Everybody, without exception, falls into a regime of ride, eat, sleep, repeat. The purpose of which is to use each day of the camp to prepare for the upcoming season. With all eyes fixed on training plans, heart rate monitors and power meters, the professional cyclists are doing whatever is necessary to later reap the rewards of their hard work in the off-season.

Such a routine has a certain charm but it also entails limitations. Thankfully, we are not at a team camp. We can do whatever we like, which is good because we are too impatient to postpone the pleasure of winning until a few months later. We want to experience something amazing here and now.

It’s evening. We are sitting on the balcony with views over the Mediterranean Sea, drinking local beer and looking forward to discovering the nearby roads, without the necessity to train, do repeats, and everything that the cyclists around us are doing.

We’re lost and the road has become worryingly narrow. It doesn’t seem to lead anywhere. It is also getting steeper and steeper. I am trying to switch to a smaller gear but nothing happens. I give it all I have but still my cadence is embarrassingly slow. In fact, I am barely moving forward.

I can’t even tell if we’ve done half the climb or only the beginning. Never mind. Don’t think about it. I am still moving despite the clear resistance of my body. And it’s not my legs that hurt. The road is so steep that my arms, my back and all my body has started to ache. We keep riding to find out what’s at the top. It has to be stunning, I keep telling myself. Turning around is not an option.

Getting lost in Calpe is a blessing. Hidden inclines are the gems of this place. You can go to the most popular roads but if you get lost, you’ll most certainly find yourself on a climb over an empty road for half an hour and reach a mountain top that feels like nobody else has ever been to it. It’s always enough to make sure you look forward to getting lost again. In fact, the worst thing to do here is ride up the same hills again and again. What a waste.

We made the quick decision to discover as many unknown inclines as often as possible because we soon learned that all roads are most beautiful when seen for the first time. Why not treat ourselves to this every time we go somewhere? Actually, it is fairly easy to do here in Calpe. You take one of the well-known roads and turn into any little side road you see, where you usually find an incline only few are aware of.

This is how we found the road to Fort Bernia which finished with nothing more than a small car park. Several kilometres of asphalt have been laid here so that hikers don’t have to start their walk at the foot of the mountain but can drive to this point. Who knew?

The road to Fort Bernia is our first discovery of such beauty. An inconspicuous path turns out to be a six-kilometre incline that takes us from just above sea level to 700 meters. The road is so narrow, twisting and steep that keeping the front wheel on the ground is nearly as challenging as keeping the pedals going around.

After half an hour of an insanely steep, yet conquerable incline we experience the relief of getting off the bikes and sitting by the road. We earned this. We don’t feel the need to begin descending immediately. Instead, we just sit and admire the view.

From Fort Bernia we can see Benidorm – one of the biggest towns on the coast where people living nearby derogatorily call Hurghada – a tourist sprawl. The town owes its nickname to the multiple skyscrapers built there. Funnily enough, the biggest one remains completely empty because its designers forgot about elevators.

Benidorm doesn’t fit in with the surrounding area at all which makes it an intriguing place. We decided to have a look at it from above. We quickly found a magnificent road winding up a hill next to the town. We could see the city of skyscrapers on the one side of the vista and the sea on the other.

We checked off another amazing road and when we were about to come back we got lost, unintentionally this time, and found a short power climb in the middle of the forest. It literally looked like a wall leading to nowhere and resembled the roads one can find in Scandinavia. It was another one of those beautiful and accidental discoveries. That’s just the way things are here.

We decide to spend one more day searching for such places, which proved to be a good idea. We went deeper into the mountains, further away from Calpe and the sea. This is how we found the nearly “perfect climb”. A hidden road that most cyclist dreams of. Narrow, steep and twisting with road turning back on itself, one after another.

As we were riding the switchbacks we all had it in our imaginations we were racing the Vuelta a Espana. A road closed to traffic, or simply a road with no traffic due to the fact that it doesn’t go anywhere. We discovered what we called “little Angliru”. And although the real Angliru must be more impressive, we found this incline ourselves and that’s what gave us so much satisfaction.

Purito Rodriguez would certainly feel pretty comfortable on this terrain but none of us are close to his stature. We don’t have anyone to blame but ourselves for getting on to this insanely steep road. Nevertheless, after some time we finally reach the top from where we can enjoy the panoramic view of the surrounding mountains that look like crumpled paper. However, little do we know that the most beautiful ascent is still ahead of us. We will find it at the end of the next day’s trip.

We found that searching for new climbs became addictive. But after all of the climbs we come across here, no matter how beautiful, all have one common disadvantage – they lead to nowhere, which forces you to return the same way you went up. It’s not what cyclists dream about; we love loops. Therefore, we decide to link up one huge loop – a ride that we will remember for a long time.

The plan is simple – cover all legendary inclines in the area within one day. The climbs that all cyclists who come to train here want to tick off, one each day. But we are impatient and slightly crazy – we want them all at once.

There is nothing to discuss. We just take one last glimpse at the map, stuff ourselves with oatmeal and oranges, take the last sip of our morning coffee and set off. Our big day has started.

The ride doesn’t start in any spectacular way. We make the decision to go up the longest and highest climb in the area. To get there, first we have to take the seaside road to Benidorm that, although undeniably beautiful, is completely jammed with cars. It’s a typical thing of this area – all roads linking the tourist towns are always full of cars but, fortunately, all you need to do to make them disappear is to turn off the main road.

So we turned. As soon as we passed through the first big town, Finestrat, the whole road became ours and ours only until the end of the day. Just us, the road and the mountains. Now, a hill up to the sky.

Port de Tudons mountain pass is like a gate between the sea and the mountains. We started our ride from the beach and found ourselves more than 1,000 meters above sea level, and descended to the other side, into the real mountains. This is where the Vuelta a Espana came through in 2009 when Damiano Cunego was the first to the finish in Aitana.

However, we are not going to get there today since it is a military area. Access denied. We still have other places to go. We are not racing but our speed is solid. We are joking, talking and enjoying the ride. Our excitement is almost tangible. The first kilometre of altitude gain passes in the blink of an eye.

We enter what can be described as a cycling amusement park consisting of countless twisting descents. We decide to get off the main road and take a narrow lane leading to more or less the same place with no cars. We can relax a little, safely cut corners and take the racing line. This is pure pleasure that we earned after a series of long and tiring uphills which, unlike the descents, seem to go on forever.

Puerto Confrides is next. It is a beautiful climb, with many hairpins going through almond gardens that have just begun to blossom all in pink, with a road suspended on the hillside. All this is complemented by a gorgeous view of the valley and the mountains that we have made our way over.

Six kilometres of steep climbs is nothing for the Spanish – they don’t even bother to put any signs at the top. But that’s not the point. This mountain pass is the beginning of another roller coaster that is 30 kilometres long and goes down the entire way.

At first it leads through a wide gully where approaching cars can be spotted from far away. But cars never appear. We just grab the drops, release the brakes and let the speed build. The further down the road we go, the more turns we encounter, and get narrower every time. We just jerk the bikes from left to right, right to left for 30 kilometres.

Four hours have gone by and the road starts to go up again. Our next target is the Bixauca Pass. Each of us is going through our own small crisis but what keeps us going is the fact that we are going to have a break in Tarbena, near the top. It is a little village where we are bound to find a nice local café. But first we have to reach it but going up. The climb is long but we stick together and finally get to Tarbena. We find a café and sit at a table in the sun. This is what we wanted!

