In 2024, the Content Creators on each of our 10 tours produced some amazing videos from around the world; from Korea to Patagonia; from France to New Zealand; from Corsica to Morocco. They explored many aspects of the tours themselves as well as the countries and cultures they were riding through.

Here are a few that our office staff thought stood out:

Shanny Hill (Marketing Manager)

This section of the Golden Buddha Ride through Thailand is lovely and the video captures that very well. Cycling on quiet roads in Thailand eating great food. Whats not to like?

“Leaving behind the relaxed atmosphere of Chiang Mai, the riders head south through the rural Thai countryside, pedalling past verdant rice paddies and historic Buddhist temples.”

This video, about how a TDA tour is run and the way the staff and cyclists of the 2024 Morocco: Kingdom of the West navigated the daily challenges, is insightful and awe inspiring. You see the great joy and excitement (and effort!) on the rider’s faces.

“I’ve never been to Morocco. What will I see? What will I taste? What will I learn?”

Olha Kurochkina (Office Manager)

I loved Melanie’s video from the Viva Italia, featuring Byron, one of the riders. With spectacular Corsican views, Byron’s compelling words, and dynamic video and audio, she created a short yet powerful message about why people get hooked on cycling. It perfectly showcases why TDA is the ultimate choice for sharing this passion with like-minded adventurers.

“Cycling isn’t just about movement. It’s about the moments where the world falls away, and it‘s just you, the bike, and the road ahead.”

Micah Markson (Office Tech Genius)

This video captures the effort that goes into preparing the amazing food on TDA tours – the number one reason to choose a camping tour over hotels!

“The Chilean coast is kind of the dream as a chef, with all its beautiful produce and seafood. And I’m getting to meet the farmers that grow it and the fishermen that catch it. I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks.”

Cristiano Werneck (South American Project Manager)

Pretty personal choice, since I was apprehensive for months about the decision to take that cable car, so I was happy to see people safe and happy on the video.

“It was quite spectacular looking across the river and not being able to see the other side…”

Miles MacDonald (Operations Manager)

This is an example of the logistical challenges taken on during a tour, and the reality accepted by staff and cyclists that plans may need to be adapted, sometimes significantly, when difficult logistics don’t line up. But when they do it’s a magical experience.

“If nothing else, this day alone would make the tour deserve the name ‘epic’!”

Henry Gold (Founder)

I have been there several times but never seen the astounding wild flowers that the Cape to Kili riders had the good fortune to experience.

“Thanks to the wet winter and the arrival of spring, the wildflower season has been nothing short of spectacular, leaving us in awe.”

This captures so well the joy of riding through Europe.

“The Orient Express…It’s been like I’m on location for a movie…It’s like a dream.”

Michael Coo (Customer Service Manager)

Mats perfectly catches the infectious enthusiasm of the staff and riders on the Journey to the East tour. I dare you not to start smiling!

“A peep behind the scenes of the world famous travelling TDA Lunch Café and find out how TDA prepares delicious and nutritious lunches for hungry cyclists all over the world!”

Coby takes a quirky look at a day on the Bamboo Road Cycling Tour from a very personal viewpoint.

“City, country, beach, mountains, monkeys, temples & night markets – a typical riding day through Southeast Asia has it all! From sunrise to sunset, come along for a day cycling the Bamboo Road.”

Here at TDA Global Cycling, we are blessed with some extremely talented writers, both in our Toronto office and in many other places around the world. In 2024, they managed to post 111 blogs covering a wide variety of topics.

Here are our staff picks for best blogs of 2024:

Ohla Kurochkina (Office Manager)

What Is It Like For A Couple Joining A Camping Expedition with TDA Global Cycling?

“I enjoyed reading Shanny’s blog as I was questioning myself, should I go somewhere with my husband one day)))))” (Read more)

A Dutch Rider Takes On The Trans-Europa Cycling Tour

“I guess, I just can’t be objective, I met him on the Viva Italia, so I guess, when I read his article, I can imagine him talking to me, hear his tone of voice, so it sounds more appealing to me.” (Read more)

Miles MacDonald (Operations Manager)

How To Be A Fantastic Roommate On A Cycling Tour

“Inter-personal communication is a skillset we can all continue to build on throughout our lives, and being a fantastic roommate on tour is a great way to practice! It’s also a chance to make a great new cycling and traveling friend.” (Read more)

How Many Cyclists That Start a Tour End up Completing it?

“For TDA getting to answer this question, whether in a blog, or when meeting a potential new TDA cyclist in person, is always a positive experience. As we’re able to explain that nearly everyone who rides a tour with us completes it, and how the group camaraderie and TDA staff support helps make this a reality.” (Read more)

Shanny Hill (Marketing Manager)

Celebrating An ‘Impossible’ Milestone: 100 Tours

“It was hard in 2021 to celebrate our 20th year as a company. We were busy restarting our global operations after a year of lockdowns and letdowns. So it felt extra special a few years later to instead celebrate our 100th tour. Something we were all quite proud of.” (Read more)

When The (TDA) Circus Comes To Town

“Yanez used to write professionally before working with TDA. Even while expending a great deal of energy orchestrating the logistics of our trips in Africa, he sometimes has time to write a gem like this. Don’t take him too seriously and enjoy the literary ride he takes you on.” (Read more)

Honourable mentions:

The Morocco Earthquake’s Lasting Legacy

Mystery and Folklore In The North York Moors

Micah Markson (Office Tech Wizard)

Living Without limits At 80: Rae’s Journey To A Life Of Health, Adventure & and Fulfillment

“Rae & Ursula have been an inspiration since I first met them in 2016, and in the years since they have not slowed down at all. Cycling with people like Rae has completely changed my views on aging, and he is a great example to bring up whenever someone says ‘Maybe if I were younger’!” (Read more)

When The Office Meets The Crew

“Olha did a great job capturing the differences and importance of the two sides of TDA – the back office and the field staff. In my opinion, it is the combination of these two aspects that sets TDA apart.” (Read more)

Henry Gold (Founder)

You Can’t Quantify Laughter

“I like Benjamin’s blog because he captured something intangible on our tours and that is the magic of our staff. It is their hard work but also their wonderful attitude and enjoyment of these trips. Their attitude and laughter is contagious. It affects everyone on the tour, particularly me.” (Read more)

The Camaraderie Of An Expedition Tour

“I like Nick Coe’s blog because I relate to it. Since we started the company, I have met many people from around the world that have greatly enriched my life. On the trip I am now, the Trans Oceania, some of them pleasantly surprised me. While riding alone on a quiet road, in a distance I saw a couple standing by their car waving, while I cycling towards them wondering who are these people, why are they waving at me? Another friend showed up knocking on the door of the hotel. And on a rest day I had a lovely and delicious dinner in Wellington with a couple who I cycled several tours with. In each case they made my day.” (Read more)

Michael Coo (Customer Service Manager)

Egypt’s Unknown Language – Honking

“Beep. Beep. Sometimes it is important to learn more than one local language.” (Read more)

The X-Ray

“You never know what will appear in your inbox. One day, completely unexpectedly, a rider who had taken part (pun intended) in the first Tour d’Afrique in 2003, submitted a painful but entertaining memory from that time that he had written up during the COVID lockdowns.” (Read more)

Honourable mentions: 

The Toilets Of Tokyo

Sime’s Excellent Arctic Adventures on the North American Epic Cycling Expedition

Friendships from TDA, Carpe Diem and a Great Canoe Trip

Iconic Dutch Windmills: Their Many Uses & How They Work

Cristiano Werneck (South. American Project Manager)

The Tour d’Afrique Cycling Expedition: Unique, Authentic & Epic

“I love this blog on the Tour d’Afrique and how it is an opportunity to challenge yourself. What I really like about is that it shows it as a chance to escape a lot of the modern day BS and really experience a simpler life style. It also illustrates how that has been changing as well over the years and therefore people should go ASAP.” (Read more)

Colombicycled

“American cyclist Mark Khalil wrote a guest blog that really appealed to me – full metaphors about cycling and life which is something I can really appreciate.” (Read more)

Did we miss any of your favourites? Let us know in the comments if we did!

SPOILER ALERT: The answer is that you can probably cycle 100 km in a day. On a supported cycling tour on mostly paved roads with moderate climbing, this is an achievable distance by any able bodied adult. The average distance on our Touring and Adventure level tours is roughly 100 km per day and we have seen people of all sizes and shapes, ages and fitness levels complete this distance. Of course, there are many factors that effect this…

Top 10 Factors Affecting Daily Cycling Distances

1. Terrain – Is it hilly, or flat? Is it smooth paved roads or bumpy tracks in the bush? Terrain is a major factor and could mean the difference between averaging 25 km/h or 5 km/h.
2. Weather – Do you have a headwind or tailwind? Are there moderate temperatures or hydration sucking desert heat? A strong headwind can feel like cycling with your brakes on. Riding in extreme heat may slow you down over the course of many hours in direct sunlight and likely means taking more breaks and requires more hydration.
3. Gear – Are you carrying everything with you or is there a support van for that? Did you pack light or prepare for every eventuality? Though maybe not as large of a factor as weather and terrain, the weight of your bike is inevitably going to slow you down and drain your energy more quickly.
4. Your plans – Are you trying to go far or wander at a leisurely pace? Do you like to have long lunches and do side trips or mid-day activities along the route? This is a factor that you control and can change from day to day or even hour to hour. You can enjoy the world around you or choose to put your head down and put in some serious kilometres.
5. Solo or Group – Are you cycling with a friend? Cycling alone? Or in a tour group? There is a wonderful solitude in solo cycling but the flip side, cycling with friends or in a group, can help you to cover more distance than you thought you were capable of.
6. Fitness – Have you trained hard? Are you an experienced cyclist? On a long tour, you may find this becomes a smaller factor over time as you will get in shape if you keep cycling daily and keep pushing through the physical fatigue. But starting a tour in good shape is a great way to jump start your trip.
7. Location – Are you cycling in familiar regions or foreign lands? Sometimes you spend more time navigating the route and finding food and housing in unfamiliar territory.
8. Navigation – Is the routing complex? How likely are you to take the odd wrong turn? One wrong turn could add lots of kilometres and hours to your day.
9. Motivation – Did you wake up feeling sluggish? Are you motivated to reach the next town and visit a friend? Your goals and motivation can certainly be a small factor in daily distance.
10. Health – Have you overexerted yourself the last few days? Do you have a cold or food poisoning? These might slow you down or even mean putting your trip on pause.

What Would My Average Speed Be?

Does 100 km still sound like a lot? Well, think about this. Even if you cycled at 10 km/h you could still manage to cycle the 100 km before sunset if you got an early start. A below-average cyclist can usually cycle comfortably on a flat paved road at 15 – 20 km per hour.

Here is a great chart (in miles not kilometres) from our friends at the Adventure Cycling Association quickly summarizing how much distance you can cover (while carrying all your gear) in 5 hours in a variety of situations. Note that on a TDA tour you only carry the basics, so your gear weight would probably be more like 5 lbs (or 2.5 kg) – meaning your distance covered might be even greater.

source: Adventure Cycling Association

What speed do you average on a full day ride? How many hours are too many for you? What are some of the things that are key to covering these long distances? Share your thoughts and comments below.

The most common question our customers ask before a tour is, “What bike should I bring?”

We’ve created a video with some advice on choosing a bike for one of our tours. However, these tips also apply to anyone planning for a supported cycle tour of a week or longer. Go ahead and click play, or read on below for more details.

Things to consider

There is an almost infinite list of things to consider when choosing a bike, especially one that you’ll be riding all day, day after day, for weeks or months in a row. We’ve broken down these decisions as follows:

Bicycle type
Durability
Tire clearance
Gearing
Brakes
Bike fit
Saddle
Handlebars
Pedals
Suspension
Carrying your gear
Recommended bikes

Types of bikes

A ‘touring bike’ is not the only option. The type of bike you choose will partly depend on what type of handlebars you like.

Bikes with drop bars

A ‘touring bike’ is, as expected, one of the most common choices. These bikes are designed to cover long distances, to be very durable, and to carry lots of gear. On a supported cycle tour, while you won’t use the full extent of these capabilities, a touring bike is always a good choice.

The next kind of bike is what we call a cyclocross or gravel bike. There are differences between these two categories, but overall are somewhat comparable. These may appear at first to be similar to a touring bike, but are typically designed a bit more for speed than for comfort and durability. They are a good choice for anyone used to riding a road bike, but who needs something a bit burlier for a tour.

Note that we do not recommend narrow tire road racing bikes for any of our tours.

Bikes with flat bars

People often don’t think of hybrids as a good choice for touring. They are certainly not designed to the same level of durability and capability of touring bikes, but for supported cycle tours, they can be a good choice. A hybrid with a flat bar is a good choice for anyone who likes a comfortable, upright position, or who ‘just wants a bike’. They are also often available with front suspension.

A hardtail mountain bike can also be a good option. It is a particularly good choice for any tour where extended portions of the route will be on dirt roads. And for paved sections, you can easily switch back to a thinner set of tires to regain some speed.

Three key elements of bike selection

1. Durability / frame material

Steel frames are well known for their excellent durability, and smooth ride quality. This is the most durable frame material available. If you want to use a steel frame for durability, but are concerned about the weight, you may be able to swap some of the other components (like wheels, etc.) to make the bike lighter.

Aluminum frames are also a good choice. While they are lighter than steel, they also are typically less durable and a bit less comfortable.

Carbon frames are the least durable option available, but also the lightest. Although newer carbon frames are less delicate than they used to be, they are still more susceptible to damage from smaller things like falling over onto a rock, being carried in vehicles, and so on. In our experience, touring with a carbon bike tends to become a source of stress and worry for the rider. Having said that, a growing number of TDA riders do use them, and you can do so if you accept these risks.

2. Tire Clearance

For the vast majority of our tours, we recommend bikes with clearance for at least 40mm wide tires. Even for tours on paved roads, you never know when you’ll come across a detour, broken pavement, or construction, and you’ll appreciate the extra comfort.

On some tours you may want to bring two different sets of tires for varying road conditions. This can be a thinner set around 35mm wide, and 40mm (or wider if your frame will allow it) for dirt sections.

