Years of traveling brought me many different insights, philosophies and countries I needed to be (over 90 in total). I lived in Pakistan, went over 15 times to India and when I stopped cycling the world, that was after 50.000 kilometer through 45 countries, I met Geo. Together we now try to be more self-sustainable, grow our own food and live off-grid. I now juggle with the logistics of being an old-fashioned housewife, cook and creative artist loving the outdoors. The pouches I create are for sale on www.cindyneedleart.com
The Svea was designed in 1920 and the technology is simple. A design that is not the best option to choose for a stove on an extended cycle trip. The Svea is currently used in Sweden and Japan for stationary use or as a working antique stove with a nice look. An Optimus Nova would have been a better choice, since that is a modern liquid fuel stove for mobile use.
More or less 900 euro, the Hilleberg Soulo is a great one person’s tent. It withstand fierce winds, it adds about 4 degrees to the outside temperature and it has enough space not to feel imprisoned.
First and foremost, after cycling more than 4 years, only a few brands are so good that I chose them again, would I have to. Therm-A-Rest, Cumulus and Optimus.
2025: bought the exact same jacket. Reused the old one.
2024: the jacket starts to rub off its inside protection layer in the neck. This means the rain drips through and the jacket can no longer be used in heavy rain.
2023: the jacket is still very much in use. Though, naturally I try to avoid rain.
The very last moment before I would set off to South America, including rainy Patagonia, I decided I needed a new rain jacket.
First thing I do is escaping Lima and celebrating my alone time. I am back where I belong, having returned from a little detour, a failed deviation.
Atacama desert
First and foremost: cycling slow means having to carry more supplies as the distance from town to town is taking you longer. Being more heavy is even more slower. For a fast one with minimal load everything changes, but for one thing…
I meet with Seth, whom I met for the first time 14 years ago. He is coming to Peru and we can meet if we like. Back then, 14 years ago, while I was using the computer in a Nicaraguan internet-cafe he sat next to me and said: ‘Shall we chitchat later?’ I was surprised by the words ‘chitchat’. We were young backpackers, in our late twenties, traveled on and off together between Nicaragua and Costa Rica on a bus. I thought I could do that again. I was wrong.
I have battled the head wind of the Atacama desert in Chile.
I really don’t know what to do: route 40 with the highest pass in Argentina? Or route 51 which runs parallel but is lower, asphalted and has traffic. I don’t even want to throw a coin because what if it tells me to take route 40? I simply can’t.
On to the 50,000 kilometer
Let’s get this weblog more clear. After over 40,000 kilometer and 4 years on the road (mostly, as I have been home in The Netherlands to be with mom, and dad) with Shanti bicycle I am going to lead you around:
‘I will take all the high passes there are’
But that was what I’ve said back home in The Netherlands. Now I am on Ruta 40 and the prospect of climbing yet another pass is not too joyful. Though, I am enjoying way more than I was in Bolivia, only because everything falls together, just right into place.
It must be because he had recognized me as a shepherd. A shepherd of piglet. He, an attractive Argentinean man a copy of an artistic talib, his beard more than four fists long.
Cycling the Electricity Highway which provides energy to the world once biggest copper mine in Chile. I have made an inland turn, to meet with some one special, again!
Gerry, 58 years, from the Netherlands has been cycling since her 18th and covered about 35,000 kilometer worldwide.
In a semi nervous state I leave Tarija but I don’t want to stay any longer either because the sounds of airplanes flying over low, the suffocating diesel fumes, the harsh thuds of crackers and the idiotic sight of sledge heels have been enough for me.
December 2016: That’s what cycling without a plan does: unexpected surprises come your way. I was meeting with an old-time friend. Not in Argentina where I was, but in Lima. Peru. I took a bus, 4 days on end. Going back I wanted to avoid more busses.
Following statement: do you agree?
Is it the urge, the curiosity and the possibility to experience total silence, absolute aloneness and being fully in nature that one cycles through the Andes?
Nothing is ever really certain, surely not when you start living a life fueled by own power and depending on very few external distractions. Actions like sleeping in a forest and being alone on endless stretches may cause reason to worry, not to mention giving up your job and doing away with a house can be downright fearful.
The only choice I have -and count on- for safe camping is the border check-post, 7 kilometer before the actual border crossing. Having arrived here after 110 kilometers cycling in a heat of 40 degrees, I surrender to the customs. That means I must first drink the offered tereré, as if I am not tired and hungry but tranquillo is the key to success.