Apart from the fact that they are car-free, these Spanish mountain villages have a great advantage that doesn’t seem to be so obvious at first sight: it’s impossible to find a shop or a gas station. As a result, you don’t stop to get a can of coke or a chocolate bar whenever you run out of energy, but instead you drop in at a local restaurant, sit down and order something to eat — e.g. tostada or bocadillo — and relax at a table without any rush. Spanish people don’t have a word for “rush”. Even we feel it would be rude to quickly drink the coffee, eat the tostada and just go. We decide to go the local way and we take our time in Tarbena.

It isn’t easy to start climbing again after such a lengthy break. We are not riding properly because our minds are preoccupied with the area we have found ourselves in. Bixauca is located quite far away from the sea which, nevertheless, is still visible from the top which leads to a moonlike plateau on the opposite side of it.

The complete wilderness juxtaposed to seaside resorts and crowded beaches is striking. We choose the wilderness and get ourselves on the plateau featuring many short but very steep climbs that exhaust our bodies and make us soon forget about our last stop.

We start making simple mistakes. It is not a good time for lapses because what awaits us is a difficult descent; a steep wall with many tight hairpins. It would be great fun to face it if we were fresh, but we are not. Karol misses one of the turns but he miraculously manages to keep his balance on the roadside. It is not a good time for taking risks. We managed to make it down safely to Castell by taking it easy.

We’ve been riding for almost six hours and the most mysterious stretch of road is still ahead – a little path which will take us to the next valley. We have been told that it it impossible to pass. Not true. We challenged it and the gravel path quickly changed into a twisting asphalt road going through a canyon. It’s the middle of nowhere with a piece of road that gets us to Vall d’Ebo, a mountain village whose name also describes the ‘not-so-difficult-but-very-beautiful’ incline leading to it.

We were fortunate to find a road from which we can see orange gardens stretched out to the horizon as well as the sea in the distance. The road is separated from the precipice with distinct little white walls that run for 10 kilometres. It would have been much easier to put some metal barriers instead but the Spanish decided to use stones, concrete and white paint to construct something that not only protects the road users but also constitutes a part of this unforgettable picture that is so typical for Spanish mountain roads.

We have done almost all the famous inclines in the area. There’s only one to go, the most famous: Coll de Rates. This is a road that gets pretty crowded during the peak time of training camps. Thankfully, it was getting late so we didn’t expect anybody there.

Single cyclists that we pass greet us, nobody sucks our wheels without asking, and no-one wants to race. Impeccable cycling etiquette. After riding for seven hours, we really don’t have the energy to play such games. A couple of power climbs remaining to drain us completely and we’re home.

Temporary breakdowns are normal given how much effort our bodies have endured. But as long as we keep strong mentally, everything usually turns out fine. We refill our sugars and set off to get what we came for. Each of us knows what the final incline means. Nobody is talking. We are just going ahead. “See you at the top, fellas!”

Actually, I am the first one to fall behind. I’m moving at the pace of a snail. The higher I go, the more of the ocean I can see. And again I’m reminded of the funny contrast between our three-person group conquering mountains on our bikes and the masses of tourists sipping expensive drinks on crowded beaches. They all seem to be happy, but I don’t envy them a bit. Although I am close to collapsing on this climb, I know that the satisfaction at the top will be much bigger!

Some people call it fighting with your own limits but to me it’s a type of meditation. I am completely separated from the surrounding world when I get to this stage. My legs have taken control of the pedals, and my mind is focused on the road. I can’t stop because if I do, I won’t be able to start again.

We are at Coll de Rates 2.1 – the definition of a hidden incline. Hundreds of cyclists pass this place everyday but none of them knows that this little gravel path leads to the most magical uphill around. It’s only 2.6km long but the average grade is 11%. It’s an asphalt road with yellow stripes painted in the middle, whose purpose baffles us – the road is so narrow that only one car could fit here.

Again, the Spanish created something beautiful for us cyclists. The road is full of narrow turns at the beginning. Then, it transforms into a set of long straight-aways running to the sky. The unguarded precipice somehow magnifies this impressive view.

At the bottom of the valley we can see a wrecked car whose driver must have found the road simply too difficult. It is a virtual wall which we needed to zigzag from side to side just in order to keep moving. We cross the final hairpins and the final wall thanks to the strength of our minds rather than bodies.

The sun slowly sets behind the mountains and colours their tops red. The wind subsides and the day is drawing to a close. Three exhausted pals are sitting on a mountaintop raising a victorious toast for the adventure just completed.

Nothing on earth can match the taste of the beers we’ve earned today. We don’t have to talk; each of us has the same amazing feeling deep inside. Life is worth living for such days.

Click on the image above to see the Strava file from the main ride described in the article

Our first destination was the town of Onimichi which is the start of the Shimanami Kaido cycleway which traverses a group of connected islands via roads and staggering bridges. We took the high-speed train (Shinkansen) down to Onomichi which was to be the starting point for our journey.

We were greeted by Aki, who would be our friendly Japanese guide for the week. We checked into the Onomichi U2 Cycle Hotel which was an unexpected surprise. The building is a 70-year-old shipyard warehouse which was beautifully renovated and opened in March. In it was a Giant bike shop, bakery, bar, restaurant, and of course hotel rooms specifically designed for cyclists. Inside were bike racks, workstands to assemble your bike, footpumps, in-suite bike hangers, laundry (to Danny’s delight) and everything else needed to make a cyclist feel at home.

While Danny, Paul and I unpacked our bikes Aki was champing at the bit to take us out riding. No sleep, swollen cankles, and too much junkfood; a light ride in the sunshine just might be the perfect thing to loosen up the legs and get into the spirit of our roadtrip.

I don’t think it was much more than ten minutes into the ride that my heartrate was at 180bpm and Aki had Danny, Paul and myself strung out like we were coming into the bell lap of a crit. Aki was on a timeline and needed to get us to this spectacular climb we wanted to visit and back safely before sundown. This apparently meant that we needed to average 45km/hr! From then on in our trip, Aki earned the nickname “Akimov” (after legendary hardman Viatcheslav Ekimov).

We followed the Shimanami cycleway around Japan’s Seto Inland Sea, exploring a rustic side of Japan as we rode over spectacular suspension bridges with beautiful ocean views that would be icons of most cities in the world. Here, these feats of enginnering are commonplace. In fact, the cycleway boasts the world’s longest series of suspension bridges as well as the longest suspension bridge in the world (by length).
 

From Onomichi we hopped from island to island, all of which seemed to be conservative places where much of the old Japan remains. There probably isn’t much of a reason for tourists to visit these areas, but fortunately the bike often brings us to places we’d otherwise never have a reason to go.

The Shimanami cycleway is impressively set up for cyclists. Having a map is often a good idea when riding unfamiliar roads, but this entire route was marked by a blue line painted on the road wherever it wasn’t obvious. The odd time we saw a vehicle, they always gave more than enough room when passing. It felt extremely safe.

At each bridge was a toll where you toss a ticket (each costing approximately 50-yen or 100-yen) into a basket. Paul, Danny and myself found it curious that it was simply an honour system without anything holding you back if you didn’t want to pay. But if you know the Japanese, the honour system goes much much further than it would in most western countries.

As we made our way along the cycleway, we started to feel like we wanted to discover something different. Big bridges and bike paths were good, but we wanted to get off the beaten path and explore. Lucky for us, Akimov knew exactly where to take us.

Instead of going the more travelled path to Imabari we headed west towards Kure and ventured to roads, villages and mountains that not many other cycling tourists would have seen. Akimov drove the pace through historic towns that were hundreds of years old, pathways that traversed the edges of mountains, and coastline roads that hugged the inland sea. It was one of the most memorable days on a bike in my life. Paul, Danny and I looked at each other in awe at every corner.