3. Gearing

On a long bike tour, it’s very important to have gears easy enough to allow you to spin up hills. The gears that you might be comfortable using at home, when you tend to have a few days to recover after a ride, may not feel the same when you’ve been riding five or more days in a row.

Many bikes actually come with gear ratios designed for racing, and others now have only a single front chainring. Whether you go for something with a triple crankset, or a double with a wide range cassette, it is essential that the easiest gear is one you’ll be comfortable in on the steepest climbs, and that the hardest will allow you to pedal along happily whenever you find a nice tailwind. Some bikes with the newest single chainring, 12 speed drivetrains do provide a total gear range comparable to a double or triple crankset – just keep in mind that whit this setup, you will be giving up either a little bit of hill climbing ability, or a little bit of top-end speed in exchange for the mechanical simplicity. Look for the biggest cassette size available – 50, 51, or 52 teeth.

Many bikes now come with electronic shifting. While these drivetrains do tend to work very well, they have a somewhat higher chance of running into issues that can’t be fixed on the road. In our experience this doesn’t happen often, but it is a risk you should be aware of if choosing to use these components. For simplicity and repairability, we continue to recommend regular mechanical drivetrains. If you do choose to bring a bike witth electronic shifting, take note of the following:

• For Shimano Di2: charging cable, and portable power bank for when you don’t have access to an electrical outlet.
• For SRAM AXS, make sure you have the charger, and bring a spare battery.

Click here to read more about bicycle gearing

4. Brakes

Almost all bikes being sold today are equipped with disc brakes, which are our recommendation. If you have an older bike with rim brakes, you can certainly keep riding it though! Click here to read more.

More choices

Now that you’ve settled on those basics, there are a few other options that, while based on personal preference, are still very important.

Bike fit

Whichever bike you choose, it’s a great idea to have a bike fit done at your local shop. During this process they will help you achieve a comfortable riding position by adjusting your saddle, handlebars, etc.

Saddle

There are thousands of types of saddles available, and finding the right one is an entirely personal choice. Your bike shop should be able to help you with this. Most bike shops will have a device which can measure the width of your sit bones, and this will help you learn what width of saddle you should look for.

The most important thing is to make sure you have a saddle that is comfortable, and that you’ve already spent plenty of time riding on before your trip. Many people will tell you about a particular saddle they have, how much they love it, and how they have used it for years and their bum has never gotten sore. When you hear these stories, keep in mind that everyone’s body is different, and the saddle that works for one person may or may not work at all for someone else.

Handlebars

You’ll have to choose between flat and drop handlebars. Again, this choice is up to you. We always suggest sticking with what you are already used to riding. People often think that you need to use drop bars for long rides, but that is certainly not the case. Your bike shop may also have other more unique options, as well as various grips, extensions, and so on to add comfort, and to give you more hand positions.

Pedals

You can choose between clip-in or flat pedals. Either choice is perfectly fine, but again you are better off sticking with what you know. If you choose flat pedals, using shoes with a stiff sole will help prevent your feet from getting sore. And if you choose to clip in, make sure that your shoes are also suitable for walking, as any long bike tour will have plenty of off-bike excursions along the way. Road bike pedals are not advised as the clip protrudes too far from the shoe and is susceptible to rapid wear, and makes walking very difficult.

Suspension

For tours on rougher roads, you may want to look at front suspension. If possible, a fork with a lockout is preferable. There are also options for seatposts and stems with suspension built in. But most riders will be happy with just the cushioning provided by their larger tires.

Carrying your gear

On a supported trip, most of your gear will be transported in the tour vehicles. But you still need to carry a few things like extra clothing layers, rain gear, tools, and water. You should always be able to carry at least two water bottles, whether in bottle cages or elsewhere, but on some tours you might even want three or four. For your other gear, there are countless options from bikepacking frame or seat bags, to handlebar bags, or even a rack with a pannier.

Recommended bikes

The following four bikes have been common choices among past TDA riders, and any one of them would be a good choice. But they can be taken as examples – there are plenty of slightly different models, or even similar bikes from other brands, that would also be suitable.

Kona Sutra (touring bike)
Salsa Journeyer (gravel bike)
Giant Roam (hybrid bike with front suspension)
Specialized Rockhopper (hardtail mountain bike)

Conclusion

One last thing to consider is the risk of damage or theft during your trip. For those reasons, we prefer bikes that are not too expensive. This will help you relax and not worry about your bike being locked up at night, and let you focus on the ride.

Whatever bike you choose, make sure you have it well in advance of your tour, and get plenty of miles on it too. You don’t want any surprises when you set off on your next adventure!

Special thanks to Sweet Pete’s Bike Shop for their help in producing this guide.

If you are joining a supported cycling tour where you bring you own bike (such as the many tours we run around the world), there is a good chance that you will be expected to know how to change a flat tire. If you are solo cycle touring, then you definitely need to know.

During the Bamboo Road cycle tour this past fall, our expert mechanic Ryan took some time to walk us through the process in this handy how-to video (below).  Ryan has been working on bikes for 12 years and figures he has fixed hundreds of flat tires in his lifetime. Here are three simple steps to fixing a flat:

Step 1: Remove the Tire

Step 2: Find the Hole

Step 3: Repair the Flat

You will need a few things to complete the job:

• tire levels
• new tube
• pump
• also handy: needle nose pliers and gloves

I suggest you watch our how-to video first, and then read the more detailed step by step instructions below.

Step 1: Remove the Tire

Find a space where you can either lay your bike down or turn it over to rest it on the handlebars and seat. Do your best to find a place shielded from the elements.

When repairing a flat on the rear wheel, shift the rear derailleur to the outermost gear on the cassette. This allows the wheel to be removed while the chain is under the least tension, and causing the least resistance.

For bicycles with rim brakes, release the brake so there is room for the tire to slide out past the brake assembly. Release the quick release. In the case of bikes with a thru axle or bolted axle, use the necessary allen key or wrench to loosen the bolt. Remove the wheel.

TIP: Wheel Terminology
Some terminology that people can get mixed up: ‘Rim’ is the metal hoop without the spokes, hub or tire. ‘Wheel’ refers to the whole assembly of the hub, spokes, and tire. ‘Tire’ refers to just the rubber outer tread (and not the tube, rim or entire wheel).

Next, deflate the inner tube and use your tire lever(s) to remove the tire. Be careful to avoid pinching the tube inside the tire. Run the lever along the inside of the tire slowly, continuing to adjust as you encounter resistance. The lever will help you lift the tire out of the rim and allow you to slide along the rim’s braking surface, pulling out the tire from inside the rim as you go.

With one side of the tire released from the rim, you can remove the inner tube. The opposite side of the tire can remain inside the rim to make reinstalling quicker.

Step 2: Find the Hole

Using gloves or a cloth (or carefully without gloves) run your fingers along the inside and outside of the tire. While you are doing this, you should also be looking closely at the tread to see if you spot any pieces or wire, glass and feel for any bumps or gashes.

You will be surprised how small the culprit can be. The smallest shard of glass can be picked up on your ride and slowly over many many kilometres work its way into the soft rubber tire and eventually pierce the tube.

TIP: Find the Cause
The most common cause of a flat tire is the previous flat tire – meaning that the same piece of glass or wire was never found and removed. After you repair the flat the same sharp object simply works its way into a new tube. So make sure to do a thorough check of your tire. Taking an extra 5-10 minutes to fix this flat could save you from fixing another one further down the road.

Sometimes you won’t ever find the source of the puncture. The wire or nail may have not remained in the tire or fallen out as you started fixing the flat. But once you are satisfied that the tire is free of debris and sharp objects, its time to put in a new tube.

Step 3: Repair the Flat

Take out a fresh tube and inflate it just enough to give the tube form, making it easier to position it inside the tire. Put the valve through the valve hole making sure it sits straight up and down, perpendicular to the rim.

TIP: Use a New Tube on the Roadside
On the roadside, get yourself riding as soon as possible by putting a new tube in and carry the damaged tube with you to be repaired later. Once you arrive at the end of your ride, you can take the extra time to patch the damaged tube. You can do this in your tent or hotel room, out of the elements to ensure you have created a good seal.

Seat the tube inside the tire, making sure it isn’t pinched or folded. Start putting the tire back onto the rim at the valve, and work your way around the rim from there.

TIP: Avoid Tire Levers
Try not to use levers for putting the tire back onto the rim. You are likely to pinch the tube against the rim when doing this. Use tire levers only as a last resort (in the same orientation used when removing the tire). 

You might want to hold the wheel against your midsection with the valve side at the farthest point away from you. With both hands, work your way from the valve on either side pushing the tire onto the rim. Pushing the last few centimetres of the tire into the rim requires more force, so you could place the wheel on the ground, standing on the opposite side and rolling the remaining tire towards you.

TIP: Set Tire in Deepest Part of the Rim
If it won’t budge, try adjusting the tire inside the rim so that it is sitting in the centre of the rim channel all the way around. The centre is the deepest part, so this means the tire should more easily stretch over the final few centimetres.

Now that it’s on, visually inspect it to make sure the tire is sitting evenly inside the rim. Inflate the tire partway, than re-inspect the rim to ensure the tire sits evenly all the way around and on both sides. Continue inflating to the desired pressure.

TIP: Tire Pressure
You shouldn’t always inflate to the maximum pressure. Instead it should be inflated to an appropriate pressure based on the terrain you’ll be riding (softer for unpaved, rough roads for example).

Put the wheel back on the bike. Tighten the quick releases or bolts. Spin the wheel to double check that its seated properly in the dropouts.

Then you are good to go!

Was this useful? Many of us have our own tips and tricks, so please share yours in the comments below.

A special thanks to our mechanic Ryan, narrator Sophie, and videographer Esen.

How do you train for a long distance cycling tour? Can you actually train for a tour that spans a continent and lasts several months? Can you ride yourself into shape during the first week of an expedition?

These are some of the questions that might come to mind for someone considering signing up for one of our tours. We always tell our participants to train for their tour, but we sometimes struggle to suggest just how to train, and for how long. So we reached out to some of our seasoned veterans – cyclists who have participated in all different levels of our tours – from Touring to Adventure, and Expedition level tours. Some have done multiple tours and are registered for tours coming up later this year.

Covering everything from core workouts, to base training, to loading your bike with heavy phone books (I’m not kidding!), these cyclists might just have the right training strategy that will work for you.

This is a rather long and detailed post, so use the links here to skip to the tips you are most interested in.

1. Keep Fit Year-Round
2. Got an Old Phone Book? Adding Weight to Your Bike
3. 20 Minutes, 4 Days a Week
4. Yoga as Part of Any Training Plan
5. Start with a Base and Ride Yourself into Shape
6. Start with a Base and Build Towards Specificity
7. It’s Never too Soon to Start, but Don’t Overtrain
8. Core Strength, Mental Strength

1. Keep Fit Year-round

2016 Tour d’Afrique participant Paul says “I have raced in different sports all my life. From alpine skiing to long distance triathlon and cycling. I just love racing over training. So I keep fit all year round.”

By making fitness a lifestyle, he was able to transition quite comfortably to the daily distances and demands of our flagship tour. When fitness is not such a major hurdle, it allows participants to focus on the other, equally important factors – eating properly and adjusting to a new diet, living the camping life, and adapting to the temperatures, the cultures, and the lifestyle of cycle touring.

Similarly Geoff who recently completed The Odyssey from Athens to Amsterdam (one of our Touring level rides) says  “My ultimate training tip is to make training a regular occurrence; a habit.”

As the tour approaches, however, he does increase the training. “I like to be well conditioned and fit before I start a major event or race. This means a 3 to 4-month prep. Over that period I’ll increase volume and intensity. Cycling volume would peak at around 300 km a week. I know this doesn’t suit everyone. My training (my life) always includes riding, running and swimming.”

One final tip from Paul “I would most definitely use the same bike seat / saddle and riding position for all my bike’s, off road or on road or on your turbo trainer.”

2. Got An Old Phone Book? Add Some Weight When Training

“Find a long hill, load [your] bike with lots of phone books, cycle in 25-40 degree weather. Do at least three hours every week!”

Leonard’s more unorthodox approach to training helped him successfully complete the first section of the Tour d’Afrique in 2019. He’s gearing up for West Africa en Vélo later this year so no doubt his phone books are proving useful once again.

Leonard goes on to say “I usually start about three months before I go on a trip as I usually do a 30 km ride at least once a week with said phone books on front and rear panniers.” This mimics the weight when he is solo touring, and gives him an advantage for tours like ours, where what you carry on your bike is minimal.

“Just to add I have three different rides of approximately 35 km each one [one hilly, one flat, and one mixed]. I do rides every week of the year no matter the weather.”

Matt Caretti (who was the race winner of the Tour d’Afrique in 2006 when it was a timed event) also enjoys the less expected training method. “My philosophy has always been to make training harder than the tour.”

He goes on to say “In preparing for the 2006 Tour d’Afrique, I cycled across the US (California to North Carolina) with about 30 pounds of gear in my panniers and dry bag. I was not shy about what I carried, actually wanting more weight as part of the training. So in addition to building lots of base miles (endurance), the extra weight helped to build strength. As well, I mimicked the length of each stage, varying my daily miles between 80 and 100, and taking a rest day once every 7-10 days… I wanted the Tour d’Afrique to be a pleasurable experience rather than a sufferfest. Yet no matter how hard we train, we will suffer at times. We get sick, dehydrated, fatigued, bored, stressed and on and on. BUT having already exposed our bodies and minds to such hardships prepares us for the challenges ahead. ”

3. 20 Minutes, 4 Days A Week

Mary, who has done the Pub Ride and who is soon to join the Journey to the East, also happens to be a fitness instructor. “I focus more on the cross training four months before a trip, starting out slow and working up.” She says stretching, balance and weight training are essential.

“Stretches can be simple as long as you push yourself to your edge. Balancing can be done with yoga or on your bike. Try riding with one or no hands and pedalling single legged. Weight training – remember you don’t need to lift heavy weights. Do push-ups several times a day. It’s not so much the number of reps as much as the frequency.”

4. Yoga As Part Of Any Training Plan

Lisa did the Orient Express and, like Mary, thinks yoga is great.

