Sierra Blogging Post Archives

Sam and Erin are a newlywed couple who took an 18-month bicycle tour of Asia and Europe… and they brought Sierra Blogging Post along for the ride.

We sent them Sierra Trading Post gear and they sent us stories and photographs from their adventure. Sam and Erin arrived home earlier this month... and they just sent me their latest and last dispatch. Welcome home, you two - thanks for bringing us along for the ride!


We finished our trans-Eurasia bicycle tour on May 2, 2010, crossing our finish line in Prague, Czech Republic [finish line pic]. We were met by 30 of our closest friends and family, there to share our moment of triumph with us.

By the time we finished in Prague, we had bicycled through 27 countries (listed below) over 21 months, from August 2008 until May 2010. In that time, we rode 11,500 miles and traversed some of the world's highest and most challenging mountain ranges. We bicycled up five mountain passes at 15,000 feet or over and hiked over one pass at 17,800 feet on our trek on the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal.

The highest pass we bicycled over was the Taglang La in India at 17,582 feet, one of the highest motorable roads in the world. We also biked the world's lowest road while riding along the coast of the Dead Sea in Jordan. The elevation there was 1385 feet below sea level.

The best part of our trip was the people we met. We were invited to stay with local families numerous times each day, like the ones in the photos here, in Mongolia, India, Pakistan, Turkey and Israel. In nearly every country, when we rode into a town, people would come out of their houses and line the street as we rode by, shouting greetings and invitations to tea, a meal or to sleep in their homes.

Often we had to decline these invitations in the interest of keeping on schedule, but sometimes the invitations came at just the right time and we willingly accepted. The people we stayed with were uniformly kind and generous, showing us unbelievable hospitality, in keeping with the social mores of Asia. Never did we feel any hostility, and although we once talked to a guy who stated he didn't like America, he also said that he knew the difference between a government and its people, and then invited us into tea.

We were gone for 637 days. Of those, we rode our bikes on 268 days, which is 42% of the time. The rest of the time we visited tourist sights or waited out rain or snow storms. We also took several long breaks, including a week and a half to hike in the Himalaya. Our parents visited us three times, each time for one or two weeks. We hung up our bikes temporarily whenever they visited and traveled with them by public transport or rented car. We often had to wait a week or two in capital cities for visas to be processed so we could move on to the next country. In all, we are happy with our pace. Going any faster made it difficult to visit tourist attractions or adequately soak up the culture of a country, which was the first priority of our trip.

On days we rode, we averaged 42 miles per day, and traveled on average five hours per day. This also turned out to be a great pace. Often across Asia, the roads were in hideous condition, gravely or steep, and the going could be slow. We stopped often to photograph our surroundings or to talk to people. We had time to read, internet and walk around towns in the evenings.

We took 33,000 photos, half of which we discarded immediately. Of the remaining photos, about 3600 of them are published on our blog. We processed them on a netbook we carried with us and archived them on an external hard drive. We also sent a backup of our archive home on thumb drives every few weeks so that our photos were backed up all over the place. We are still going through the last few hundred from our final few days of riding.

In total, we spent $36,000 on our trip (discounting family vacation time), which works out to a little over $30 per day per person. We indulged in comforts, like staying in hotels, but also spent over 100 nights camping. We ate nearly every meal in roadside food stands and restaurants, because, although we could have cooked our own food, we very much enjoyed trying local delicacies.

Many of the countries we rode through had fabulous food, even in remote parts, and we rarely suffered for want of calories. Crossing Central Asia was the toughest diet-wise, since the meals are monotonous, always boiled or barbecued mutton and with a bit of bread. We loved the cuisine in China because it had an immense variety of dishes, and it was always fresh, locally grown produce with nuanced spices. Middle Eastern fare was similarly enticing, with tender meats, loads of salads and of course hummos, bread and amazing desserts.

Nothing went majorly wrong. We never had a major injury or illness, no theft or loss of belongings, no catastrophic mechanical failure, and no reason to abort our trip. We learned an immense amount about world politics, history, and cultures. Most importantly, we experienced how alike most people are, simply wanting to get on with their lives and work, raise their children, and how happy people can be in the most dire of circumstances. The generosity we experienced from the locals where ever we went was truly impressive and will never be forgotten.

Also important to us were the people at home who supported us and followed our journey online. Thanks goes especially to

Sierra Trading Post for offering to sponsor us and for providing the invaluable gear they did. They sent it to us where ever we needed it, and always whatever we asked for. We are wearing their clothing in most of our pictures!

It was a trip of a lifetime, and now that we are home in Cheyenne, we can hardly believe that is us in our pictures. It is good to be home and reflect on our adventure. We feel lucky we were able to do it and now are ready to focus on life in the States. We are planning on writing a book about our adventure but first and foremost, we are job hunting.

For those interested, the countries we rode through, in order of our trip are: Kazakhstan (twice), Russia, Mongolia, China (twice), Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, the West Bank, Israel, Albania, Montenegro, Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. We also visited Bosnia Herzegovina, Italy, Austria and Germany, but by rental car and not on bicycle.