I’ve never been to Italy’s Cinque Terra, but Paul has and he was astonished at how much the mountain roads here shared with some the agricultural areas you pass through when walking the Cinque Terra. Terraced land plunging into the sea, small trolleys on a single metal track used to collect the harvest and small villages nestled into the base of the hills.

It was beginning to get dark and we finished the ride just short of Hiroshima where we were aiming. We got transport to our hotel and called it a day.

Our ride from Onomichi to Kure was perhaps a bit unrealistic for regular visitors as it was a one-way trip and the Tourism Board had our luggage transported to our hotel in Hiroshima. But courier services are extremely well set up and affordable in Japan and shipping your luggage to your hotel on the other side is a good option.

That night we went to a Japanese-Korean style barbecue which would have been an outstanding meal in its own right, but after the long day on the bike and trying to follow Amimov’s wheel for hours on end, it may have been the best meal I’ve ever tasted. Yes, I say that all the time, but this time I really mean it. The amount I ate was surely proof of that.

Our ride to Nukui Dam was one of our contingency plans in case the Shimanami cycle way didn’t deliver what we had hoped. However, if we just put our legs up and didn’t touch our bikes for the rest of the trip, it would have still been a successful trip.

But we wanted more. Paul cleverly discovered this route by looking at the Strava heatmaps of the area, and judging by topographical maps, Google Street View, and the popularity of Strava routes, this was going to be one hell of a good ride. This was also Akimov’s stomping ground and he knew the roads well.

We got rolling and the legs were heavy. The sensation was accentuated by starting on a gradual 40km ascent which didn’t look like we were climbing.

Just like the previous day, we encountered a wide range of terrain in a relatively small area. We made our way to the top of a ski field through a narrow forest road that we would have never found a few years earlier without the tools we have today. But still, technology will ever beat local knowledge and Akimov was our saviour.

An example of the invaluable local knowledge Aki brought was when he took us to the top of a climb that seemed to be slightly off the route we had set. The road ended and Aki hopped off his bike and began walking up a steep grassy hill that was about 300m in elevation. Paul, Danny and I looked at each other, cringed and shook our heads. We (well, mostly Paul, the man who’s climbed Everest) protested to turn back but Aki wouldn’t have a word of it and just kept walking.

We had no other option but to follow and when we reached the top we understood when Aki was so insistent. The views were magnificent but it was still no place for a carbon road bikes.

Aki took a quick view and kept walking down the other side towards what looked like some singletrack below. We still wondered what the hell we were doing here. When we got to where Aki was taking us, to our amazement, it was paved singletrack. I’d never seen anything like it! We were smack bang in the middle of nowhere, and the next thing we knew we were riding singletrack that mountainbikers could only pray for, but on our roadbikes. On bitumen. Only in Japan…

We would never question Aki’s judgement again.

Back to the hotel after another “most memorable days of riding in my life” we headed straight back to the same Korean BBQ joint, this time without our generous guide or hosts. It’s a miracle we found it again. Fortunately the restaurant staff recognised our appetites and didn’t need to endure to our sign language to know what we wanted. Once again, I set a new record for the amount of beef eaten in a single sitting.

After two solid days of riding that blew away our expectations, we unanimously decided that we didn’t need to rush out of Hiroshima and engage our contingency plans. We had planned on going to Kyoto to discover the riding there, but it would have been rushed and there was absolutely no need.

Instead we decided to spend some time in Hiroshima, a city best known, of course, for being devastated by an atomic bomb on August 6, 1945. It would have been a shame to leave Hiroshima without visiting the Peace Park Memorial Museum, a building dedicated to both documenting that moment in history and striving for world peace. The museum was a confronting display of what humankind can “achieve” and the bombing was very well documented and preserved as a lesson to ensure that it will never happen again.

I’ve always known that there’s no better way to experience and discover a country than by bike and our trip to Japan highlighted this once again. The bike took us to parts of Japan we’d never otherwise consider going and made us some friends along the way.

Now when I think of words to describe Japan, “cyclist’s playground” will certainly be on the list.

Mustang is in the Tibetan plateau, a high altitude desert. Rocks, stones, and soil in shades of brown, ochre and red against the infinite blue sky. We ride on a jeep trail that follows a valley with side cliffs, majestically showing the signs of glacial erosion and the work of the winds.

The contrast of blue and brown is interrupted around every 10 kilometres by the lush green of the barley fields around beautiful villages. First we reach Kagbeni, then Chuksang, then Chele.

White Tibetan houses stand in clusters by the fields. Their windows are small. The white walls are painted with red stripes to keep the evil spirits away. Wood branches are displayed along the perimeter of the roof as a sign of wealth.

At Chele the road starts to climb. The mountain pass ahead is higher than 4,000 meters.

Climbing is about getting into a rhythm, where the body finds solace in its repetition. Like meditating, when focusing empties the mind of thoughts, the body enters a trance-like state where pain is somehow subdued. Without rhythm, climbing is unbearable. Every turn in the road carries the hope of seeing the summit, just to reveal more turns, more climbing, more pain.

As I keep pedaling and climbing, I think of Tim Krabbe’s 1978 book ‘The Rider’ where he shares what goes on in the mind of a cyclist at each kilometre of a local race. He calls shifting to a lighter gear “taking painkiller pills.” The strongest riders – those who put more kilometres into their training (for cycling is a fair sport) – keep their biggest gear squeaky clean, and leave their adversaries behind. For the rest of us, the painkillers available are limited, as there are only a few gears to shift into. Only rhythm can save us.

There is no rhythm today. The road is at times too steep, at times too technical. I must stop, put the bike on my shoulders, and walk on. Unbearable. Never ending, like the chilled winds that come down from the glaciers. I miss my road bike. I miss the smoothly paved Stelvio and the Tourmalet.

But this broken climb is also epic, for cycling is about climbing. The Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France became epics in the mountains. On mountain roads, thousands of fans camp, wait, and cheer the cyclists who become heroes. Cyclists conquer the mightiness of nature by means of the most simple and most clever machine made by man. The beauty of climbing is in the certainty that the act itself entails; as human beings, we find comfort in certainties. The pain of going uphill is certain, unavoidable, but also the summit, eventually, is certain.

The rewards that always come with reaching the top here in Mustang are incredible. I stand in front of amazing views of Tibet to the north and the Annapurna to the south. I experience a sense of achievement at having crossed the same passes that were the subject of the adventurers’ tales I’ve dreamt of since I was a kid.

The descent is certain too: the thrill of speed, the magic of the wind in your hair, the gain of distance without effort, the relaxation of the muscles. We ride down all the way to the small village of Syanboch, which we reach just at the right moment: dusk.

Our exhaustion is pleasantly countered by the simplicity of the homestay that hosts us. Dinner is butter tea, an omelet, the local Tibetan bread, and few boiled vegetables from the garden. The bedroom is a small empty room, with only a bed and a poster of Mount Kailash, the centre of the world for the Tibetans.

Outside, darkness envelops everything. The sky is full of stars. It’s cozy to sit in the kitchen around the stove. We are still in our dusty cycling clothes, our faces black. Our host’s face is dirty too, from his day in the field. He speaks to his elderly mother in a language that sounds like a lullaby for us. She is in the corner spinning yak wool. Back to our bedroom, we are fast asleep; the sleep of the righteous is what the bicycle gives you.

The prize of every traveler venturing into Mustang is its capital, the fortified Lo Manthang; it finally comes into view on the top of the last of the mountain passes. I look at the city as a dream come true, as a conquest on a bicycle.