“I would add yoga to any training routine – it helps with strength and flexibility and can go a long way to reducing muscle aches – especially in the lower back. I have been using the Sufferfest yoga videos every day for several months now – they are specifically targeted at cyclists and quite short (15 minutes). I definitely notice the difference when I am on the bike!”

“You should notice a difference after a month or so if you are doing regular yoga 3 days a week or more. I have been doing 15 minutes a day 5-6 days a week and it definitely helps a lot.”

5. Start With A Base And Ride Yourself Into Shape

“Begin the tour in decent physical condition and you’ll ride yourself into tour shape”

Tom should know. He has crossed South America and Africa with us and will tackle the Silk Route in 2021. These are some of our most challenging tours and so we would reiterate the importance of building up that base fitness. The more you prepare your body physically the more you will enjoy the tour.

I asked Tom what his base training entails. “Since, being retired, I have the time to recreate, ski, golf, hockey and the YMCA where I hang out doing yoga, spinning and light weights I’m in reasonably good shape. Maybe 3 months before the tour I’ll step it up and then shut it down a week before the start.”

So once you have the base training done and the tour starts… “Consider the riding as aerobic exercise, day after day, legs and lungs and mental strength. You are capable of much more than you thought possible. Make sure you’re comfortable with your saddle, you’ll be spending 6 plus hours on it every day.”

Tom’s last tip? “I highly recommend butt cream, and a good granny gear.” Spoken like a veteran TDAer indeed.

6. Start With A Base And Build Towards Specificity

“Start training your ‘base fitness’ when you are several months out and then gradually shift to workouts focused on ‘specificity’ the closer and closer you get to your tour”

Loraine completed the 2019 Tour d’Afrique and had some great details to share on her strategy. “Base fitness training is essentially performing a variety of cardio-based exercises (could be biking, swimming, trail running, rowing, cross-country skiing, etc.) at least 3 times a week consistently…They could be as short as 30 minutes sessions. But I’ve found that consistently doing the workouts over time (I use 3 times a week as the minimum) is the biggest factor in building base fitness. If you are a bike commuter, you’ve already nailed base fitness training.”

“As you get closer and closer to your event, your workouts need to become more specific. That is, you are training the muscles and movements you are going to use on the tour. This means you are riding your bike more and more, and for longer and longer distances instead of doing the other workouts. Try to get on the bike consistently for even short 30 minute sessions at least 3 times per week. The most important workout in this period is doing a long ride once a week. You should set your goal to ride the bike for a set number of hours rather than worrying about the distance or speed you actually went during the ride. Spin classes are a great way to get in more consistent riding time, as is getting a bike trainer so you can use your own bike indoors.”

And for those who wait too long and don’t have months and months to train… “If you…are only a couple weeks out, then you have to skip the base and do only specific workouts. Essentially, ride your bike a lot – as often as possible, as hard as possible, and in as many conditions as possible.”

7. It’s Never Too Soon To Start, But Don’t Overtrain

Karen has done both Expedition and Adventure level tours and has this to say “it’s never too soon to begin. It’s possible to train while on tour, but I don’t recommend it. I would say you need a good few months, 3-6 to see results. It depends how often and how hard you’re training, what condition you were in to start with [and] how old you are.”

BUT, don’t overtrain. “Overtraining is a real issue. I’ve learned to vary my training efforts – mix up climbing days with intervals, active recovery with max efforts. I like Zwift for that reason – it has training plans that keep me honest.” And don’t forget recovery “If you don’t eat and drink the right things at the right times, stretch or [use a] foam roller, and get enough sleep, you’ll find progress frustratingly slow.” Check out her blog here.

8. Core Strength, Mental Strength

Chris has done over 10 TDA tours and is the first to complete the 7 Epics. His philosophy? “Tour cycling is much less challenging and more fun with a strong core, so join a health club, gym, or simply begin to perform core strengthening exercises. Things like sit-ups, push-ups, and planks are great core workouts.”

Chris goes on to say “eat a well balanced nutrient rich diet, cut out the bad stuff. Better going into a tour a little on the lean side as opposed to overweight.”

Lastly, remember that even if you took everyone’s advice and start the tour in really great physical shape, it doesn’t necessarily mean you are prepared mentally.

“Just as important to train your mind as your body. The mind must be trained and the body will follow. Make a plan as to how to deal with things when they go wrong, such as injuries, bike mechanical malfunction.”

I hope you found this helpful. Please add your own training tips for long distance cycling below in the comments. I certainly learned a few things.

Can you ride yourself into shape on one of our tours? Yes. Is it better to get serious about training 3-6 months before the tour begins? Absolutely. Make it a part of your routine and see what progress you can make. Grab your yoga mat, or your phone books and put in the time to make your TDA tour experience all the more pleasurable.

A special thanks to Paul, Geoff, Leonard, Matt, Mary, Lisa, Tom, Loraine, Karen and Chris for contributing these great tips. 

18. What does that number signify?

At the age of 18 a person comes of age in most parts of the world. They can vote, sign up for the army and, here in most of Canada, legally buy alcohol and cigarettes. There are 18 chapters in the Bhagavad Gita, which is contained in the Mahabharata, which has 18 books. In my own tradition, the Hebrew word for alive or live is חי (chai), which has a numerical value of 18. In fact, my Hebrew name is Chayim which literally means life. 18 years is a good chunk of one’s life.

On January 16th, the 18th running of the Tour d’Afrique starts in Cairo. To put it simply, 18 is a good number to reflect on the beginning of this adventure. But, truth be told, this film was not my idea. Last year we hired a young, talented videographer, Laundon Peacock to film the 2019 Tour d’Afrique. After the tour was over, he suggested that it was time for TDA to create an Origin story video and pitched himself as the creator. Shanny and others here in the office thought it was a good idea and thus, we present to you, The Origin Story.

When I landed the opportunity to shoot tourism content in Africa for four months with TDA it’s safe to say I was over the moon.

Since I started making videos a few years ago all I wanted to do was travel and make films. I looked up to Youtube travel vloggers like Ben Brown and Louis Cole and thought if I could get paid to do anything, it’d be that. So I started a Youtube channel and made a bunch of random videos. I mean no one really watched them, but that’s how filmmaking started for me.

From there I moved to the UK on a study abroad year and made a bunch of travel films. They picked up a few thousand views and the university I was studying at asked me to make some promotional content for their study abroad program. Then I started freelancing online to build my portfolio. A few months later I left university to make videos full time.

At the time, it felt like a massive risk, a big leap, but now looking back I can’t believe I considered not doing it. Interestingly, the same thing happened the first time I rode a bike. I don’t mean the time when I was like 3 and had training wheels on. I mean that stretch in Egypt, that beautiful stretch of desert between Ain Sokhna and Ras Ghareb; the first time I had a go at being a cyclist.

When Shanny, TDA’s Marketing Manager told me the night before that I’d be cycling 70km, my first thought was ‘nope, that’s not going to happen’. I haven’t cycled more than 10k in my life and the last time I rode a bike was four years ago.

Shanny said that getting in the saddle was a great way to build relationships with the riders, understand what they’re doing, and why they’re doing it, so I could make the best videos possible. I saw his point, it’s a very smart thing to do, but on a 70km morning? Surely it’d be better to ride a 30km afternoon or something to ease myself in. But it was the first week of the tour, I couldn’t back down and come up with excuses.

So, I nervously headed up to my room and prepped all my gear so I could leave as early as possible. I had everything packed except for a pair of chamois, a t shirt and my runners. I woke up extra early, butterflies galore, thinking I’d be the laughing stock of everyone by lunch. I headed downstairs, put my bag in the truck, and waited in line for breakfast. The plan was to leave with the first rider and just cycle my heart out so I wasn’t last in at lunch.

I wolfed down breakfast and made a peanut butter sandwich for the road. Nervously I mounted my ride and started pedalling. About five minutes in, one of the fastest riders was on my tail, as she rode up I could see the puzzled look in her face – “you’re riding today?”, nervously I replied “I guess so”. She put her hand out for a high five and said “just remember to have fun”, before passing me and upping the pace.

After that all my nerves faded away, and as I rode into the sunrise I felt this immense sense of calm. But there was still 65km to go. Slowly but surely I found my rhythm. Other riders swished passed but it hardly bothered me, all I cared about was enjoying being on a bike in the middle of no where. It was almost meditative. Unable to think about any of life’s stresses I simply focused on pumping my legs and looking around once in a while. A few picture stops and incredibly tasty peanut butter snacks later, I came to the crest of the last hill, I saw the lunch truck and a massive grin emerged. I remember thinking ‘is that it? Is that 70km? Let’s do some more!’

Getting on the bike reminded me of the time I took that massive leap and left university. Full of nerves & worry I jumped off the cliff and it was the best thing I ever did. To me, this trip is quickly become less about filmmaking, and more about trying new things, pushing myself and seeing what’s on the other side. I think I’m doing ok so far, I backed up my 70km with a 110km a day later, shaved my head for fun and tried slacking just because. As I’m writing this all I can think is, ‘I can’t believe it’s been two days since I’ve been on the bike, I feel like it’s been a year.’ Oh how things change hey?

One of the smallest, yet most intriguing, changes to the Bamboo Road Cycling Expedition in 2019 is the route change from Siam Reap to Bangkok. Fresh from a couple days exploring the incredible temple complex at Angkor Wat, the cyclists now head south, skirting the vast expanse of the Tonle Sap and crossing some of Cambodia’s most productive rice fields before arriving in laid-back Battambang.

The town has an interesting history. Legend has it that it is the ‘City of the Lost Stick’. The story goes that eleven hundred years ago a farmhand, while caring for his cows, found a magic staff. He used its powers to depose the current King and then ruled over the area for many years as King Dambong. Eventually, the deposed King’s son returned to confront Dambong who fled the city with his magic stick which had been neutralized by some mystical intervention. Both he and the stick were never seen again although the staff is said to be hidden somewhere on the banks of a nearby river. Many locals honour his memory and have nicknamed him Ta Dambong (Grandpa Stick). Villagers often place incense at the foot of a large statue of him which greets travellers as they arrive in Battambang on the Phnom Penh road.

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In the late 18th century, Siam (now Thailand) swallowed up much of north-western Cambodia, including Battambang, at the time an important trading hub. It wasn’t until 1907 that it was returned to Cambodia, although this took place under French colonial rule as part of their grand plans for Indochinese colonies. During the reign of the Khmer Rouge, the local population suffered horribly as evidenced by the Killing Caves of Phnom Sampeau, about 11km southwest of the town or the gruesome memorial to the genocide’s victims, the Well of Shadows, on the banks of the Sangkar River, 6kms north of Battambang.

Today Battambang, with its atmospheric French colonial architecture, is, according to Lonely Planet, “the perfect blend of relatively urban modernity and small town friendliness.” While the cyclists on the Bamboo Road will only have an afternoon to explore the area, there are a couple things not to be missed.

Bamboo Train

Although the renewal of the Cambodian Railway system has meant that this experience is not as ‘authentic’ as it used to be, it is still worth trying. In the past, local transport, especially in small, rural villages was virtually non-existent. Locals decided to use the many abandoned rail lines instead. They built bamboo rail cars, or ‘norries’. Simple but brilliant engineering. “The body of a norry consists of a single queen-size platform, often made of bamboo, which lies on a metal undercarriage. Steel wheels on a pair of axles lie underneath. A belt wraps around the rear axle and is connected to a lawn mower or boat engine mounted on the rear of the platform. The driver yanks a cord to start it up, the engine emits its mosquito-on-steroids whine, and down the tracks it goes.” (Atlas Obscura) Looks like fun.

Battambang Bat Cave

About a 30 minute tuk-tuk ride south of Battambang and close to the Killing Caves of Phnom Sampeau is the Battambang Bat Cave.  Each night, literally millions of bats emerge in an incredible spectacle lasting about 20 minutes. You can sit by the side of the road and enjoy a cold beer and some street food while you watch the bats streak across the sky while the sun sets behind them. Or, if you are feeling a little more adventurous, you can hike up to the mouth of the cave and get up close and personal as the bats swarm out into the darkening sky. Either way, it is a sight you will not soon forget.

Every year TDA Global Cycling, through its Foundation, donates 1 bicycle per full tour rider to a variety of individuals and organizations in Africa. We encourage our riders to consider using their incredible ride across Africa to benefit a number of worthy causes, including the TDA Foundation. In 2019 a number of Tour d’Afrique riders have taken up the challenge and one anonymous cyclist has already made a substantial donation to the Foundation. We wish them all the best in both their journey and their fundraising.

Vikas Patel (Canada) – BC Cancer Foundation

“I am hoping to use this bike ride to raise awareness and money to support the BC Cancer Foundation. The BC Cancer Foundation hosts the Ride to Conquer Cancer, and it was there where I first learned of the tremendous work the foundation does. Most of us have had too many good friends and family taken away too soon because of this very ugly disease, and I would like to help bring an end to it. I know the road to success in this is not a short one, and it may not even come in our lifetime, however each journey begins with one step and this is mine.“

Frederic Antille (Germany) – Lessons For Life Foundation

“I strongly believe that education is the most important factor to raise people out of poverty. This is why I chose to support “LessonsforLife”, an organization that is doing a fantastic job funding education in Africa.“

Paul Bullen-Smith (UK) – Médecins Sans Frontières

“I will be raising funds for Médecins Sans Frontières (www.msf.org) an international, independent medical humanitarian organisation. They provide medical assistance to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, or exclusion from healthcare.“

Alexander Harling (UK) – Douglas Macmillan Hospice

“The Douglas Macmillan Hospice, better known as Dougie Mac, is the only adult hospice in North Staffordshire. They were one of the few things that lifted my dad’s (and mum’s) spirits and energized him in his incredibly tough final months in 2017 and 2018, battling cancer. He was better on Dougie Mac days. They are wonderful.“

Peter Cox (Canada) – Transforming Faces

“From January – May 2019, Peter will be biking from Cairo to Cape Town – covering nearly 12,000 km across 11 countries. His motivation? Fulfilling a dream and, at the same time, raising life-changing funds for children born with cleft lip and palate and their families in Africa.“

Lucy Preece (UK) – Medecins Sans Frontieres & Mission Rabies

“Whilst I am lucky enough to be able to go on this challenge, there are many people in Africa and beyond who are nowhere near as lucky. Please sponsor me to help raise money for Medecins sans frontieres, a non-discriminatory charity offering medical care to those in need. Their work in the ebola crisis is well known, but they work in remote, dangerous environments in Africa and around the world. MSF workers put themselves in danger every day for their fellow human beings- they need our money to continue this amazing work.“

“Mission Rabies is part of a concerted effort to reduce human rabies deaths to 0 by 2030. Please donate to help fund this ambitious target and help both human and animals from needless suffering and death.“

Tom Perlmutter & Jackie Silverberg (Canada) – WaterAid

“We are two friends who’ve signed up to cycle across eastern Africa. We’re asking you to support us in our epic cycling journey by donating to WaterAid. Worldwide, 844 million people have no access to clean drinking water and a further 2.3 billion lack access to basic sanitation, like toilets and latrines. Not only does this crisis severely hinder the fight against global poverty, it is also the world’s greatest cause of illness. At any given time, half of the world’s hospital beds are occupied by people suffering needlessly from water- and sanitation-related diseases.“

Timothy Forde (Australia) – The Lion & Tusk Museum

“Tim is generously donating all the funds that he raises on this ride to the Rhodesian Services Association – a New Zealand registered charity whose focus is the preservation of Rhodesian military history from 1890 to 1980 through The Lion & Tusk Museum and associated digital archive projects.“

Andrew Brink (Canada) – TDA Foundation

“The Foundation was created with two main goals: To give something back to the people and the communities of the areas that we pass through on our cycling tours and to raise consciousness about bicycles as an alternative and, in many ways, better and more beneficial means of transport. To fulfill these objectives the Foundation focused on three areas: donating bikes to individuals and organizations in Africa, supporting bicycle advocacy and promoting projects that protect the environment.”