How comfortable is it to wear your clothes a week without washing? How delicious is it to cook a one-pot-meal for years? How does it feel to have no wash for days on end? How your towel can smell astringent of slight mold infused with the smell of wood fire. Is there still comfort after living for years on a bicycle? If there is, can it still be called comfort?
Lomo Plata hosts many indigena in search for work. They just hang around at factories, dressed in poor, dirty clothes, arriving in truck loads. I am surprised when I see a Mennonite woman being homeless and asking for a rather big donation.
Cycling in South America is about as easy as it gets when it comes to interactions with men. It has been different! Here a Mirror View on this particular subject:
An inquisitive curiosity led me to ask people I know about their view on particular subjects. It’s called ‘Mirror View’ because it’s not an interview, as I give my view on each question too. I find it interesting to see the difference in perceiving.
I notice the first bleak, sullen looking German-alike faces when I reach the turn-off to Hochstadt, another 35 kilometer on hard mud combined with loose sand. Whereas the average Paraguayan is hard to read, the German looking faces are reminding me of Stalin. I know Stalin isn’t German, so aren’t the Mennonites. They are Paraguayan.
‘It’s a dangerous route, the road is narrow’, ‘there are wild animals’, ‘not so many people live there’, ‘it’s too hot’, ‘many mosquito’s’, ‘the distance between houses is big’, ‘it’s a jungle, nothing is there, boring route’.
‘Paraguay is weird,’ said the student I’d met in Ponta Pora. Good, weird suits me. I’d heard little to nothing about Paraguay and so it only became more attractive to me. Paraguay is in the heart of South America, wedged between Brazil, Bolivia and Argentina. 95% of the population lives in eastern Paraguay, which is easy to figure out on the map of this country.
‘You are not going to Caraapó?’ asks a man, who parked his car next to me now I have stopped to ask someone directions to buy food.
No, I am not going there, I reply.
‘Oh, that’s good! Caraapó is not good.’
Why not? I ask.
What do I know about Brazil? That they are the creators of the toe-slipper brand Havaianas and Ipanema, though I take with me Lowa mountain wear shoes. Of which the shoestring get strangled and I fall stretched out, first thing at the airport.
30th of June, 2016. My former friend of a long gone past with whom I began to discover the wonderful world of a 14-year-old gave my name to a journalist from a local paper. Soon I met Wiljan, who turns out to be living a few blocks away from me. It was a very cozy conversation:
June 2016: this post is another of my reflections about life on and off a bicycle. Since all of my blogposts are coming into your inbox, this one follows just like all the previous. Just skip it if you’re not into posturing; a non-travel post. Instead, a travelers thought.
Desires: Libya, Algeria, Niger, Saudi Arabia, Namibia, Colombia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Guyana’s, Kirgizstan and Mongolia.
How incredible much I longed for openness in Nature, able to pitch my tent where ever I desire and to do some trekking. I bought sturdy Goretex shoes, and a backpack I already have. Initially I choose Iceland. Then the sun came out in the Netherlands. Did I really want to battle some more wind and rain and cycle in a loop?
Always being bitten by mosquito’s and awake for hours while trying to sleep, itching myself until bleeding and ever so often on the search for any kind of repellent.
Remaining of the assumption that (bicycle) gear last forever, I now know it isn’t. I should get rid of that tale. Yet, Cumulus comes close. I bought the sleeping bag at the start of the cycling trip (probably somewhere in the beginning of 2012), so it lasts long.
This A to Z is based on cycling as a woman alone in India, which makes a whole lot of differences. Before I cycled through India, I have traveled extensively by public transport and always solo. I haven’t counted the exact entries into India but it must have been more than 15 times.
Plus
I am was quite fully satisfied with the Svea 123. I even use it in hotel rooms, though I am very careful not to spill fuel and always put a folded windscreen underneath the stove as not to burn the hotel down.
This post it too simple for words. But somehow it got stuck in my mind.
Each country cycled through; one best photograph
On this tour I wanted to stay close to the Netherlands. I cycled from the Netherlands to Istanbul and back. I did so between May and November 2015. Here we go:
I didn’t look forward to Italy. I am only in Italy because it borders Croatia. And I am in Italy because it makes the movement of hurrying back home quicker. I had to hurry back home thrice before, and nothing as an antidote as to return from a seemingly empty desert or a high Himalaya.
Cycling Cindy