A few hostels have sprung up around the walls of the city since it opened itself to the global tourism in the early 1990s. I find hotels soulless, like airports. The beauty of cycle touring is its ability to unlock the place you visit and its culture. The pace of cycling is slow enough to allow you to see the details, yet fast enough to cover distance. The climax after a day of cycle touring is to be able to stay with a local family in their home, as a guest. This is what I intend to do here as well.

On every one of my cycling trips, at around six in the afternoon, when men are heading back home after working in the fields or taking care of their small business ventures in the villages, I start my search for food and shelter. I call it “generating benevolence”: it entails finding a human being and having him willing to draw on the basic human values of hospitality and assistance by way of sympathy, necessity, and interest.

On the high pastures in the Pamirs or in the cotton fields of Uzbekistan, a western man in lycra on a bicycle is as exotic and interesting to the locals as a nomad herder living in a yurt or a lama of a fortified monastery is to me. While tourists often generate indifference (or at best are seen as rich men to make some quick dollars off of), people engaged in sports are almost universally seen with sympathy.

In the remote Wamena valley in Papua, tribesmen joined me barefoot for few kilometres as they saw me running by; in the Turkmen Karakum desert cars stopped to offer me water; in the remote beaches of the Philippines, in the plantations of Malaysia, in the slums of Jakarta people stood by the road giving me the thumbs up.

When it is clear that no options are available, it is rare that people do not assist. Generating benevolence requires a sixth sense on how to pick the person to ask for assistance: why him and not another? I follow a few tips from experience: a house with a well-kept garden or with flowers, even if modest, is a sign of a good place to stay. A doctor is likely to have a clean house. I prefer to choose and generate benevolence rather than following those who approach me with an offer in the first place.

My experience is that most of the time you are better off in a home than a hotel or camp ground, and, most important of all, you are always sure of an interesting glimpse into the real life of the locals. A home does not lie; it says who you are. I run a private kitchen in Hong Kong. I cook at my home or at my client’s home for the simple reason that is the most meaningful way I know to generate cultural exchange out of brief encounters.

The family that hosts me in Lo Manthang is gathered on the first floor, as the ground floor is reserved, as is customary, for the cattle, and today to our bicycles as well. Their daughter is making the dough for the Tukpa, the local version of gnocchi. The mother is preparing fresh butter by pounding it in a wood cylinder. The stove is fired by cow dung, and a soup is simmering on it with pieces of yak meat. The father is spinning the prayer wheel.

The daughter speaks good English. With her soothing smile, she tells me that Mustang is a happy land because of the people’s devotion to Buddhism, their strong sense of community, and their contentment to live simply, like their ancestor did. “Foreigners can experience the gentleness of the people of Mustang and the purity of our landscapes. They can make it theirs and carry into their life,” she says.

Sometimes we are lucky. We find the person with the key to a cave, its roof covered with mandalas whitened by time. We encounter a monk who allows us to enter into the assembly hall of a monastery and admire the clay statues of the Buddhist’s Gelugpa tradition: the eleven-headed Avalokita, Manjusri, and Sakyamuni. On the walls, frescos depict a green Tara and a series of Indian yogis. It is a magical place and there is a special sense of belonging, for we arrive here as pilgrims would: by simple means, in our case a bicycle.

We found a jeep driver who agreed to take our bicycles back to the beginning of the Mustang valley, at Muktinath, where the Annapurna Circuit skirts this magic kingdom. We will go back on foot, through valleys too remote and technical even for mountain bike.

Muktinath is at the base of the highest pass of the 5,400-metre Thorong La. We got our bicycles back and left Mustang to follow the circuit counterclockwise. I spare my back and hire a horse to carry my bicycle to the top, as does my guide. My companion Ake feels strong and carries his bicycle all the way up the mountain, though the snow.

The first part of the descent, down to the hut of Torong, is very technical, but soon the trail becomes easier, save for the steep precipices on its side. The valley turns east and opens up majestic views over the mountains: Gangapurna, Annapurna III, IV, and II.

We reach Mantang. A road from Besisahar was built recently, although the jeeps do not arrive up here yet because of a missing bridge. The road was very badly received by hikers globally, supposedly because it disrupts the sense of wilderness of the Annapurna Circuit. But it was very much needed by the locals. And it also opens up new touring opportunities for cyclists.

We ride down the valley through ancient forests. We have left the Tibetan desert and the Himalayan snows behind. From Muktinath we reach Besisahar in two days, and in five hours by car we are back in Katmandu.

A Kipling poem speaks about the instinct of men to go far away, beyond the mountains. I have been by bicycle beyond the mountains, in the valley of Mustang. There is nothing beyond the mountains, simply peacefulness and the sense of freedom that the immense landscape instills. One of the monks we met told me that the ascetics who inhabited the caves of Mustang were not looking for anything. But this nothingness has a lot of charm, and is full of meaning.

To be continued …

If you tell a cyclist about the Alps, they will probably think of the famous mountain passes of the Tour de France. But the Alps are far bigger than just the climbs of France. There are a myriad of destinations to choose from.

Tirol is a region situated on the border of Austria and Italy which is more often associated with skiing rather than cycling. All the better for us — the area, despite in the midst of holidays, is pretty much desolate. There are no crowds of tourists or lines of cars spoiling the fun.

We’re here for only a couple days to acquaint ourselves with the mountains and let our legs get used to the never-ending hills before we set off for the proper roadtrip. We didn’t plan out our routes. All we had in mind was one magical word: “Höhenstraße”, or “high road”. That is all one needs here.

We find it immediately and got on to the Zillertaler Höhenstraße. We leave the town and immediately get on to a single car-wide road going to nowhere. It is not the typical road made to connect two cities. It is one of those roads that looks like it was designed for cyclists, running somewhere on the hillside, twisting into picturesque hairpins with views out of this world.

The weather is great and we keep shouting “whoaaa!” each time another spectacular view appears from around the bend. It is a cycling amusement park full of climbs and descents. We are focused, tired and immensely satisfied. Our first day couldn’t be more perfect.

Something completely different awaited us the next day. Instead of the scorching sun, heat and beautiful views we faced the cold, thick fog and pouring rain.

We start from Imst, heading for an unknown mountain pass. We don’t want to know what it is, we just want to enjoy the ride along the road situated on the wall of a great ravine, halfway through the steaming mountain. There is only a wooden rail between us and the precipice.

We’re surrounded by heavy clouds, thick fog and slanting rain, all while Jarek treats us with stories from his time as a pro dropping names that most of us only dream of riding beside.

We are unable to see what’s behind the next turn or how far it is to the top. But every mountain has its oeak, and we will finally get to this one’s as well. It’s getting dreadfully cold and the only tourist we come across are dressed as if they was taking part in a polar expedition. We are also trying to keep warm. Dominik puts on his leg warmers but Jarek says that doing so in the summer is unbecoming. Alright, if a pro says so, he must be right. We put on only rain jackets and head down.

I don’t know how high we’ve climbed but the descent seems endless. And it is not because we are going slowly – our brake pads would quickly disintegrate had we wanted to ride slowly. Fortunately the road was such that we were able to descend like kamikazes. I think it was one of the most beautiful descents in my life, with perfect tarmac, banked turns and long curves where we could easily see if a car was going our way.

With the wet weather we didn’t expect to encounter anybody or anything – the road was all ours.

Innsbruck. The heart of Tirol. The sun slowly emerges from behind the mountains, heralding what is going to be another regular day for many. But not for us. We are about to do what we have come here for – the destination of our roadtrip.

We will start and finish in Austria but we will spend a half of the day in Italy. Planning out a route in the Alps is no piece of cake because the roads run from one valley to another, with many mountain passes. The itinerary looks pretty easy on the map, maybe because the map is flat. But we know that today our road will very far from flat.