]]> https://tdaglobalcycling.com/2019/01/doing-good-well-2019-tour-dafrique-rider-fundraising/feed/ 0 https://tdaglobalcycling.com/2019/01/follow-the-riders-on-the-2019-tour-dafrique/ https://tdaglobalcycling.com/2019/01/follow-the-riders-on-the-2019-tour-dafrique/#comments Tue, 08 Jan 2019 16:26:51 +0000 https://tdaglobalcycling.com/?p=36070 Each year a number of cyclists decide to blog about their adventures on their ride from Cairo to Cape Town]]>

Each year a number of cyclists decide to blog about their adventures on their ride from Cairo to Cape Town and 2019 is no exception. We encourage you to follow the adventures 2019 Tour d’Afrique through the eyes and ears of these riders.

>>Don’t forget to follow #tourdafrique on Instagram too

Updates From The Road

“We are only ten days away from the start date on January 17th. Between packing and training, the adventure is starting to feel real!” – Peter Cox (Canada)

Tom’s TDA

“This is a story about crossing boundaries, literal and metaphorical. It is about the reasons we travel: every voyage is a voyage of discovery, of the other and of oneself. These voyages have no age expiry date. At seventy, one can be as captivated by wonder as at seven. It takes the magic of place to turn the key of wonder. As with any true voyage, the challenges will be many and there are no guarantees. Regardless of how far I manage this, the important thing is setting out.” – Tom Perlmutter (Canada)

Tourdefred

“Doing this tour has been on my mind for many years but I never found the time (who said courage ??) to do it…This changed beginning of 2018 as I decided to step out of my comfort zone and to go for this amazing trans-African bike tour.” – Frederic Antille (Germany)

Cycling Tour d’Afrique 2019

“I have not been into long-distance cycling for that long yet. Of course, the bicycle has always had a prominent place in my life: Chasing after my friends on my bike after school. Discovering the area around my hometown. Cycling to Delft every day when I was still in university. But it was not until 2014 that I discovered that it is quite easy to push your limits on a bicycle. It started with trips of 30k, which within some months gradually increased to a 100k, venturing further and further away until I even rode 100k rides two days in a row.” – Romy B (Netherlands)

Cairo to Cape Town on Bicycles

“On January 17th Lenore and Gerry will set off past the Great Pyramid of Giza in Cairo on the most ambitious journey of their lives. Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa. The continent from top to bottom. 12,000 kilometres. On bicycles. Camping. We can’t predict to what degree time, energy and technology will impact what emerges in this blog. We can definitely commit to keeping it interesting.” – Gerald van der Weyden & Lenore Lewis (Canada)

Look back at the blogs of the 2018 Tour d’Afrique.

“In order to understand West Africa you need to feel it.” – Man in a bar to Robert Gex ,West Africa en Velo rider

Guinea was a surprise, perhaps because we all had no idea what to expect or maybe because Guinea is just such a unique place on our route. A country of 13 million people, it is considered one of the poorest countries in the world and sees few visitors. It is because of this and the route, which we took, that our Zimbabwean staff member Noah would often mutter, “we are in deep Africa now”.

Deep, indeed. Luscious green, a country of great natural beauty and many rivers. It is rich in minerals, culture and history. Deep also are its problems from having to deal with refuges from the troubled past of neighbouring countries, from a failed experiment with socialism, from two years of military rule and from its ethnic divisions. Yet this country now has an elected civilian government and one can feel just from seeing the roads being build that efforts are being made to improve the lot of its people.

If there is one thing we end up doing a lot on a trip through West Africa on a bike is ‘feel’ West Africa. Robert, an American cyclist living in Thailand, stopped for a drink in a local bar in Sierra Leone while waiting for a ferry that would bring him to Freetown. When a man asked him what he was doing here, Robert responded that he was part of a group are cycling from Morocco to Ghana. The man responded that in order to understand West Africa, you need to feel it and that there is no better way of doing this than by bicycle.

One night in Guinea, just before we were to cross the border into Sierra Leone we were staying in a village typical of many that we had seen on the trip. It was situated close to a small river where I went to wash myself after cycling in the hot and humid conditions. Refreshed and clean, I went back to our campsite which was located on the village soccer field.  Our staff was busy preparing dinner and a short distance from them was a group of local elders, sitting and watching the ‘goings ons’ of a group of foreigners – cooking, setting up camp, washing themselves and their clothes. In front of them there was table filled with local produce – bananas, coconuts, oranges, cucumbers – a welcoming offering to the guests in the village. The coconuts were particularly popular.

After I set up my tent I walked over to the elders with our local fixer and sat down to chat. We exchanged pleasantries, than chatted about their lives, how they make their living, what we are doing here and so on until our scheduled daily rider’s meeting. I asked them if one of them would like to say something to our riders. They picked a young man, who spoke to us about their lives in the village and explained their problem with fresh clean water and their need for a village well.

After the meeting, Michael Howard, one of the riders and a successful businessman came over and started talking to the elders. By the end of the evening, Michael had committed himself to funding a well project for the village and another well project for the village of our local fixer. Michael later explained that he felt touched by the needs of the villagers but was also motivated by the need for actions and for others who, like him, could afford to make contribution, to be an example and to contribute to the lives of those whose current circumstances were not as favourable.

Michael’s words reverberated in my mind because one of the goals for setting up the original Tour d’Afrique was to provide an alternative way for people to visit Africa, something other than the usual safari or holiday on the beach. So on behalf of the villagers, I want to thank Michael and the many others over the years who went beyond the cycling and made valuable contributions, either through the TDA Foundation or through projects of their own. Examples include Tim Padmore and Ronda Green who set up ceramic workshop on Zanzibar and Jason Becker who supported the college education of a young man he had met cycling through Kenya. There are many, many others – too many to name – but in the end, it is people like them, like you, who we at TDA take a particular delight in introducing to Africa.

Wherever you were to meet Hanne, you would immediately notice her wide smile and entrenched laugh lines. She speaks eloquently, even when exhausted, with a thick Norwegian accent. In any conversation about her personal life, she will quickly bring up her children and grandchildren, proud to be their role model.

So, what is she doing here, cycling the backroads of West Africa? Hanne says that she is in her third life – and we’re not talking reincarnation. Hanne sees her life as being lived in three different parts. The first was her childhood, raised in a fishing village in Norway. The second, her family life – becoming a mother and raising two sons and a daughter. The third, the one she lives today, is one she gets to live for herself. She can choose whatever she wants. This means doing psychology work all over the world, running an education project in Tanzania that was founded by her late father, and doing the Tour d’Afrique in 2017. All of these choices led her to TDA West Africa.

There were a few things that made Hanne want to join this tour. The most prominent was her desire to return to Sierra Leone after working with MSF there in 2007/2008. After the civil war, there were many victims who survived the war with unseen wounds. She worked with a local team for 8 months, training them in counselling and therapy. After 10 years, she looked forward to the prospect of coming back. Hanne was also intrigued to see the similarities and differences of the surrounding countries. From her own time in West Africa, she had heard about how much the countries and the people have in common, and how they depend on each other for trade, employment, and shared knowledge.

Hanne is drawn to the simple life – One that she experienced on her self-supported kayak trip around the Island of Senja in Norway, the 2017 Tour d’Afrique, and her solo bike tour of Tanzania, post-TDA. She enjoys expeditions that push her to her limits, helping her discover what those are. More than that though, she enjoys a life where time just goes beside you, instead of having to chase after it. As we sat under the shade of a tree in a bush camp in Sierra Leone, she shared a proverb of the Norwegian Sami people that gave me chills: “Time is not going, it is coming.” This is how Hanne wants to live this third life of hers, and TDA is a place where she can realize that lifestyle.

If you want to check out Hanne’s project in Tanzania, you can find the website here and their Facebook page here.

The past 12 months have seen our office staff, our field crews and our guest bloggers create some pretty amazing content. Here are our favourites for each month of 2018.

January – Once Again

TDA Global Cycling’s Operation Manager, Miles MacDonald, reflected on his numerous experiences in the Sudan over the years.

“Nomadic motion has become home like, and yet in the last weeks while surrounded by the same desert sands, under the same mesmerizing nights of stars and against the same frigid morning winds, it is not the feeling of home I know from 13 years ago, or from more recent years on the tour, it is unique and a separate experience unto itself. Given definition by the local inhabitants whom chance allows myself to encounter, by the individual participants and the stories they bring to the tour, and by the staff who set the tone and direction of the journey.” Read more.

February – 9 Surprising Reasons To Cycle Southern Africa

Cycling in Southern Africa can bring you to some of the world’s most iconic sights – Lake Malawi, Victoria Falls, the towering Red Dunes at Sossusvlei and Cape Town’s Table Mountain. Over the years our riders and staff have discovered some lesser-known but equally interesting attractions.

“If you are cycling south towards Mzuzu, your route will begin with with a stunning, if challenging 1000m climb up onto the country plateau. Congratulating yourself on making it to the top, you might just miss one of Malawi’s, if not Africa’s, hidden gems – a bamboo bridge first constructed in 1904. WTF – that makes it 114 years old. Each year the local villagers get together and make the needed repairs, ensuring it lasts for another century or so.” Read more.

March – The Water Shuffle

Tour d’Afrique Assistant Tour Director, Stephanie Thornton wrote a nice piece from Nairobi about how her experience cycling through Africa was a wake-up call, pointedly reminding her about how fortunate those of us that have access to safe drinking water at all times really are.

“Men, women, and children populate the shoulders of the roads in Ethiopia. Donkeys and horse carts carry litres and litres of water daily. In the vast rolling hills of Ethiopia it’s almost impossible to imagine where families might get water. Now in the arid Northern Kenya, watering holes seem scarce and local herding boys shout for “maji” – the Kiswahili word for water – instead of money or sweets.” Read more.

April – The Beers Of The Pub Ride: Little-Known, Weird, Unexpected & Occasionally Appalling

Michael, our resident TDA Global Cycling beer expert, put together a collection of brews for the riders on the inaugural Pub Ride to keep an eye out for….for better or worse.

“(I)n 1777, Frederick the Great banned coffee, stating “It is disgusting to notice the increase in the quantity of coffee used by my subjects… My people must drink beer. His Majesty was brought up on beer, and so were his ancestors.” Read more.

May – Bamboo Road 2019 – 5 Exciting Changes To The Route

The innovative and restless minds at TDA Global Cycling rarely rest. We are always looking for changes that will make our cycling adventures even better.

“Taiwan. This compact island has it all – colourful temples, vibrant night markets, soothing hot springs and friendly people. The scenery is outstanding – tropical rainforests, stunning gorges, rumbling volcanoes, towering sea cliffs and incredible ocean views. Our route will circumnavigate the island, including the unspoiled east coast with its picturesque fishing villages and endless beaches and coastline.” Read more.

June – A Waffle And A Tipple With The Ancestors

Veteran TDA Global Cycling master mechanic Doug Percival has practiced his trade in many far-flung corners of the globe but here he returns to his family’s homeland in search of his ancestors.

“Oddly enough, the castle was a gift to the daughter of the Earl of Dunbar in 1214, and Dunbar is a name on my fathers side, dating back to the 1100’s… Standing on the hill, where some small original walls still exist, with a 360 degree view of Scotland to the north and England to the south was a strange experience, and certainly had me pondering on the millennia of family that had stood in the same place, with the same view…how the World has changed, what those walls have seen!” Read more.

July – Fashion On The Silk Route

Silk Route Communications Officer and Gaelic Fashionista, Elaina O’Brien took the opportunity to remind us that while cycling is important, cycling in style is even more so.

“With the summer in full swing, our riders have been sporting their favourite seasonal looks on the bike, and we’re loving the variety of trends and styles. The fashion in the field throughout the Silk Route has been funky, chic, and classy.” Read more.

August – 5 Reflections On My Unsupported Bike Trip In Grizzly Country

Long-time TDA Global Cycling staffer Shanny Hill took some time off this summer to remind himself what unsupported bike touring was like. And to deal with his fear of bears…

“I followed the recommended advice: carry bear spray and make a lot of noise. If you ask my brother I might have followed that advice a bit too closely. With images of grizzlies in mind, I got in the habit of blowing my whistle frequently. Really frequently. Every minute or two. Every day. For 10 days straight from Banff, Alberta to Whitefish, Montana.” Read more.

September – Cycling In Iran As A Woman

Our Silk Route Communications Officer, Elaina, took a closer look at what it was really like pedalling through the Islamic Republic of Iran as a female cyclist.

