The Middle east

So I’ve had a look at which routes to take through Central Asia, but after initially thinking that i would go via Turkey-Iran-Pakistan-India  ive  now decided a very different route.

My plan is to hit Turkey and then travel through Georgia to Azerbaijan. At present there is a little thing called a war going on between Russia and Georgia, though surprisingly you can still travel into Georgia without so much as a Visa for up to 90 days. After crossing into Azerbaijan from Georgia I’m going to head for a town called Baku. Baku sits on the western shore of the Caspian Sea where it is possible to get a ferry over to Turkmenistan. From Turkmenistan its a 900 mile journey to Uzbekistan, passing through some of the famous silk road cities such as Bukhara and then on to the Fergana Valley. Fergana valley  is the entry point in to Kyrgyzstan which in turn is the entry point into western China!

Yurtcamp near the Issyk-kul lake in Kyrgyzstan

Europe and Eurovelo

So i had heard that there were already European cycle routs, i didnt however realise just how vast they were.

“EuroVelo is made up of 12 routes, totalling over 66,000 km, of which about 45,000 km is already in place. The EuroVelo routes are made up of existing and planned cycle routes at regional and national level, selected according to published criteria (see the EuroVelo Guidelines for Implementation/ Route principles for further details). A signposting system for EuroVelo routes has been developed (see the Manual Signalization for EuroVelo routes for details).”

Of the 12 routes, i have dicovered that Eurovelo 6 passes through pretty much every Country i want to visit plus a couple of new ones!

Eurovelo 6

The great thingabout the Eurovelo cycle route is that it has to hit a certain criteria, and because of this there are certain things you can expect. For a route to be part of EuroVelo it must:

• have no gradient above 6%
• be wide enough for two cyclists
• have an average of no more than 1,000 motorised vehicles a day
• be sealed for 80% of its length
• be open 365 days a year, have provision points every 30 km (19 mi), accommodation every 50 km (31 mi), and public transport every 150 km

Planing a rough outline

So the first thing i need to do i start drawing out a rough guide for the rout i am going to take. Listed below is the begings of an idea.

Start:

Christchurch: Dorset-France-Switzerland-Austria-Germany-Czech Rep-Slovakia-Hungary-Romania-Bulgaria-Turkey-Georgia-Russia-Kazakhstan-Kyrgyzstan-China-India-Burma-Thailand-Malaysia-Indonesia-Australia-New Zealand

23 countries in total so far, but I’m sure along thing will change as i find out about visa’s along the way. I think the best thing to do next is find out about the visa’s. How long each country will permit me to stay there for and what type of visa i will need.