We begin with Brenner Pass. It is a light warm-up compared to what’s in store for us. We set off in great moods, listening to Jarek’s stories about the life of a domestique to our past idols. The conversation lasts only a moment before it’s brutally interrupted by a very strong wind blowing right in our faces, turning the ride on this slight uphill into a battle for every metre.

We move closer to one another and start spinning the pedals as if we were breaking away from a peloton. Dominik is doing whatever he can, I am taking my turn at the front for a couple of seconds. It’s only really Jarek that’s doing the hard work – without him we would get blown back to Innsbruck.

The gruelling struggle is over when we reach what we wrongly assume to be a mountain pass. Instead of a summit we get a lovely town, Brennero. However, it’s too early for a coffee break, and no one is thinking about it yet. We just want to get away from this wind, which doesn’t get any weaker on the way down.

We stop rolling turns at the front as we look for a road sign to Jaufenpass. The proper mountains have arrived.

The mountain grabs you by the throat right away and makes you pant. But we have no reason to complain – this is what we wanted and have having a kind of masochistic fun. There are only 100km left after all. The end seems very close. We are not in a hurry – the sun is still high.

As we are climbing the hill we are passing cows that are chewing the grass at the same slow pace we are moving at. Some of them even throw an indifferent glance our way. Maybe they think we’re idiots. “Why don’t they just lie down on the grass?”.

The pack of motorcyclists that pass us by might think the same. The Jaufenpass mountain is a raceway. Nobody here is enjoying the nature or the views. Everybody is pushing their machines to their absolute limits. This isn’t the type of company we wanted – we have to constantly watch our backs as they seem to think that riding in the middle of the road is a good idea.

It takes us almost an hour and a half to get to the end of the second mountain pass. This time instead of wind we get some seriously steep grades. It is a horribly long climb with just a single flat section as a consolation. At the end of a mountain pasture, where there are no more trees, there is only a green forest clearing and a narrow path.

A couple of switchbacks more and we get to Passo Giovo, at 2,094 m above sea level. The café at the top is crowded by motorcyclists who seem to be in a hurry. We take a deep breath of satisfaction and enjoy the view before we begin the ride down.

From its south side, Jaufenpass is an incredibly picturesque road. Almost the entire time you can see a huge valley and mountain ranges sticking out of it. It’s a delight for the eyes. Unless of course you are descending with the likes of Jarek and Dominik who know how to get down a mountain at warp speed.

So I forget about taking in the views. There is no room for distraction. All the more so because of the motorcyclists who might show up behind your back. There are many of them coming from the opposite direction but none of them behind us – despite their huge engines and even bigger brake discs, nobody has managed to catch up with us. It was half an hour of euphoria like I’ve never felt.

The Alps are very simple in a way. There are valleys and summits, climbs and descents. That’s it. The question of stops and coffee breaks is pretty straightforward as well — you have only two possibilities, either at the top or in the town at the foot of the mountain. We have missed out on too many of such opportunities so far. It’s time we stop.

These mountains can drain you of every calorie. We stop in San Leonardo, a beautiful, typically Tirolean town where cafes are plentiful. We lounge comfortably and treat ourselves with good coffee and apfelstrudel. We’ve earned it and we take our time.

Each of us is already tired and instead of a only a piece, we’d most certainly prefer a whole cake. Knowing that we still have a lot of cycling up the hill to do we stuff ourselves with anything at hand and set off to conquer another mountain pass. It is getting difficult.

We start from a valley with our heads craning up towards the snowy mountain tops. One of them is our goal. We have two vertical and 30 horizontal kilometres to cover. Timmesjoch, Passo del Rombo. The names might not sound familiar to the average cyclist but the hill we are riding is a good match for the most famous of mountain passes.

It starts nice and easy but the first switchbacks, narrow turns and steep sections let our legs know that this mountain is going to be as painful as anything we’ve ridden before. There’s no discussion; we just continue on ahead.

To distract us from the pain, Jarek tells us stories about how he used to train with Simoni, Piepoli and Szmyd. He tells us how he carried Cunego’s or Ballan’s water bottles or how he dictated the tempo for his leaders. We are all ears, imagining the scenes in our heads and suddenly we end up sucking the narrator’s wheel, as if we were a part of his story.

The problem is that this mountain is a monster and even the best domestique in the world is of little help here. But the point isn’t riding as fast as possible. After some time each of us is riding on his own, silent and concentrated. The area begins to empty, while most of the sky is covered with dark clouds. There are no motorcyclists, cars or people passing us. We are almost alone on this mountain.

The road to the mountain pass is closed to traffic in the evening and it is getting later. We take the last of the narrow hairpins as wide as possible to reduce the gradient. Our legs begin to beg for mercy but we refuse to stop, knowing that reaching the summit will be well worth the effort.

The final part of Passo del Rombo is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The road appears to be hanging over the escarpment and the mountain around us seems to be within arm’s reach. Our legs are now empty and we are not sure how high we are or how far it is to the summit. We have come out of the forest the snow on the roadside make us realise how high we atually are.

Just before the end we have to go through a long dark tunnel that gives us a surge of adrenalin. We are gathering speed as if we were close to a finish line. I grab the lower handlebars and lock onto Jarek’s wheel — he is not waiting for anyone.

We ride the last kilometre as if it was the end of a mountainous stage in some grand tour. Finally, we get to the Timmelsjoch mountain pass. We are 2,500m above sea level and we are all alone. The sky has been completely covered with lead-colored clouds and the wind is whistling sonorously. We get off our bikes, totally worn out, and eat whatever we have left while staring at the mountains.

The ride down to Sölden is my fastest descent in memory. I didn’t know how fast I was going but Dominik, who was the only one with a speedometer, said that we looked like little dots quickly disappearing from his view. His top speed was 99km/h. We felt like we were dying on the way up, and now were risking our lives going down.

It all starts from the very first meters. A wall of tarmac running for 13km. It becomes a little flatter somewhere in the middle, letting you catch your breath and make a couple of lighter spins, but only for a moment. Inside the entry gates must usually be full of skiers and snowboarders in winter but now there isn’t anybody in the area.

Ötztaler Gletscherstrasse. An climb leading to the mountain glacier that is extremely popular in the winter but completely empty in the summer. Now, it is being visited by only the three of us. The whole road is up for grabs. We are making the most of the turns like at a race and zig-zagging from left to right on steeper sections. Huge signs count down the hairpins and make us realise that we still have a long way to go.

Dominik picks up his rhythm and rides off. Jarek stays with me, out of habit I guess. I can hardly speak, I can feel my energy supply being asphyxiated. We stop by a mountain creek to fill our bottles with the water and then we’re back on the bike. Jarek flicks through the gears and starts chasing Dominik and leaves me in my misery.

Now each of us are on our own. I don’t know what Jarek feels and I can only guess what Dominik does, but my tempo has now settled into a free-flowing mode of cycling meditation. The road goes up for quite a while, the landscape becomes more and more harsh and the sky is increasingly darker.

We are at the foot of the mountain glacier. The lifts are not operating. Totally exhausted, we are standing in the middle of a huge and completely empty car park, only with mountains around us. Getting here was worth all the effort it required. I take a deep breath and enjoy the moment. This is what it’s all about.

One month before my departure to Kashmir, I received an e-mail from my mother, all in capital letters, subject “URGENT: “CALL ME WHEN YOU WAKE UP” (I live in Hong Kong and she in Italy). “I AM READING EVERYWHERE THAT KASHMIR IS DANGEROUS; ALL TRAVEL SHOULD BE AVOIDED.”