“Although there are strict formal guidelines for locals and tourists alike, there is indeed some wiggle room for tourists. Authorities will generally leave you be unless you’re clearly pushing the cultural boundaries. Locals are more than happy to see foreigners travelling in their country so they are more understanding.” Read more.

October – Four Things You’ll Never Know About Madagascar From Watching The Movie ‘Madagascar’

Our good friend David Houghton, who cycled the inaugural Magical Madagascar trip in 2017 contributed a guest blog highlighting 4 reasons for anyone to consider cycling Madagascar…instead of watching the Pixar film.

“Is Madagascar more than four bumbling animals who escape from a zoo and meet up with a ring-tailed lemur named King Julien XIII? Hell yeah. Is Madagascar, located off the southeastern corner of the African continent, a challenging place to get to? Hell yeah. Is Madagascar one of the most unique and rewarding places in the world to ride your bike, an island that’s a microcosm of our world that’s also home to vegetation and animals you’ll see nowhere else on the planet? Hell yeah.” Read more.

November – Objects In The Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear…

Our West Africa en Vélo staff member Sophie DeGroot penned a wonderful essay on how cycling can help you become an active participant in your travels instead of a passive spectator.

“Too often tourism is a one-sided affair. A bicycle is a fantastic mechanism to shift the power dynamic between the tourist and the local. Literally removing yourself from a spectator’s box makes you more approachable and evens the playing field in which interactions take place. The people you meet, the places you see are not just closer than your mirror suggests, they are a part of your everyday experience.” Read more.

December – On The Shores Of The Arctic: Pingos, Metallica & MukTuk

It is a rare thing, indeed, when we suddenly find ourselves able to include a destination, previously inaccessible to cyclists, in one of our expeditions. When we heard that the remote town of Tuktoyaktuk had recently been linked to the rest of the world by road, we knew we had to make it the starting point for the 2019 North American Epic.

“On September 3, 1995, Metallica and other popular bands flew into Tuk, putting the little village in the international news. The bands played a concert in Tuk as a publicity event for Molson Brewing Company promoting their new ice-brewed beer. Dubbed The Molson Ice Polar Beach Party, it featured Hole, Metallica, Moist, Cake and Veruca Salt. Canadian film-maker Albert Nerenberg made a documentary about this concert entitled ‘Invasion of the Beer People‘.” Read more.

The second section of the 2019 Trans-Himalaya Cycling Expedition runs from Manali to Rishikesh and is aptly named – Heavenly Hill Stations. Our route will take us through 3 of India’s most beautiful colonial hill stations. They were established as high-altitude towns to be used as a place of refuge to escape the blistering summer heat and dust of plains during the British Raj and were designed to, as much as possible, replicate the climactic conditions back in the British Isles. However, after the 1857 Mutiny, these towns also served as vital centres of political and military power.

Manali

The small town of Manali is situated in the Kullu Valley, often referred to as the ‘Valley of the Gods’. The story of its founding goes like this – One day Vaivasvata, the seventh incarnation of Manu found a tiny fish in his bathing water. The fish told him to look after him with devotion for one day it would do him a great service. Vaivasvatatava cared for the fish till the day it grew so huge that he released it into the sea. Before departing the fish warned Manu of an impending deluge when the entire world would be submerged and bade him to build a sea-worthy ark. When the flood came, Vaivasvata and the Seven Sages were towed to safety by Matsya the fish – which is regarded as the first avatar of Lord Vishnu. As the waters subsided, Manu’s ark came to rest on a hillside and the place was named Manali.

Its location marks the beginning of an ancient trade route to Ladakh and from there over the Karakoram Pass on to Yarkand and Khotan. The British made it into one of their hill stations in the 1800’s. During their rule, they introduced apple trees to the area and to this day, the fruit remains the best source of income for the majority of the locals, although tourism is growing quickly. The Brits also introduced rainbow and brown trout into the nearby lakes and streams.

Today, the town is a popular adventure destination with trekking, paragliding and whitewater rafting all available. A pleasant 2km walk out of Manali will take one to the sacred Hadimba Temple (1553) where pilgrims come to honour Hadimba, the demon wife of the Pandava Bhima from the Sanskrit epic, the Mahabharata.  Nearby Gatothkach, the warrior son of the Pandava Bhima and his demon wife Hadimba, is worshipped in the form of a sacred tree. Old Manali is worth exploring with its ancient stone and wood houses and is the location of the Manu Maharish Temple, the alleged site where Manu’s ark came to rest after the great flood. The Manali Gompa is world famous for its large statue of Buddha and sublime wall paintings. Finally, one can relax at the Vashist Hot Water Springs and Temple, dedicated to the local patron saint, which is 3km from Manali, across the Beas river.

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Shimla

Shimla, the capital of the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, is named after a Hindu goddess, Shyamala Devi, an incarnation of Kali. Attracted by the dense forest of pine, deodar, oak and rhododendron and its cool climate (it stands at 2200m) the British took control of the area in 1815. Prior to that there was only a temple and a few scattered houses. As more and more British officers and bureaucrats decided to spend their summers in the area, it became famous for balls, parties and other festivities. Rudyard Kipling wrote that it had a reputation for “frivolity, gossip and intrigue”. In fact, the writer used the town as the setting for his books, Kim & Plain Tales From The Hills. In 1864, Shimla was officially made the ‘summer capital’ of British India.

The railway route from Kalka to Shimla was completed in 1903 and, with more than 806 bridges and 103 tunnels, was touted as an engineering feat, known as the “British Jewel of the Orient”. In 2008 the line became a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is definitely worth a ride. It has a ruling gradient of three percent and 917 curves, the sharpest of which is 48 degrees. One interesting story is that during its construction, British Colonel Barog miscalculated tunnel construction and the ends failed to meet in the middle. Humiliated, he shot his dog, then himself and is buried at the entrance to his mistake. A new tunnel was successfully completed with the help of a local ascetic Bhalku who used a long and solid wooden staff to hit the ground and divine the correct alignment! He also helped with the alignment of several other tunnels on the line and was eventually awarded a medal and turban by the British Viceroy.

The town is home to a number of buildings in the Mock Tudor and Neo-Gothic styles of architecture dating from the colonial era, as well as multiple temples and churches. The centre of Shimla is the Mall, which meanders along the mountain ridge for 7kms. There is no traffic and a walk along its length will allow one to take in sights like the Viceregal Lodge (LP describes it as “a cross between Harry Potter’s Hogwarts and a Scottish baronial castle’), the Town Hall and the Neo-Gothic Gorton Castle. At the east end one can make the strenuous 30 minute hike up to Jakhu Temple for some incredible views of the snow-capped Himalaya. The temple itself is dedicated to the Monkey God, Hanuman. Appropriately there are hundred of monkeys in the area as well as a 33m statue of Hanuman, in pink, no less.

Mussoorie

Known as the ‘Queen of the Hills’ for its spectacular views of snow-covered Himalayan peaks as well as over the Doon valley, Mussoorie was established by the British in 1823 after Lt. Frederick Young of the East India Company, who came to the are to shoot game, decided to build a hunting lodge there. Its name appears to be a derivation of ‘mansoor’, a shrub which is indigenous to the area. Mussoorie was the intended terminus of the Great Trigonometric Survey of India in 1832 that began at the southern tip of India. It was also known for spirits. In 1832, Sir Henry Bohle started ‘The Olde Brewery’ on the outskirts of town. However, he argued with the aforementioned Lt. Young about licensing and in 1834 the facility was shut down. It was reopened in 1850 when Sir John McKinnon, the brother-in-law of Sir Henry Bohle, restarted the brewery, being the first in British India. It is said that the famous Indian poet, Mirza Ghalib, was a big fan. Shipping the big barrels of beer to their destinations on carts gave name to the town’s Cart MacKenzie Road which still exists today.

Under British rule, Mussoorie, in 1827, became a convalescent centre for soldiers. It was also the temporary home to the last Maharaja of Punjab, the child King, Maharaja Duleep Singh, son of the great Maharaja Ranjeet Singh. After the two Anglo-Sikh wars, the Punjab was ready for annexation by the British and Duleep Singh was forced to sign away his kingdom and wealth, including the famous Koh-i-noor diamond, to the Governor General of India, Lord Dalhousie. Before he left for England, the Maharaja was kept at the Castle Hill Estate near Landour Bazaar in Mussoorie. His days there came to an end on April 19, 1854 when he was deported to England where he lived in exile for the rest of his life. During the 1959 Tibetan Rebellion, the Central Tibetan Administration of the 14th Dalai Lama was at first established in Mussoorie while the first Tibetan school was established in Mussoorie in 1960. Today, some 5,000 Tibetans live in Mussoorie.

Considered by many to be the honeymoon capital of India, one can enjoy a 3km walk along Camel’s Back Road from Kulri Bazaar to Gandhi Chowk, passing a rocky outcrop in the shape of a camel’s hump. Gun Hill is a wonderful place to look out over the Indian plains and can be reached by cable car from the Mall Road. There is also the opportunity to visit the remains of the building and laboratory of Sir George Everest, the Surveyor-General of India from 1830 to 1843. Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak is named for him. The renown Landour Language School offers classes in Hindi, Urdu, Sanskrit and the local dialect of Garhwali.

We last ran the North American Epic in 2015. It started in Anchorage, Alaska and finished in Mexico City, Mexico. It was a pretty epic ride – 10,000 km, 116 days & 3 countries. No need to change anything, right? Well, somehow we got word that the Canadian government was building a new road between the Arctic hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk and Inuvik, thereby connecting the rest of the North American road system with the shores of the Arctic Ocean. A lightbulb went off in our collective TDA hive mind and before you could say, let’s think this over, we had sketched out a new North American Epic route, one that would start in Tuktoyaktuk and continue south, all the way past Mexico City, to Panama City – 14,500 km, 165 days & 9 countries.

Tuktoyaktuk

To us, as Canadians, one of the coolest things about the new route was the starting point in Tuktoyaktuk (commonly known as ‘Tuk’), a tiny village of about 900 people. The name translates as ‘resembling a caribou’. According to local legend, in ancient times a woman looked on as some caribou (Tuktu), common at the site, waded into the water and as a result turned into stone. Reefs resembling these petrified caribou are said to be still visible at low tide along the shore of the town. Our riders will have to check that out. They will have time. There is only 1 gas station and 2 food markets (just wait until you see the prices!) although the first sit-down restaurant, Tyson’s Burgers, opened last summer. You might think such a small town might not be that interesting but please, read on.

History

Tuktoyaktuk, set on Kugmallit Bay, was used for centuries by the Inuit to harvest Beluga whales and caribou. Its natural harbour, located conveniently near the Mackenzie River Delta and sheltered from the winds and waves of the Arctic Ocean, made it a perfect setting. Interestingly, the fact that it was situated so closely to the outflow of the MacKenzie (Canada’s longest river) meant that its people developed a permanent rather than nomadic culture. Driftwood floating down the MacKenzie gave the locals wood to build houses rather than igloos. It even influenced their diet as they were able to cook food.

Most of these whale-hunting Inuit died during epidemics that swept through the area in the early 1900’s. The diseases were brought by American whalers. However, in the 1930’s the Hudson Bay Company built a trading post there which attracted local Inuit to the area. Known at that time as Port Brabant, it was the first place in Canada to revert to its indigenous roots in 1950, reclaiming the name – Tuktoyaktuk. In the 1950’s, the town was an important staging point for DEW (Distant Early Warning Line), part of the North American missile defence system. The 1970’s briefly brought oil and gas exploration in the nearby Beaufort Sea during the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries 1973 oil embargo and 1979 summertime fuel shortage and, indeed, that explains the large industrial buildings around the town.

The completion of the all-season Inuvik – Tuktoyaktuk Highway (ITH) in November 2017 will likely have an even larger impact than these previous events. It makes it Canada’s only community on the Arctic Ocean to be connected by road to the rest of the country. Tourism, as illustrated by our own cycling adventure, will soon be a large presence in the community. The 137 km 2 lane gravel road took 3 1/2 years to build (that is 40 km/year) and cost over $300 million. It has to withstand temperatures from as low as -40C in the winter to +20C in the summer when the sun never sets. Unlike some remote roads like the virtually straight Eyre Highway that crosses the Nullarbor Plain in Australia, the ITH winds endlessly through a collection of brackish estuarine basins, locally known as the ‘Eskimo lakes’, requiring eight bridges and 359 culverts.

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North American Epic

This incredible expedition is the only cycling tour that covers the entire North American continent, from the shores of the icy Arctic Ocean to the...

Things To Do in Tuk

You may not have time to do all of these on your all too brief visit with the North American Epic but we know you’ll be back.

• Look for pods of Beluga whales.
• Talk to the village elders
• Explore the Pingos. These are Ice Dome Hills – layers of soil over an ice core. The Tuk area contains more than 1/4 of the world’s 1350 pingos. The nearby Pingo National Landmark has 8 Pingos including the world’s second highest, the Ibyuk Pingo, at 49m high and 330m wide. It is the size of a 15 story building and creates a striking contrast to the surrounding pancake-flat tundra. You can hike to the summit for a great view.

• Try the local delicacies – Muktuk (raw Beluga whale meat) & Caribou soup
• Take a polar plunge in the Arctic waters.
• Visit the ‘Our Lady of Lourdes Ship’ sitting in the middle of town next to the Catholic Mission. This 60′ vessel was donated to Canada’s Northern Missions by Pope Pious XI in the 1930’s. The schooner delivered supplies to far-flung Catholic missions in the Arctic, from Tuktoyaktuk to Cambridge Bay in what is now western Nunavut, in the 1930s and ’40s, braving storms and shifting ice floes. It arrived in Tuk in 1940 and was an important link to the rest of the world. Unfortunately, it is also a reminder of the sad history of Canada’s residential schools. While it carried vital supplies out to the missions in the spring, it returned in the fall with Inuit children who were then sent to residential schools across the country. These children were kept from their parents for years. Some never returned. In 1955 the ship was pulled from service and beached near the town. In 1967 a DEW Line helicopter moved it to a storage pad and in 1978 Dome Petroleum workers painted the ship and added a historical plaque. In 2008 local volunteers repainted it and resealed the holds.
• Go boating with a local guide to the commercial whaling ghost town of Herschel Island.

