Where In The World

Due to popular demand, well one request anyway, I've attached some photos showing our general travel intentions.  The solid black lines indicate air travel and red lines indicate general bicycle/boat travel.  It appears the only boat/ferry travel will be from Bali to the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.  The first pic shows us flying into Instanbul at 02:55 hrs and then catching a 07:30 flight to Van.  From Van we hope to get in some mountain riding and then return to Instanbul along the coast.  From there it's on to Bangkok.

A close up of Turkey

From Bangkok we plan to fly to Bali and either ride along the islands or, preferably, take a ferry over to the large island of Sulawesi (misspelled below) and ride/snorkel and pig out on fresh fruitd and seafood.  Then it's back to Bali and a stop in Bangkok to change planes for the flight to Hanoi. 

After riding the mountains of northen Vietnam we hope to enter Laos thru a remote, yet open, border crossing at Nam Can.  After probably a relatively short ride in Laos, we were there in 2000, the plan is to enter China at Boten, Laos.  We'll ride north to see Shangri La and Tiger Leaping Gorge, double back a bit to Lijiang and over to Xichang in Sichuan then north by northwest to Urumqi.  Here we should be able to get our visas for Central Asia.  After riding the Pamir Highway we head to Dushanbe.  Depending on the time of year, what we feel like (and how the bank account feels) we'll head home - or somewhere else.

Committed

Looks like we have to go now - yesterday we bought our tickets from Seattle to Instanbul for $750 each including taxes!!  Can't hardly even leave Alaska for that price anymore.  Today I bought the tickets from Instanbul to Van on the east side of Turkey.  It's our general plan to ride for a couple weeks in the mountains in SE Turkey near Iran/Iraq and then work our way back to Instanbul along the Mediterranean.

We'll spend a couple days in Tacoma visiting good friends from my competitive rowing days before heading out on the 15th of September for Turkey.  Upon remeasuring the bikes and the boxes and the airlines regulations we should be able to cut down the box so we don't have to pay the bike fees - seems like the fees really aren't too bad except for Turkish Airlines - a lot of medieval baggage rules to try to figure out and comply with.  We have given up using TA for the flight to Instanbul and are flying Condor/Lufthansen instead.  D-day is getting closer but seems like all is on schedule for now!!

Next adventure - Turkey

Ever since we met 13 years ago we've talked about taking an overseas bike trip and we are finally actually going to do it.  Our plan as of today is to fly to Turkey and start riding on the eastern side returning to Instanbul over 4-6 weeks.  Next will be Indonesia, on to Vietnam by mid-Nov, then Laos and/or China (we were able to get a 3 month visa!!) and into Central Asia.  Ambitious yet but at least one has to start somewhere.  We'll see how far and to where we get.  Hopefully I get it figured out how to post photos but I figure I'm doing well just getting this far!

We have made all, hopefully, the necessary arrangements for our house(s), taxes, insurance etc. to cover us for the next year.  We are fortunate to have my second cousin, Laura, housesit for us.  She just graduated from law school and will be clerking for a judge here in Anchorage for a year - timing was perfect.

Turkish Airlines has been, and continues to be, a challenge.  We just received word to day that they will accept our bike boxes.  Why they have to be pre-approved and why it takes a week for the approval process is beyond their ability to explain.  Now we just need to decide if we will fly with them or use miles.  If we stay with TA then we end up where we want to start and no changing airports, additional bike fees etc in Instanbul.  If we use miles than we need to buy tickets to get across the country, more bike fees, hotel for up to four or five days in Instanbul so it may not be any cheaper in the long run.  Plus if we use miles we have to book a return trip, which we could always change the return date but would just need to eventually return from Instanbul. Tentative departure is Sept 15!!

So we'll see how this goes and investigate posting photos.