There is no glory in dying for adventure. But, when you share your travel plans at home about destinations that are just a bit out of the ordinary, people are often much too willing to share stories they heard from friends of friends, adding their own insights.

To some, Muslims would angrily not allow me to cycle during Ramadan because my need for food and water would make me break fasting. A common view was that I would be kidnapped along the Line of Control or savaged by bandits on the back roads. A doctor in a well-known clinic in Hong Kong suggested no less than 10 vaccinations, including yellow fever, which is not in Asia. Travel advisories often apply to a whole country, instead of just where it exists in a specific location.

To make a decision on whether or not to listen to all that good-natured advice, I have a magic four-word formula that I always ask them: “Have you been there?” This simple question has repeatedly saved me from suggestions that are, most of the time, overly pessimistic and seldom accurate. If the answer is “no,” I stop listening. Thank you for your concern, but I need to do more research to find the truth about the place I want to visit.

The only way for a fair and up-to-date assessment of the challenges and opportunities of visiting either the center of Milan or the uninhabited valleys of Ladakh is the first-hand experience of someone who has recently been there. I called the Italian Embassy in India, and I was indeed discouraged from my plans, but not for the reason my mother was worried about: “you will be soon out of breath, the climbs are endless and at a high altitude. Take a jeep instead.”

Good intelligence comes from other cyclists who just did what I am embarking on (see, for example, the treasure of journals at crazyguyonabike). A rewarding experience is to meet fellow cyclists on the road going in the other direction. The conversation usually develops in the opposite fashion than those with people who have never been there. You first and foremost talk about what you can do, rather than what you cannot do.

I pass the shimmering Dal Lake and its houseboats, the Mughal gardens, and the lush and busy plains of the Kashmir Valley. At Ganderbal, 20 kilometres out of Srinagar, the road turns east towards the Himalayas – from time immemorial the symbol of human aspiration to the divine.

The road climbs, the river beside it grows in intensity, cultivated fields disappear, and the deciduous trees give way to the conifers. The first of the majestic glaciers, the Thajiwas, appears. I stop at Baltal, a vast, tented camp below the road. Thousands of pilgrims are preparing for the great pilgrimage to the holy cave of the Hindu God Shiva, the Amarnath Yatra.

I leave my bicycle and follow the crowd of chanting pilgrims on the narrow path up the mountain to a valley at 4,000 meters where Shiva – the lone wanderer, the yogi, the Great God – did his cosmic dances with all the gods gathered around him.

The road climbs steeper after Baltal, up hairpin curves, negotiating a deep canyon lined with ice walls. The goal is to traverse the Zoji La Pass, at 3,500 meters, to get over the Great Himalayas. The tarmac gives way to a rough and unstable terrain full of stones, with sheer slopes on the side that fall into the void.

I stay on the mountain side of the road. When the road narrows, I cycle in the middle of the road, making it impossible for vehicles to overtake me. I raise my arm, acknowledging the truck presence behind me, asking for consideration. They patiently wait; there is always respect in the backwaters of the world towards cyclists in their epic voyages. When it is safe, I let them pass, and they inevitably slow down when they are next to me and show me their thumbs up.

Once over the pass, the valley opens up; the lush green of Kashmir is gone, giving way to the barren aridity of Ladakh. There is no human settlement — absolutely nothing in either direction for many kilometres, save for an army checkpost. Instead of inspecting my panniers, they enthusiastically offer me the great Indian food that everywhere, even in this remote outpost, thanks to its magical combination of spices, tastes great. A group of entrepreneurial Kashmiri offer the unknown thrill of skidding on sledges, down a steep but short snowfield, to the few motorists passing by for the equivalent of 1 AUD.

Forty kilometres of descent in the wilderness with the wind in my hair. Engaging a desolate yet majestic landscape, taking in view after view, each depositing a layer of emotions in my spirit. At night, in my simple homestay in Draas (the small village that has the ubiquitous fame of being the second coldest place in winter across the world), the thick deposit of the world’s presence accumulated throughout a day results in a sense of fulfilment and happiness.

“The enemy is watching you,” warns a sign where the road is the closest to the Line of Control. The next sign has a painting of the face of Ayatollah Khomeini, for this place is Muslim Shiite. I leave the main road and turn into the tranquility of the Suru Valley, with poplars and willows fringing the road and cultivated fields along the river that runs slowly. Slowly is how time passes here, amongst the rugged barren hills. Slowly as my speed, which reflects the peacefulness and simplicity of this place and allows me to notice its small meaningful details.

The simple agrarian village is dominated by mosques with tin cupolas; a group of female students leisurely walks down the empty road with a white hijab veiling the head; an old man with a long beard and a sheepskin robe sits by the door of his house.

There are no gels nor energy drinks here. There are no shops. There is just a small café with a table outside where I can get a masala tea and a plumcake. Children surround my bicycle full of admiration. The sorrowful recitation of an elegiac poem comes from the loudspeakers on the minaret. I enter the mosque and sit amongst the row of believers who are crying, hitting their foreheads, commemorating the martyrdom and valour of Hussain Ali.

The humanity that is in the act of cycling lowers cultural barriers. Local people see the cyclist’s efforts and his vulnerability. He is offered support, hospitality and acceptance.

The road turns into gravel, winding through a deep valley that narrows into a canyon and then widens again, opening the view onto snow clad peaks. Suddenly I am in front of the sharp inclines of the Nun and the jagged edges of the Kun, the two beautiful and highest peaks of Ladakh. The village ahead, Parkachik, is the last Muslim settlement, with the last mosque and the last minarets, and then it will be stupas, prayer flags and monasteries.

There are no borders, but the religious ethos changes abruptly, just as the flora, geology, vernacular settlements, ethnicity, and culture have done every day since I left Srinagar. The valley becomes austere. No more lush fields, just boulders strewn all around and a vista over high peaks and glaciers. I do not meet any cyclists or foreigners. The few jeeps with tourists pass by so fast that I don’t even notice them. Why is it that no-one comes to see this incredible beauty? Is it only appreciable to those who look at it slowly?

Hours on the bicycle alone are a treasure of available time. I wanted to put them to good use by meditating, leveraging on the spirituality of these lands. Sitting still and focusing on the breath is a classical form of meditating, but other, more active forms of meditation are possible.

I concentrate totally on every pedal stroke I make, mindful of which muscle I activate, the progress between pushing and pulling, the balance in my body. I am aiming to clear the mind from clutter. I wonder at what is within and around me, without adding preconceptions.

I try to understand the nature of my perception and discern between beneficial and harmful states of mind. To paraphrase Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, I am cycling just for the pleasure of cycling, freely and firmly, without hurrying. I am present at every step. I look around and I see how wonderful life is. Let us cycle as free people and feel our steps growing lighter as we walk. Let us appreciate every pedal stroke.

Cyclists understand their environment exceptionally well. We take notice of every slight inclination of the terrain, we feel how the winds blow, we look for obstacles. The speed we travel allows us time to observe nature and people. Cyclists understand their body exceptionally well. We pay attention to our efforts, listen to what the different muscles tell us, and understand the different senses of fatigue.

In the middle of the bleak, wide basin of Rangdum, a 250-year-old fortified monastery stands on a small hill with the majestic encircling mountains, guarding the passage of the five valleys that converge here. From the monastery, the road ascends towards the Pensi La Pass, a climb that I engage with the trepidation of an epic adventure. The valley narrows, streams flow fast into the river down the valley, draining the grand glaciers, creating geometric deltas whose waters glare in the sun. Those are good pastures for the hundreds of yaks that graze undisturbed, for no one but the seasonal nomads lives here.