• Visit the Icehouse – a natural freezer dug into the permafrost where villagers keep their catch.
• Check out 2 replica sod houses.

Tuk Fun Facts

• Tuk is referenced numerous times in Canadian legendary songwriter Stompin’ Tom Connors’ song, “Mukluk Shoe“.
• On September 3, 1995, Metallica and other popular bands flew into Tuk, putting the little village in the international news. The bands played a concert in Tuk as a publicity event for Molson Brewing Company promoting their new ice-brewed beer. Dubbed The Molson Ice Polar Beach Party, it featured Hole, Metallica, Moist, Cake and Veruca Salt. Canadian film-maker Albert Nerenberg made a documentary about this concert entitled ‘Invasion of the Beer People‘.
• In July the mean temperature is 10C. The average high is 15C and the average low is 7C. The record high is 30C and the record low is -2C. The precipitation rate is lower than most deserts. So be prepared for anything.
• In the summer of 2018, Tuk hosted its first destination wedding.
• One Beluga whale will feed 4 families for almost 1 year.

It all started rather innocently. I was having breakfast listening vaguely to a conversation behind me about projects and donations when Mateo, our cartoonist extraordinaire, showed me a cartoon of a mosquito asking for a blood donation. “Just one little drop can save a life”. It made me laugh.

I turned to the gentleman behind me and said that he might also appreciate the cartoon. He turned out to be Peter Penfold, the former British High Commissioner to Sierra Leone during its fairly recent tragic past.  As a person who played a key role in restoring democracy in the country, the High Commissioner had written a book about the time – Atrocities, Diamonds and Diplomacy.

I was so fascinated by his stories that I asked if he would be open to giving a talk the same evening to our cycling group in order to give them a context to the country, the people and the culture they were experiencing from the seat of the bicycle. The Commissioner, to my delight, agreed.

Inspired by the talk, I decided to wander the streets, the places he mentioned, to make his words come alive with images. Looking at the Google map of the city, I noticed a nearby destination, the Peace Museum, that I thought would be a good place to start. I set off in a straight line towards my target, crossing one shantytown after another. Here, as in the other ‘Lonely Places’ that I have written about, places where foreigners tend not wander, no one bothered me, in fact quite the opposite. If I was paid any attention at all, it was a smile or a friendly greeting. The places themselves seemed liked scenes from a Hollywood blockbuster disaster movie.  Unfortunately, in reality, the civil war and the Ebola epidemic were calamities that had helped create the present reality and there were no gofers around to provide a large latte to the technical crew behind the scenes.

The Peace Museum was not obviously marked in any way so I walked into the UN compound to ask where it was. Several more ‘asks’ led me to a small building which, upon entering, I found empty. One room seemed to have previously contained abandoned archives, another some covered exhibition tables, yet another some exposed displays. As I wandered around a man approached me, pointed to a chair and explained that this was the former rebel leader’s favourite seat. Next he pointed to some amulets the rebels wore that they believed protected them from bullets. It was not long however before another man saw me, started yelling that the museum is going through renovations and shuffled me out of the building.

Once outside I noticed a modern building a couple of hundreds meters from me that turned out to be the ‘Special Court for Sierra Leone’. This court, set up to try war criminals, was mentioned by the Commissioner in his book as something that he thought was a mistake and ended up costing in the vicinity of a quarter billion dollars. The court, before it shut down, convicted nine men, so about $26 million dollars per prisoner: ‘not something that a poor country should be spending money on, especially as the criminals were not high ranking individuals’. Upon closer examination I found out that the building was handed over to the government in 2013 and now sits empty, beginning to fall apart. Seems like the High Commissioner may have been right. From the High Court, I headed to the place where Freetown was established, the famous cotton tree where returning former slaves sat down and contemplated their new freedom.

If the side streets did not look as carefree (and car free) in Freetown Christiania, Copenhagen (where I happened to be walking in July after the end of the inaugural Pub Ride), the Freetown streets leading to the core of the city were a raucous mix of traffic, blaring horns, and the miscellaneous noise of people working and trading – doing what they do every day. We had a pleasure of riding this way on the way from the port to the other side of town upon our arrival in Freetown and for me, having cycled in India on our Hippie Trail, the only thing that was missing were the sacred cows. The resulting chaos is not without its charms and though scary at first, in many ways it is safer than cycling the main streets of Toronto where cars are able to speed at over 60km an hour and blasting away at the few daring cyclists.

I found the cotton tree, proudly standing and recording everything that it sees. One day human beings will likely invent an app that will be able to hook up to the tree and tell one very long human saga, of hope, wars, disasters, reconciliations, rebuilding and more hope. I say more hope because if you look at enormity of the rebuilding challenge of Sierra Leone, without hope there is no future. And the people of Sierra Leone believe in the future.

Since we posted ‘10 Things That Will Never Happen On The Tour d’Afrique‘, we feel obliged to post a list of 10 things that we guarantee will happen on the Tour d’Afrique.

1. YOU WILL DISCOVER HIDDEN WONDERS

2. YOU WILL GET HUNGRY

3. AND YOU WILL EXPAND YOUR CULINARY HORIZONS

4. YOU WILL LEARN TO LIVE WITHOUT A WASHER/DRYER

5. YOU WILL QUESTION YOUR SANITY

6. YOU WILL LEARN TO WORK TOGETHER LIKE A WELL-OILED MACHINE

7. YOU WILL SEE AN ELEPHANT

8. YOU WILL MAKE FRIENDSHIPS THAT WILL LAST A LIFETIME

9. YOU WILL SEE INCREDIBLE SCENERY

10. YOU WILL LEARN TO ASK FOR DIRECTIONS IN SWAHILI

Arriving in Sierra Leone just two days ago, we met Abdulai, our local guide, in the ferry terminal on our route to Freetown. Amongst the hectic nature of the terminal, he kept his calm and helped riders navigate the crowded beach to get onto the boats into Freetown. A situation that would stress out most people was made easier by having someone who could help us navigate the back alleys, translate the many people screaming, and suggest which local sweet to choose.

As many may know, Sierra Leone has faced many hardships in the last few decades. Between a civil war that tore apart the country and the Ebola outbreak that reminded everyone again how fragile life can be, the country lovingly nicknamed ‘Salone’ by locals is making huge leaps forward. One thing they are focusing on is allowing tourism to thrive again. Amongst the beautiful beaches and rolling hills, there are people and places that are alive with drum beats and colourful cloths. Abdulai is a part of that movement here in Salone. He experienced both atrocities first hand, but still finds immense beauty in his country – one that he would trade for no other. Anyone can read about a country in Lonely Planet or on Wikipedia and learn the facts, but staying up after dinner over a cup of tea with someone who is willing to answer questions and share their stories is an opportunity to learn in a way you never could from the seat of your couch.

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In each country we ride through we hire local guides to help us navigate not only unseen road blocks and police checkpoints, but important cultural norms and language barriers. As I suppose those who work in tourism often are, they are colourful people with many stories to tell. On West Africa en Vélo alone we have already had six local support guides. They are a vital part of the staff team and provide a wonderfully unique and personal window into their home countries.

Though Radouan, our Moroccan guide didn’t speak English, only French and Arabic, his smile made us all feel welcome. The language barrier never stopped him from educating us on what we saw or heard, even if some of it was lost in translation. Through Southern Morocco, Hamdi shared his Berber heritage through glasses of sweet tea, boiled straight over hot coals. Mohammed’s loud personality clashed against the sepia deserts of Mauritania. Colourful enough to keep us all entertained on desert nights with wild stories of camel caravans and more of that never-ending tea.

Phillipe, our Senegalese guide, became a crowd favourite when he arranged for cold beer to be brought to our first camp in Senegal. It arrived to our bush camp on the back of a motorbike from 30 kilometres away and was received with applause.

Hassan, who between headstands would find us local Guinea dishes along our cycling route. As unique as the country’s they represent, they leave individual marks on the tour. Not only are we lucky enough to have memories of road conditions or chance meetings on the side of the road across 7 different countries on this trip, but we are given the chance to get to know someone who will answer the questions you might be afraid to ask, nudge us when we cross cultural norms, and offer sound advice on how to say hello or where best to spend a rest day.

Riding a bicycle through West Africa isn’t all rainbows and butterflies, especially without rearview mirrors, tinted windows or air conditioning. As we leave the desert and begin to make our way into the jungle, everything is changing. Crossing from Mauritania into Senegal revealed not just a cultural border, but an environmental one. The humidity is as thick as the sand under our tires. The vast horizon lines of the Sahara to our East and the Atlantic to our West are increasingly becoming speckled with baobabs, rice fields and people in colourful attire moving at a rapid pace through a village market. These changes make cycling more difficult, but they are also the reasons we are here.

Imagine cycling early one morning through the Senegalese foothills – rolling hills with Acacia trees lining the shoulder, their thorns just aching to get stuck in your tire. A quiet morning, you are not surprised to see a young boy herding goats towards you down the middle of the road. Attempting to repeat the local greeting in Wolof, you are cut off by the surprise of a machete waving through the air as you roll past him. There are many ways that you could respond – shock, fear, anger. Yet in this moment it is important to realize that you are currently cycling through a culture where a work commute can mean a 9-year-old boy herding cattle down the road with a machete in one hand and a stick in the other. With no free hands, he waves the shorter of the two utensils in greeting. The same surprise might come from a grown man running at you with a spear attached to the end of a long stick. Despite his age, he shares the same enthusiasm as the boy for a lycra wearing circus-act riding through his home town. His own safety is less of a concern than getting to fist bump every rider coming through town.

These moments can be terrifying, but they also define the experience you have in your travels, along with the experience that the locals have with you. As a tourist traveling in a privately hired car, you are physically caging yourself off from the outside world. You become a spectator looking out of a window, enjoying the view but closing yourself off from the landscape and people you have come all this way to see.

On a bicycle, the experience is inherently different. You have less control over the narrative of your travel, unable to roll the windows up to ignore a vendor or curious child. If you came to a place to experience it, why not do so fully? Just as you want to ooh and aah at what you are seeing, taking pictures along the way, the people you are passing are doing the same. They might giggle at your clothes or peel with laughter at your attempts to speak their language, but at least you are giving them a chance to interact with you, not armoured in a way that restricts nearly all interaction. Yes, you may have your arms or legs touched as you pass by or even have rock thrown at you from a child. However much more often you will be applauded by crowds, offered shade in a vendor’s hut, or receive a friendly push up a seemingly endless hill. Making ourselves vulnerable to people, climate, and culture can seem like a big step out of a tourist car, but its rewards are greater than its risk.

Too often tourism is a one-sided affair. A bicycle is a fantastic mechanism to shift the power dynamic between the tourist and the local. Literally removing yourself from a spectator’s box makes you more approachable and evens the playing field in which interactions take place. The people you meet, the places you see are not just closer than your mirror suggests, they are a part of your everyday experience. On TDA, we will always choose the bicycle.

It was only a couple of weeks ago that our little company announced a new tour, Viva Italia, inspired by the idea that ‘all roads lead to Rome’. Strangely enough, I am now sitting in a coffee shop in Dakar where, according to Lonely Planet, ‘all roads in Senegal truly lead to Dakar’.

150 years ago Dakar had 300 residents. Now it is home to over 3 million people. It is a place that in my mind – and I assume many others of my generation – is associated with the, now defunct, Paris-Dakar off-road car rally.

Now that I have spent three days cycling, walking and traversing this big, cosmopolitan city, I ask myself, how is it that a city of this size, stature and history was for years in my mind simply an exotic place. A place where a crazy car rally, that tested man’s ability to built fast, durable, monstrous cars and motorcycles, traversed the Sahara desert, destroying sand dunes and spitting vast amounts carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Ironically this rally, simply called ‘Dakar’, continues to run in South America.

Dakar is situated on a small peninsula on the westernmost edge of this huge and marvelous continent. No matter where you are standing, sleeping, walking or driving, you are at most 3 km from the coast where you can enjoy all the enjoyment that the ocean provides, from wonderful cooling winds, to beaches, to football games on the sand, to surfing or simply dining or sipping your drinks and watching the world go by.

It is also a city where commerce of every sort and kind is encountered no matter where you are. Hawkers, hustlers, street vendors and assorted other characters can spring up at any moment particularly in areas where there are tourists. Interestingly, two days ago I took a 15 km walk across the middle of the peninsula from north to south and I was not accosted even once. For that matter, on my walk I did not encounter any expats or tourists.

Some of my friends and readers will now probably think that I am being reckless and endangering my life by walking alone in an unknown city, full of who knows what kind of shady characters. Fortunately for me, when we arrived in our hotel on the first day my hotel room was not ready. It gave me time to sit down in the lobby read some of the local press. One of the newspapers had a big screaming headline; ‘50 murders in Senegal in 2018!’ This headline was of interest to me because I live in Toronto with a population of around 3 million people. The number of homicides in my hometown so far in 2018 is around 90. So Senegal, with a population of over 16 million has less murders than Toronto. Quite a surprise.

The truth is that I, for one, should not have been surprised. Ever since I started this company I have been asked over and over, again and again, is it safe to cross Africa on a bike? Most of the time I have answered the question simply by saying that the most dangerous part of cycling in Africa is the same all over the world and that is dangerous drivers. I have written blogs such as ‘I Have More Fear of Cycling in Toronto Then Anywhere Else in the World‘ and I have talked about this to the media. Yet even I was surprised that the rate of homicides and dangerous crime in a poor country such as Senegal is significantly lower than in a place I call home.

What is one to make of this? Yesterday, I took a boat to Ile de Goree, a place where thousands of Africans were held awaiting their transportation and enslavement – that is if they survived their horrific conditions and passage to the new world. When one walks on the cobblestones among the old buildings in this now very tranquil place one wonders how any mind can perceive that it is ok to enslave another human being, not to mention a child. Even the slave traders all knew that enslaving human beings for profit was not acceptable to any religion.

What I realize from my days here in Dakar is that what we all need to do, and do continuously, is to expose ourselves to a different world than the one we already know so that we can see the world differently, so that what we see forces us to see the world from another perspective. Dakar from now on you are no longer the place where the Paris-Dakar rally ended. From now on, in my mind, you are a lively place with millions of people going on with their daily struggle and on Sundays, having fun exercising on one of its many beaches.

