The Big Trip Announcement…

So here it is! The ‘big Bertha’! This is the proposed route from London to Sydney, tackling the highest accessible roads Eurasia (and the world) has to offer. Any chance of a westerly breeze…?

It is becoming very real now that little red line has come into existence that I shall start following this trail very shortly. It is only a rough guide that I drew into google maps, so don’t read into the fine detail of the map too much! What is really noticeable is how winding the route becomes from taking the Pamir highway (Tajikistan – many 4000+ passes), the Karakoram highway (China/Pakistan – passes up to 4900m) and the Manali-Leh highway (India – mountain passes over 5300m). I may come to regret choosing all three of these, but when am I next going to be passing by with a spare month in my life?

Right from the off I want to qualify what I would like to get out of this trip, so when I inevitably find myself cold, wet and cursing this idea, at least I can laugh at my delusional logic. So in order of importance:

• To harvest a goldmine of cracking profile pictures for the next 10 years.
• To have actually dreamt up and properly attempted a once in a lifetime adventure.
• To learn about new cultures, countries and people’s way’s of life.
• To have actually seen the world, the good, the bad and the very weird.

Unlike the Endo ride (https://pedrcharlesworth.com/category/the-endo-ride/), this one isn’t for charity. I want this trip to be for myself, to learn, to grow and to experience a small sliver of the world. To truly do this I don’t want to be bound to a hard schedule or even destination. Flexibility is a key theme of this trip, where I can grab a train if I really want to, or to suddenly change my plans to explore a new city if I fancy it. Personally I would feel that I would be cheating all those who donated their good money if I were to stop, or decide to head somewhere completely different. I’m sure I shall do more charity rides in the future and I’ll definitely have plenty of time to dream up some wacky challenges.

I’ll be blogging right here if people fancy following my progress and hopefully this site can be a useful resource for those interested in riding sections of this route.

For the time being I will be scrambling about acquiring last minute kit to try and hit my departure window (15th-22nd Jan, a.k.a 1-2 weeks time, ah!) More to follow shortly!