My earphones are playing Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. The road inclines steeply and turns to reveal a new landscape as the orchestra engages the fourth movement. I surge on my pedals following the surge in the tempo, increasing the pace, living — not thinking — what the neuroscientist António R. Damásio taught: that the brain treats great music as if it comes from the heart, not the ear. Today the music is complemented with the view, which my brain perceives to come not from the eyes but from the heart.

I reach the pass at 4,400 meters, seeing the thousands of prayer flags that inspire the traveler to spiritual practice. The road descends through a series of steep hairpins, with a breathtaking vista over the spectacular Drang-Drung Glacier that twists as it gently glides down the valley from the snowy plateau in the distance.

I reach Padum, the heart of the Zangskar Valley. I can only continue towards Leh on foot. I find a jeep driver who will drive to Kargil tomorrow morning. He is willing to put my bicycle on his rooftop. At Kargil, he will give my bicycle to a bus driver, who will deliver it to a contact person in Leh. As improbable as it may sound, I am totally confident that I will find my bicycle when I arrive in Leh a week from now. Padum is far, very far from the disaffection of the cities we live in.

To be continued …

Our first destination was the town of Onimichi which is the start of the Shimanami Kaido cycleway which traverses a group of connected islands via roads and staggering bridges. We took the high-speed train (Shinkansen) down to Onomichi which was to be the starting point for our journey.

We were greeted by Aki, who would be our friendly Japanese guide for the week. We checked into the Onomichi U2 Cycle Hotel which was an unexpected surprise. The building is a 70-year-old shipyard warehouse which was beautifully renovated and opened in March. In it was a Giant bike shop, bakery, bar, restaurant, and of course hotel rooms specifically designed for cyclists. Inside were bike racks, workstands to assemble your bike, footpumps, in-suite bike hangers, laundry (to Danny’s delight) and everything else needed to make a cyclist feel at home.

While Danny, Paul and I unpacked our bikes Aki was champing at the bit to take us out riding. No sleep, swollen cankles, and too much junkfood; a light ride in the sunshine just might be the perfect thing to loosen up the legs and get into the spirit of our roadtrip.

I don’t think it was much more than ten minutes into the ride that my heartrate was at 180bpm and Aki had Danny, Paul and myself strung out like we were coming into the bell lap of a crit. Aki was on a timeline and needed to get us to this spectacular climb we wanted to visit and back safely before sundown. This apparently meant that we needed to average 45km/hr! From then on in our trip, Aki earned the nickname “Akimov” (after legendary hardman Viatcheslav Ekimov).

We followed the Shimanami cycleway around Japan’s Seto Inland Sea, exploring a rustic side of Japan as we rode over spectacular suspension bridges with beautiful ocean views that would be icons of most cities in the world. Here, these feats of enginnering are commonplace. In fact, the cycleway boasts the world’s longest series of suspension bridges as well as the longest suspension bridge in the world (by length).
 

From Onomichi we hopped from island to island, all of which seemed to be conservative places where much of the old Japan remains. There probably isn’t much of a reason for tourists to visit these areas, but fortunately the bike often brings us to places we’d otherwise never have a reason to go.

The Shimanami cycleway is impressively set up for cyclists. Having a map is often a good idea when riding unfamiliar roads, but this entire route was marked by a blue line painted on the road wherever it wasn’t obvious. The odd time we saw a vehicle, they always gave more than enough room when passing. It felt extremely safe.

At each bridge was a toll where you toss a ticket (each costing approximately 50-yen or 100-yen) into a basket. Paul, Danny and myself found it curious that it was simply an honour system without anything holding you back if you didn’t want to pay. But if you know the Japanese, the honour system goes much much further than it would in most western countries.

As we made our way along the cycleway, we started to feel like we wanted to discover something different. Big bridges and bike paths were good, but we wanted to get off the beaten path and explore. Lucky for us, Akimov knew exactly where to take us.

Instead of going the more travelled path to Imabari we headed west towards Kure and ventured to roads, villages and mountains that not many other cycling tourists would have seen. Akimov drove the pace through historic towns that were hundreds of years old, pathways that traversed the edges of mountains, and coastline roads that hugged the inland sea. It was one of the most memorable days on a bike in my life. Paul, Danny and I looked at each other in awe at every corner.

I’ve never been to Italy’s Cinque Terra, but Paul has and he was astonished at how much the mountain roads here shared with some the agricultural areas you pass through when walking the Cinque Terra. Terraced land plunging into the sea, small trolleys on a single metal track used to collect the harvest and small villages nestled into the base of the hills.

It was beginning to get dark and we finished the ride just short of Hiroshima where we were aiming. We got transport to our hotel and called it a day.

Our ride from Onomichi to Kure was perhaps a bit unrealistic for regular visitors as it was a one-way trip and the Tourism Board had our luggage transported to our hotel in Hiroshima. But courier services are extremely well set up and affordable in Japan and shipping your luggage to your hotel on the other side is a good option.

That night we went to a Japanese-Korean style barbecue which would have been an outstanding meal in its own right, but after the long day on the bike and trying to follow Amimov’s wheel for hours on end, it may have been the best meal I’ve ever tasted. Yes, I say that all the time, but this time I really mean it. The amount I ate was surely proof of that.

Our ride to Nukui Dam was one of our contingency plans in case the Shimanami cycle way didn’t deliver what we had hoped. However, if we just put our legs up and didn’t touch our bikes for the rest of the trip, it would have still been a successful trip.

But we wanted more. Paul cleverly discovered this route by looking at the Strava heatmaps of the area, and judging by topographical maps, Google Street View, and the popularity of Strava routes, this was going to be one hell of a good ride. This was also Akimov’s stomping ground and he knew the roads well.

We got rolling and the legs were heavy. The sensation was accentuated by starting on a gradual 40km ascent which didn’t look like we were climbing.

Just like the previous day, we encountered a wide range of terrain in a relatively small area. We made our way to the top of a ski field through a narrow forest road that we would have never found a few years earlier without the tools we have today. But still, technology will ever beat local knowledge and Akimov was our saviour.

An example of the invaluable local knowledge Aki brought was when he took us to the top of a climb that seemed to be slightly off the route we had set. The road ended and Aki hopped off his bike and began walking up a steep grassy hill that was about 300m in elevation. Paul, Danny and I looked at each other, cringed and shook our heads. We (well, mostly Paul, the man who’s climbed Everest) protested to turn back but Aki wouldn’t have a word of it and just kept walking.

We had no other option but to follow and when we reached the top we understood when Aki was so insistent. The views were magnificent but it was still no place for a carbon road bikes.

Aki took a quick view and kept walking down the other side towards what looked like some singletrack below. We still wondered what the hell we were doing here. When we got to where Aki was taking us, to our amazement, it was paved singletrack. I’d never seen anything like it! We were smack bang in the middle of nowhere, and the next thing we knew we were riding singletrack that mountainbikers could only pray for, but on our roadbikes. On bitumen. Only in Japan…

We would never question Aki’s judgement again.

Back to the hotel after another “most memorable days of riding in my life” we headed straight back to the same Korean BBQ joint, this time without our generous guide or hosts. It’s a miracle we found it again. Fortunately the restaurant staff recognised our appetites and didn’t need to endure to our sign language to know what we wanted. Once again, I set a new record for the amount of beef eaten in a single sitting.

After two solid days of riding that blew away our expectations, we unanimously decided that we didn’t need to rush out of Hiroshima and engage our contingency plans. We had planned on going to Kyoto to discover the riding there, but it would have been rushed and there was absolutely no need.