“The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind” – Bob Dylan

Dylan, as often was the case, got it right. While cycling the west coast of Africa from Morocco to Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, the answer is indeed ‘in the wind’. If anything, besides the fact that one is cycling in the spectacular grand Sahara, it is the wind that will make the day either pure joy or pure hell. Well, I may be exaggerating a bit, but ask any of the participants on the West Africa en Vélo, how one day they can easily reach the point of breaking down and start crying, only to feel an immense exhilaration 24 hours later.

Of course, this could also be because the desert has a way of heightening one’s own senses, allowing them to wander in every which direction. In my opinion, it is no coincidence that all the monotheistic religions have origins in the desert and those deserts have played such a key role in their evolution. The silence of the desert can bring out the best and the worst in us.

Perhaps it is the sand that does that. The sand can just lie there and look romantic and be a perfect backdrop for another majestic sunrise or sunset. One can luxuriously walk barefoot through it, feeling the sand sensually caressing one’s soles. However, when it joins forces with the wind, the sand will torture you, penetrating every pore of your skin. If that were not enough,  combined with the velocity of an oncoming truck, it will sandblast you with such force that you will feel like your skin is peeling off.

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So, are these elements the reason the desert attracts some of us while others find it repellent? Or is it because, in the desert, one can look at the night sky and wonder about Little Princes on other planets? Perhaps it is simply because in the desert we can test whether we are the rare individuals, who like the bushman of the Kalahari, have the ability to listen to the stars singing.

When Laurens van der Post one night
In the Kalihari Desert told the Bushmen
He couldn’t hear the stars
Singing, they didn’t believe him.
They looked at him,
Half-smiling. They examined his face
To see whether he was joking
Or deceiving them. Then two of those small men
Who plant nothing, who have almost
Nothing to hunt, who live
On almost nothing, and with no one
But themselves, led him away
From the crackling thorn-scrub fire
And stood with him under the night sky
And listened. One of them whispered,
Do you not hear them now?
And van der Post listened, not wanting
To disbelieve, but had to answer,
No. They walked him slowly
Like a sick man to the small dim
Circle of firelight and told him
They were terribly sorry,
And he felt even sorrier
For himself and blamed his ancestors
For their strange loss of hearing,
Which was his loss now…

David Wagoner wrote this poem about the desert and the man who authored such books as the ‘Lost world of the Kalahari’. Like van der Post, I, no matter how hard I try, know that I can not hear the stars singing. On the other hand, I do have 13 reasons why you should pick a desert and cycle across it.

In the last 15 years I have biked through the Sahara a couple of times, the Atacama desert, the Stuart Highway’s deserts, the Turkmenistan desert, the Gobi desert and many others. As long as I can keep cycling, I will look for more deserts to pedal across, always listening for those elusive singing stars.

No, I don’t mean with our loved ones back home. I am talking about the most important relationship on any TDA tour – the one between you and your bike. Much like choosing a partner, choosing to travel by bicycle is a choice that is meant to enhance your life. As you may know, being in a long-distance relationship is never an easy thing. Yet, when done right, it can be one of the most rewarding experiences. West Africa en Vélo is no cake walk. Rather, it is the opportunity to experience the world around us uninhibited and on our own terms. Riders have already traversed 1,761 kilometres. They have rolled high up into the Atlas Mountains, climbing up to 2100m. They have biked past goats, climbing tree branches in search of that sweet Argan Fruit.

The first step to a successful relationship begins with choosing the right partner. On a TDA expedition, there is no more important companion than your bicycle. On West Africa en Vélo, some stayed with their loyal travel partners, while others decided to try something new. Erwin, from Germany, has had his trusted steed for 28 years. He and his bike have been on 5 TDA tours, exploring thousands of kilometers. Other riders shopped exclusively for a bike that could take them from Casablanca to Ghana. Joseph, a rider from Canada, has done 4 TDA tours. He has used a different bike for each one. His allegiance to these bicycles has not faltered, but he certainly isn’t after “the one.” Each tour had different needs that different bikes fulfilled. His 7 bikes at home in Toronto prove that he is nothing but dedicated to travel by bicycle.

Like any healthy relationship, our bicycles help us become a better version of ourselves. Choosing to travel by bicycle is a dedication, not only to a hunk of metal, but to a way of travel and a way of life. It gives us the opportunity to stop every few kilometers and meet a local fisherman or sip a sweet tea with a shop owner. Riding the bicycle gives you the opportunity to not only enjoy the sights along the way, but to engross yourself in them. Being on a bicycle means you are exposed to the elements, the smells, the sights (for better or for worse). While it may mean getting soaked to the bone in a thunderstorm or getting to know the locally loved potholes, you are rewarded with the opportunity to see and go where few other tourists ever have. While it can seem scary, giving yourself over to so many unknown variables, there is no doubt in a TDA rider’s mind that there is no other option. And to state the most obvious benefit, riding over 100 kilometres a day will get you into some of the best shape of your life. These are all things that travel by train, plane, or car could never give you.

So, what happens when the relationship starts to deteriorate? Your chain begins to whine. Your spokes start to snap, one by one. Your frame cracks. Your rim crumbles. These are realities on the West Africa en Vélo and they require each rider to lovingly take care of their companion. Chains are delicately scrubbed and oiled. Owners watch carefully as the bike mechanic repairs the shimmering spokes. They trudge through small mountain villages until a local welder can be found to repair the body of their loved one. They will even book flights to far away continents just to get their hands on a single piece to return their partner to their whole form again. The big and little ways that TDA riders are dedicated to their bicycles is a true act of love.

Despite the difficulty of a long-distance relationship, it isn’t hard to argue that bonds built over thousands of kilometres are some of the best. Be it with the bicycle you choose, or the peloton partners you come to know, you can gain so much more than elevation on your Garmin.

For years, the founder of TDA Global Cycling, Henry Gold, has gazed longingly at the islands in the Mediterranean Sea, trying to come up with a cycling route that would do justice to the area’s history, culture and scenery. Finally, inspired by the 2012 Alumni event that we called ‘All Roads Lead To Rome’, he came up with a circular route that covered not only the beautiful islands of Corsica, Sardinia & Sicily but also managed to include the stunning Italian regions of Tuscany and Calabria as well as the historic cities of Florence, Rome and Siena.

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Viva Italia

It has been said that ‘All roads lead to Rome’ and the Viva Italia cycling tour is simply more proof that this may indeed be the case...

From St Peter’s Square in the ‘Holy See’ the group will take the long way around to Rome’s fabled Colosseum via 5 weeks, 2,345 km and 3 islands of fun. Whether it’s a Campari and Soda in Siena’s magnificent Piazza del Campo or strolling through the priceless collection of Renaissance art in Florence’s Uffizi Gallery there is much to do off the bike as well.

They will ride through some of Tuscany and Italy’s greatest vineyards, and sample fresh seafood in historic Livorno. They can take a side trip to gawk at the Leaning Tower of Pisa. They will experience Corsica’s granite mountains, Sardinia’s serpentine mountain roads and ancient hilltop villages.

The cyclists will wander the medieval streets of Cefalu and experience the grit of Palermo over a plate of fresh homemade pasta. There is also Sicily’s Mount Etna and the islands untamed interior with incredible views from the towers of the Castello di Lombardia in the town of Enna.

Then there is Italy’s long and winding Tyrrhenian coast that will take the group through tiny seaside villages. They will enjoy some of the world’s best pizza in Naples, the ruins of Pompeii and the stunning beauty of the Amalfi Coast.

Viva Italia, indeed!

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. What makes the desert beautiful,’ said the little prince, ‘is that somewhere it hides a well… And that was true. I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams.”  – Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

The Marrakesh Express better known to us as West Africa on Vélo from Casablanca, Morocco to Accra, Ghana has reached Boujdour, somewhere I assume the popular travel writer Pico Iyer would call a ‘Lonely Place’.  Many years ago he wrote a book called Falling Off The Map: Some Lonely Places Of The World.  I personally have developed an attraction to such places and Boujdour is one such town. What makes a place a ‘Lonely Place’?

I will give you an example. Yesterday, after two long days of cycling into strong head and side winds, our 140km day turned out to be relatively easy because, of course, we had a tail wind. So when I arrived in Boujdour, before heading to camp, I decided  to have a cold drink. When I sat down I saw a sign for a restaurant called Fruits de Mer, and decided to check it out later for dinner.

Alas, when I arrived for dinner it turned out that the Fruits de Mer had ceased existence in some distant past and it was now a local coffee shop where a couple dozen men were watching a soccer game. So I ventured off in search of a restaurant where I could eat some fish, Boujdour being situated on the ocean. After a half an hour walk my search parameters expanded to include any kind of restaurant that might have Moroccan food and after another 20 minutes my search simply focused on finding some local fresh food. In my wanderings I came across many coffee shops.  In all of them, the same picture appeared as in the former Fruits de Mer – men watching television.

So ‘Lonely Places’ are not places where there are no people. They are more like places where the modern world has not yet decided that there should be fancy restaurants, Starbuck coffee shops and tourists looking for ‘authentic’ experiences. Boujdour, in fact, is so ‘lonely’ that even though it is a fair sized town on the main Atlantic route to Mauritania, Senegal and rest of West Africa, it is not even mentioned in Morocco’s Lonely Planet book. It is so ‘lonely’ that I have yet to see a Trip Advisor ranked establishment not to mention their omnipresent logo. What is one to do if you wanted to stay in one of the hotels on the main street? There is no one who has ranked the hotels for you in terms of price, cleanliness or hospitality. What an ordeal it has been for some of our riders who chose not to stay at the campsite.

Mind you, it is not just Boujdour that is so ‘lonely’ on this section of the West Africa en Vélo. We have been cycling, and will continue cycling, on terrain that many would never consider worth visiting. That, of course, is not always the case. The famous aviator and author Antoine de Saint-Exupery the writer of such as wonderful books as The Little Prince and Wind, Sand & Stars, did come to the region and wrote about the place.

The Little Prince was composed by Saint-Exupery while flying the desert route, rescuing pilots who had crashed delivering mail from Europe to Dakar. “This is, to me, the loveliest and saddest landscape in the world. It is the same as that on the preceding page, but I have drawn it again to impress it on your memory. It is here that the little prince appeared on Earth, and disappeared. Look at it carefully so that you will be sure to recognize it in case you travel some day to the African desert. And, if you should come upon this spot, please do not hurry on. Wait for a time, exactly under the star. Then, if a little man appears who laughs, who has golden hair and who refuses to answer questions, you will know who he is. If this should happen, please comfort me. Send me word that he has come back.”

So why would one go to see and experience such ‘lonely places’? I will leave the Little Prince to answer – “People where you live grow five thousand roses in one garden… yet they don’t find what they’re looking for… And yet what they’re looking for could be found in a single rose, or a little water…” Antoine de Saint-Exupery himself put it this way – “A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral“.

Never thought about cycling across Madagascar before? This guest post from David Houghton might change that. David cycled the Tour d’Afrique in 2005 and our inaugural Magical Madagascar cycle tour (as part of his 200 bicycle rides challenge in 2017) and decided to share his first hand experience with us.

1. You’ll Never Know The Feeling Of A Lemur Massaging Your Head

Madagascar is home to over a hundred species of lemur, with a range of faces, ears and noses that would make Dr. Seuss jealous. From the one-ounce pygmy mouse lemur to the fifteen-pound Sifaka lemur, you’ll only ever see them in a zoo. Unless you travel to Madagascar.

Seeing them up close requires some effort. You’ll need to hike into the forest with an experienced guide to spot them in the treetops. But well before you see them, you’ll certainly hear them: lemurs make an incredible range of sounds from grunts, snorts and chirps to wailing calls deep in the forest. It’s probably their eerie calls that got lemurs their name. Lemur comes from the Latin word lemures, which means ‘ghosts of the forest’.

The good news is, some of these ghosts are tame enough to clamber all over your head for a piece of banana. With a ringed tail swishing in your eyes, and four clawed feet massaging your scalp, it’s an experience you’ll not soon forget.

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2. You’ll Never Know The Joy Of Cycling Down The Avenue Of The Baobabs

Since Madagascar separated from the rest of Africa 500 million years ago, it has fostered both the gigantic and the miniscule. On the small end of the scale, you’ll see (if you look close enough) leaf chameleons no bigger than your smallest fingernail. There are tiny Golden manatella frogs and the diminutive yellow-bellied sunbird.

On the large end of the scale, of course, are the baobab trees. Locals call these enormous upside-down trees ‘the roots of the sky’; They’re impossible to miss, reaching heights of 30 meters (98 feet) and circumferences up to 11 meters (36 feet). As you ride the length of the Avenue of the Baobabs, you’ll be surrounded by the upheld arms of these ancient giants. It’s humbling.

This sense of epic scale is everywhere in Madagascar, in the breadth of the skies and the height of the mountain ranges. When you ride Madagascar from bottom to top, you’ll realize it doesn’t feel like an island at all; it feels like a landmass. No wonder it’s called the eighth continent.

3. You’ll Never Know How Great The Malagasy Are

Madagascar’s indigenous people are friendly, resourceful, funny, and very, very curious. A couple of dozen kids will gather to stare at you as you drink your morning coffee. Men will inspect your bike closely, women will assess your colourful Lycra clothing with the scrutiny of a tailor.

As you ride through Madagascar, you’ll often see people’s occupation or purpose in what they carry: a shovel or a machete, a sack of rice or firewood, a woven bag, well-worn jerry cans that are bruised-banana yellow. Most everything in Madagascar is handmade, from wooden carts to wobbly fences to hand-painted signs, and you’ll see the Malagasy in the process of making them every day. The women are dressed brightly, the men drab. Fully half of them are barefoot. You’ll raise a hand as you pass on your bicycle, and they’ll do the same.

4. You’ll Never Know How Great The Cycling Is

You want it easy? Hard? Do you want ocean breezes? Unrelenting heat? Don’t worry, Madagascar has it all. You’ll ride dirt roads through quiet villages, the wind scented with woodsmoke. You’ll see women with enormous bags of charcoal balanced on their heads, chickens hanging from a passing bicycle, long swaths of grain laid out on the tarmac to dry in the sun. You’ll ride gnarly roads of gravel and mud, you’ll tackle sweaty climbs through thick vegetation. You’ll drink warm zebu milk, and it’ll taste better than Gatorade in the midday heat.

