycling) into a lifestyle, and reminded each other to ground themselves amid their adventures with meaningful and loving relationships. Both were intellectual powerhouses whose curiosity led them to take themselves outside of their comfort zones and explore new countries and cultures.

Their cycling adventure around the world, despite its indeterminate length, considerable risk, and geographic isolation from their family and friends, opened them up to the experiences that they so craved. They shared stories on this blog and on social media about the kindness shown to them by perfect strangers half a world away, some of them with very few material resources to their name. In a time as divisive as the one we now live in, it was refreshing to see the generosity of the human spirit through their eyes, and we can think of no better global citizens and ambassadors than Lauren and Jay.

Their tragic passing leaves an incredible void in the lives of those of us who were lucky to love and be loved by them, and the way in which they were killed was antithetical to the peaceful, loving, and respectful way in which they both lived their lives. We are heartbroken at their passing, but draw strength from the many memories we shared with the two of them and with the outpouring of support that has reaffirmed their impact on others. We also draw some comfort from the knowledge that they died doing the thing they loved, with the person they loved.

On behalf of their families and friends, we ask that you carry on their legacy by being kind, inquisitive, and adventurous. Pursue your passions fully, and let others in on those passions so that you can enjoy them side by side. If you were lucky enough to know Lauren and Jay personally, please continue to share their story and your memories of your time with them.

Jay Austin

July 11, 2018

stories

#39 (Too Ashuu, Kyrgyzstan - Ala-Bel, Kyrgyzstan)

Jay Austin

July 11, 2018

stories

Pearl-white snow and a torrent of hail and then dark.

We enter the tunnel.

I feel it first in my lungs. A tightening, like air being sucked out of a paper bag. Like my airways are filling with something they shouldn't be. Something thick. Like I need a certain amount of oxygen to live and this just isn't enough oxygen to live.

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