An Interview by Diego

Spanish Diego has a great cycling website about sharing routes, finding inspiration, information and planning bike tours.

He’d asked me to participate and since I love interviews, here’s another: WOOW 

The most stunning places you visited thanks to your rides

I was blown away by the whole Moroccan and Mauritanian Sahara stretch, in particular the area around Dakhla and Nouâdhibou where colors of nature were combined to the most outstanding abstracts. You might think desert is boring but each day is completely different from the other, sometimes even hours differs a lot. I had the luck to have a full day of rain and so flowers sprung up, grass grew and colors were plentiful.

I loved Oshogbo in Nigeria, an artful park in the middle of the forest, a collaboration between a Swiss artist and a Nigerian woodcarver. Cycling in Nigeria was a challenge of it’s own and to reach such a peaceful, quiet park was a beautiful opposition.

The Organ Pipe Monument in Arizona, USA was as if I were a fairy in a magical wonderland, it was a climax of cycling many days in cacti landscapes, some as high as 20 meters. Unimaginable grandness!

Nanded in India was a more than welcoming surprise. Because it is a holy city for the Sikh people from all over the world, the atmosphere was relaxing. For once, I was not stared at constantly, I could even drink chai undisturbed while devotional music sounded through boxes throughout the city. No tourists at all, so a pure undiluted India. There is a kind of ashram/lodge connected to the temple where you can stay for a good budget price, but mind you: cutting hair and shaving armpits and legs is not allowed!

Wadi Shab in Oman was such a hidden -yet very accessible- gem that I felt I left a lover behind when I cycled on to set up my camp on a beach, but not after I had a muscle-relaxing bath in a crystal clear pool between red canyon cliffs. 

This was just one question, there’s a lot more to read by clicking here. Enjoy!