Is there more to Madagascar than a Pixar film would have you believe? Is Madagascar more than four bumbling animals who escape from a zoo and meet up with a ring-tailed lemur named King Julien XIII? Hell yeah. Is Madagascar, located off the southeastern corner of the African continent, a challenging place to get to? Hell yeah (Read our Tips on Flying to Madagascar with a Bicycle) Is Madagascar one of the most unique and rewarding places in the world to ride your bike, an island that’s a microcosm of our world that’s also home to vegetation and animals you’ll see nowhere else on the planet? Hell yeah.

The final countdown is over. The excitedly anticipated cycling expedition – West Africa en Vélo – embarks tomorrow on what is bound to be the trip of a lifetime. That is certainly saying something as most of the riders have completed numerous other TDA tours.

What We Do Know

This is the inaugural West Africa en Vélo and, as such, we are eagerly awaiting the unexpected. We do know that we will begin by pushing high up into the mountains near Marrakesh before descending back to the coast in Western Sahara. As we pedal through the Sahara Desert, spending the afternoons swimming in the Atlantic Ocean and our nights gazing at a million stars, we will hopefully find a friend in desert tailwinds. In the sub-Saharan jungles of Senegal and Guinea we will fill our shoes with red dirt, rest at the foot of age-old baobabs and cross rivers on the bows of old wooden vessels – if we’re lucky! There is much to look forward to on this expedition – the predictable, the unprecedented and the unexpected.

What We Think We Know

The riders and staff have come from all over the globe to experience West Africa from the seat of a bicycle. In fact, they represent 19 different countries. Some are here to see, hear, and taste all things West African while others want to challenge themselves physically and mentally. Most alumni are simply excited to be back on the road, cycling with friends from tours past. When I began asking the riders what expectations they had for the tour, there was a pause. I could see them considering many factors while trying to choose just one word. When I  probed for a gut answer, I heard everything from “challenging” and “sore bum” to “spectacular” and “sand storm.”

Everyone’s background, gives them a different set of expectations. For some, the unknowns are in their own physical and mental abilities – knowing they will be testing their limits in an extreme environment. Some think more of the tangible details – understanding that the weather and climate will be unpredictable through the desert and jungle, especially without weather apps. Others consider it will be the local language and culture, the distance between coke stops, and of course, the kinds of food we will be presented with along the way that will be the unknowns.

The best part, many agree, is expecting the unknown, the adventures, and the challenge, even if it comes with a “sore bum.” That is why many riders come back to TDA, tour after tour. TDA founder, Henry Gold, knows this spirit of adventure lives on in every rider and is proud to be joining us on this inaugural expedition.

What We Know We Don’t Know

Standing at the Hassan II Mosque (our start line) tomorrow morning, we cannot predict what it will feel like to cross the finish line 71 days from now. We cannot know how this tour will impact our lives – physically, emotionally, or on an entirely soulful level. It is impossible to know what days will be our hardest and even more difficult to understand that, unexpectedly, those may also be some of our favourite days. The idea that the nightmare of getting caught in a thunderstorm or having a flat tire in the middle of the jungle may become your favourite post-tour stories? Crazy! Yet, “life is 10% what happens to you, and 90% what you make of it” [Charles Swindoll].

Well, time to roll, we’ve got 6,420 km to go!

“A journey is a door through which one goes out of the known reality and steps into another, unexplored reality resembling a dream.” – Henri Albert Guy de Maupassant

At its core, it was just a cycling trip. I take my bike, put one leg over the bar, push on the pedal and off I go. It was January 2003 and I, together with another 30 people, were off on the adventure of a lifetime, a cycling journey that would take us from the watchful eyes of the Sphinx by the Pyramids in Cairo to the beaches of Cape Town under the incomparable Table Mountain.

On paper, the inaugural Tour d’Afrique looked insane and some actually said just that; in letters to the editors, in emails to our office and some to my face. It was something that had never been done before. I put on a brave face and shrugged my shoulders but inside a little voice occasionally said – ‘listen to them’. Why was I doing this? I can come up with many answers, maybe even good ones. Well, why do people volunteer to test a new plane or go to Mars?  In reality, the real answer still eludes me.

Now here I am about to start another new, tough, perhaps even extreme adventure – West Africa en Vélo – 73 days on a bicycle from Casablanca to Cape Coast in Ghana. I am constantly being asked ‘how does it feels to set off again’. What should I respond? Should I  respond with  platitudes -that I am excited and apprehensive?

Should I say that I am surprised? That even in my wildest dreams I would not have believed that 15 years later, after cycling all six continents, I am again undertaking such an incredible journey?  That who knows what surprises will it bring, what joys and sorrows  I will experience, what lessons the journey will teach me?

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Should I respond that one is never too old to take on new challenges? I am 66 years old but there are quite a few on this ride that are older than me! Should I point out how great it feels that I am not really involved in the running of the tour, that the wonderful TDA staff is doing all of it?

Should I point out that I am a really lucky man to be in a position to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity? All of those things, and more, are part of how I feel ‘setting off again’.

The answers to a simple question can be elusive because, in reality, what I recall now and what I really felt then are most likely totally different. What I can say with certainty is that each journey that takes me out of my comfort zone, is never disappointing, and most importantly , is always enriching. It forces me to stretch myself, mentally and physically. It forces me to meet people, whether my fellow cyclists and staff or the locals that I meet one day at a time. To quote Maupassant again “it is the lives we encounter that makes lives worth living”.

So how does it feel to set off on another new adventure? Wonderful, just simply wonderful, I think. But then again, why am I doing this, whispers my little voice.

The 2018 TDA Trans Europa reached the finish line in Lisbon, Portugal last Friday, signifying the end of 5 full tour riders’ epic 2.5-month journey across Europe that began in early July. What’s really incredible about this year’s tour is that every single full tour rider achieved EFI. There are some difficult riding days on this tour and yet I can honestly say there wasn’t a single time that any of our riders even came close to contemplating getting in the van for a lift to camp.

Mark, from Juneau Alaska, did the full Tour d’Afrique a couple of years ago and decided to come back and do another one of the (in his own words, “slightly more luxurious”) 7 Epics. He’s a strong cyclist for someone who doesn’t ride much at home, enjoys a healthy mix of riding alone and riding with the group, and has an obsession with getting submerged in water. Whenever he arrived at camp or the hotel, Mark’s first mission was to head straight to the beach or find a local swimming pool. And after approximately 120km of riding each day, I’d say he’s earned it!

This was also Seatlite Rick’s second TDA tour, after riding from Victoria Falls to Cape Town on last year’s Tour d’Afrique. In fact, right before cycling out of Helsinki with the Trans Europa at the start of July, Rick did his own little self-supported cycling tour near Tromso in northern Norway with a dozen fellow cyclists who all met each other on the 2017 Tour d’Afrique.

As if he hasn’t had enough of the saddle yet, Rick’s now flown from Lisbon to San Sebastien, where he will cycle through France to Paris, and then take a train down to Italy to do another cycling tour from Rome to Como. We wish Rick the best of luck on his continued European cycling adventure!

Canadian and first-time TDA rider Scott’s achievement of EFI was especially remarkable because he was unfortunate enough to have some ongoing bicycle issues right around the middle of the tour. Luckily it never prevented him from riding the full day, nor did it prevent him from staying positive and enjoying himself throughout the tour. Upon reaching Lisbon, Scott celebrated by getting a couple of tattoos on his calves for his parents, done by a renowned Portuguese tattoo artist.

This tour was also a TDA first for Kiwi rider Jo, a.k.a. “The Aged Athlete”, who spontaneously signed up to the Trans Europa at the last minute and has really made the most of each and every day she has spent cycling from Finland to Portugal. Not only did she keep TDA staff on our toes (you couldn’t afford to dawdle too much while flagging or setting up lunch; because Jo was never far behind!) but her blog was always wildly entertaining and perfectly captured each day’s events for everyone following the tour back home.

And last but not least, Jeff did the TDA Pub Ride and TDA Trans Europa back-to-back, spending his entire summer riding his bicycle around the UK, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean and finally the Iberian Peninsula. Jeff was never in much of a hurry to get to camp, preferring to spend his day on the road, interacting with locals, stopping for Coke stops and searching for ice!

Jeff’s no stranger to bike touring, however normally he has to carry everything on his bicycle and plan his own route, so I think being able to explore Europe by bike with those things taken care of was refreshing. He also opted for his hammock over pitching his tent most nights, and thankfully we were extremely lucky with the weather on this tour so as long as he could find two sturdy trees, Jeff was good to go!

These people are very strong riders but beyond that, they have proved a point – cycling +100km a day isn’t as absurd and impossible as you might think. TDA has a vast range of alumni clients of all ages, sizes, backgrounds, fitness levels and head spaces. Just about the only thing every single TDA rider over the years has in common is that they were willing to push themselves to achieve what we often hear on these tours is “too far”, “too hard” and “too extreme”.

So to anyone whose only objection to signing up for a TDA tour is their lack of confidence in their own abilities, remember that half the riders on the 2018 Trans Europa were complete strangers to this sort of thing, and yet every one of them rode Every F*#^ing Inch!

Once again, congratulations to everyone who joined us on this year’s Trans Europa and keep riding!

During the five months of cycling along the Silk Route the riders and staff have experienced a wide variety of emotions and have learned much about themselves and the journey itself. There are things we wish we had known beforehand and lessons we have learned along the way. It’s partly what makes long distance cycling so exciting. You have time to think – and think we did.

As we near the end of our trip, we’ve gathered together a collection of tips and tricks and advice that we would like to share with you.

Practical Reflections

One thing we have found is that the riders often regretted not having this or that item; having packed the wrong size tent or perhaps too many spare tools. They were only too keen to share exactly what’s necessary and what’s not…

“Bring a back-light for the tunnels. This is highly useful for Iran in particular. “ -Jasper, full tour rider.

“Definitely have an appropriate bike. There are many gravel and dirt roads throughout the trip, and a road bike isn’t advised. Also having dictionaries and Google translate with the necessary languages downloaded so you can use it offline will save you a lot of time and hassle.” -Mark, full tour rider.

“I think that having an offline map program such as maps.me, Galileo or a Garmin and downloaded routes is extremely useful.” -Virginia, full tour rider.

A mattress and cot are not absolutely necessary but if you are a fan of comfy beds and rely on them for a good night sleep then it’s definitely the way to go.

“A whistle for dogs.” -Jim, full tour rider.

“Bring a two person tent.”

We had a wide variety of tents on the tour. One thing that everyone agreed on was that a slightly larger tent (two-three person) is worth bringing. You should also try have a tent with detachable fly, for those epic, starry night skies.

“Zinc cream is essential! And stock up on sun cream because it’s hard to purchase in Central Asia.” -Kylie, full tour rider.

A good camera is another highly useful accessory. Make sure that it’s a durable one and that it can last through five months of challenging conditions.

“I love my camera. I recommend the Olympus Tough. It’s proven to be very tough indeed. I’ve taken hundreds of photos on it.” -Jim.

Bring a good solar panel. It can re-charge your devices pretty quickly. During the long stretches of camping everyone was using solar panels to keep things fully charged.

Count your clothes before and after you hand them in to the local laundry.

Philosophical Findings

The riders endured 116 stages of cycling. They averaged 120km a day, with a rest day every 4/5 days. After five months on the bike, they made plenty of discoveries.

“I learned a lot from the very start of the trip; like if you’re any bit of a half assed cyclist like me; get as many gears in the back as possible.” -Jim.

“Get ready for shit to happen, and roll with it. Things will happen that are out of your control, just deal with it.” -Kylie.

“Be prepared to accept anything. This trip is more than just a cycle, and it’s all part of the experience. This is what I signed up for, and if I wasn’t here what else would I be doing? Just don’t fight against it when times get tough, embrace it.” -Nelson, sectional rider. I

It’s a social experiment as much as a cycling expedition. Spending such a long time with the same group of people is an interesting test. Group dynamics change over time; people experience fatigue, homesickness and an assortment of ailments on the road. Having to deal with your own moods, as well as those of a small group of others on such a regular basis can be challenging, to say the least.

“It’s easy to lose sight of yourself, and watch personalities blend into each other. I’ve enjoyed spending time with the local support. They have been the greatest insight into the country for me. Building friendships is better than being strictly a tourist the whole time, and meeting local people really helps.” -Mitch, chef.

Takeaways from the Trip

After a long day of riding, people generally got into camp mid-afternoon. They would give them a couple of hours to themselves and their thoughts.

“You get an idea of how big the world is. It’s quite the feat, propelling yourself across the globe watching mountains and deserts pass, crossing time zones and borders, you get a real understanding of how vast the world is. How else could you understand this on such a level?” -Simon, sectional rider.

“It’s much more than a cycle. For me, I’m a tourist on a bike. I get to stop and talk to locals when ever I want, and the hospitality in Central Asia has been better than anywhere else I’ve been.” -Kees, sectional rider.

“There were stretches in between towns that were difficult to get any produce other than the basics. Places like the Pamir Highway, the Turkmen and Uzbek Desert. The climate at times also made it difficult to keep produce fresh. That said, I really enjoyed finding things along the way, such as white aubergines in Iran; okra in Osh; Yak meat and milk in Tajikistan and Kumis in Kyrgyzstan.” -Ben, Chef

What to Expect

“Riders will have different riding styles and opinions. Be open-minded to other people’s needs on the trip.” -Brenda.

“Expect more headwind than tailwind.” -Jasper.

“Bring plenty of tissues and wet wipes, and get ready to shit like you never have before.” -Kylie.

To be honest, you can’t mentally and physically prepare yourself for the reality of the Silk Route. You can read all of the ‘how to’ books” and talk to all of the experts but the most important thing is to just dive in with an open mind. You will learn invaluable life lessons, you will laugh and cry and bleed and sweat and love it all. There will be moments of hardship, worry and fear but you will wake up feeling more alive than you might ever have thought possible. You will gaze upon the Milky Way, the misty mountains, the burning embers of campfires but you will never look back.

“I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.” -Eric Roth.