Instead we decided to spend some time in Hiroshima, a city best known, of course, for being devastated by an atomic bomb on August 6, 1945. It would have been a shame to leave Hiroshima without visiting the Peace Park Memorial Museum, a building dedicated to both documenting that moment in history and striving for world peace. The museum was a confronting display of what humankind can “achieve” and the bombing was very well documented and preserved as a lesson to ensure that it will never happen again.

I’ve always known that there’s no better way to experience and discover a country than by bike and our trip to Japan highlighted this once again. The bike took us to parts of Japan we’d never otherwise consider going and made us some friends along the way.

Now when I think of words to describe Japan, “cyclist’s playground” will certainly be on the list.

With newly assembled, tuned and working bikes, our sights were set on a town to the north which boasted such sights as a mosque and temple. The actual sights weren’t the goal, but rather the experience of escaping the city. Very quickly the crowded, loud streets opened into fields and country roads, with small villages never too far apart.

As we passed, kids would yell and run out of their houses to greet us with “Hello” and “How are you?” and “What is your name?” Field workers carried scythes through gaps in grass, occasionally slashing at a portion of the field, only stopping to lift their heads and watch us ride past.

Two young kids approached us as we arrived at the mosque, one carrying a small chicken. He clasped it like a baby, and it seemed perfectly content in his grasp. The mosque itself was filled with kids – perhaps around nine or 10 – but very few adults could be seen. People ran from one building to another, all the time seeming in a rush, but with very little sound. Pigeons nested in the spires, occasionally getting a fright and all leaving at once, only to return again shortly after.

The road then took us west, stopping briefly at the Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple before we continued, searching for a tea stop. Chai stalls were in abundance. We chose one with an open sitting area outside, under the shade of a very large tree. A few shops were clustered together here – not a town, but not close to much else.

A small bridge was near the shops, and exploring past the bridge we found a whole community, living amongst an old temple grounds. The river lapped at the steps, where ladies sat and thrashed at their washing, hitting it against the stone time and time again, with soap suds floating downstream. Some men prayed, others sat idly on the steps or bathed in the river. Kids swam and laughed. We took photos and felt like true tourists.

The return journey to Mysore was much of the same, with a sandy bridge crossing in the middle. Traffic increased, and the full afternoon bustle of the city overwhelmed everything. Tuk-tuk fumes, incense and wafts of masala. Suddenly hungry, we stopped and had the local Indian specialty – a Thali consisting of many small mounds of vegetable curry, served on a banana leaf, accompanied by the soft, flat bread, paratha.

The afternoon was spent once again wandering, and preparing to leave Mysore the following morning. Another early night.

With the morning light came kites and crows sailing past our window. We gathered our things, and packed the bikes. An earlier departure meant we missed the busy traffic and saw the city covered in a light fog, beams of early sunlight streaming between the trees as we made our way toward Chamundi Hill.

Later, we realised that if this were a Western city, a climb as perfect as this would be teeming with road cyclists. Here, however, the bikes were replaced by mini buses filled with those looking to pray to the black granite Nandi Bull statue at around the halfway point to the summit. A short descent had us now travelling south – the direction we’d remain travelling until we reached our end point in Varkala.

We took the long way, well away from the highway. It added kilometres, but each one was worth it. Tiny yet completely ripe banana bunches hung from trees lining the roads and peeling revealed a seeded, very sweet version of our regular riding snack.

These roads made us feel like we were stepping back in time, to a place where people still lived off the land, and had little interest in material possessions – although this was occasionally blurred by loudspeakers blasting Indian pop music as we passed through some towns. It wasn’t long before we arrived in Nanjangud, carrying extra bananas in our jersey pockets.

Deciding against the highway we’d only caught a glimpse of along the way, the bus seemed a better option by far. A bus in the loosest of terms, our transport contained seats, but was entirely windowless, and mostly without sides, meaning those on the back would hold on to keep from falling out. Racing between gaps and often on the wrong side of the road with trucks approaching, our driver managed to somehow effortlessly guide us through the traffic we would have had difficulty riding amongst.

Accommodation for the evening was small bunk-style rooms; each dorm named after an animal native to the adjacent National Park. Dark seemed to arrive quickly, and sleep came with it.

Warnings were spoken about riding through the Tiger Reserve; our planned route for the morning. Tigers weren’t the main concern, but rather the elephants that also inhabited the area. Elephants have a tendency to charge, and if in danger the best we could do was throw our helmets toward the elephant, hoping that would keep them at bay.

What started as a morning covered in a blanket of heavy fog soon turned into a sunny yet mild day, as we made our slow journey through the forests on winding, undulating roads. The riding wasn’t easy, but it certainly was visually rewarding. Lush green forests parted occasionally to tease us with the view of the mountains that awaited us.

After passing through the border to a new state (Tamil Nadu), suddenly we came to the end of the National Park, where the mountains we had viewed hours earlier now towered beside us; their peaks lost in the clouds on an otherwise fine day. We relished the amazingly smooth road on the way to our next hotel – after days of potholes and gravel, this was a change we were extremely grateful for.

Our accommodation was nestled right at the base of the Nilgiri, or “Blue Mountains”. Tomorrow we’d face a climb that sounded amazing, yet dreadful; the climb to the summit was 11% for 11km, with an elevation gain of 1,200m, with a total of 1,700m to the town of Ooty itself.

Putting these numbers aside, we met a neighbouring farming family, and they invited us into their small home for ginger tea and a donut-like snack. Their farm was something from fiction; the grandfather tended to a small herd of cows, while the father looked after the crops. The other duties were shared between the sister and brother, with the mother looking after chickens and water. The view into this world was fascinating.

We could have happily moved to this farm, and not faced this looming mountain – but instead, we left their humble yet incredible abode, and went to bed. Sleep was necessary.

To be continued …

Photo gallery

Loren Rowney: Andy did the introductions. Our initial group included Chas & Drew the videographers, Brad the local tour guide, and my riding buddy for the weekend, Laura Wilson. We checked in to the Mantra, unpacked, kitted up and jumped in the car to chase the sunlight.

We were joined by a few locals who generously talked us through the climb and passed along all sorts of Cairns riding tips and tourist destination suggestions.

• Lauretta: a local paramedic, who is a roadie/mountain biker that runs women’s weekends away on the bike.
• Sarah: a local who loves riding of any kind – triathlon, mountain biking, road riding; she does it all.
• Sue: an Ironwoman, and owner of local Coolwater Caravan Park at the bottom of Copperlode

Insider tip from Sue: after climbing Copperlode, stop in to Elva’s Cafe for a mean smoothie or milkshake to refuel after your effort.

Laura Wilson: The introductions to Sue, Lauretta and Sarah happened on the bike. We were in a bit of a hurry to hit the road because of the waning daylight. The five of us stuck together as a group as we made our way up toward the top of Cooperlode. It was a slow but steady pace up to the summit.

We all had different levels of riding abilities, but it didn’t matter. I love when one person might be fitter than the other, but we actively make the choice to ride together. We dropped in and out of conversation. Sometimes that chatter was quite constant. At other times, we were too puffed too talk.

Loren Rowney: Typically after flying the last thing on your mind is kitting up and riding up a climb; however, Copperlode Dam was the climb earmarked to signal the official start to Roadtripping Cairns. The climb is a local favourite among cyclists, and once we began the ascent it was easy to see why.

Around nine kilometres long, Copperlode averages a seven percent gradient with pitches at over 10 percent. The climb is set amongst the beautiful tropical rainforests that make up Northern Queensland. It was a leisurely ride up the mountain, chasing the remaining sunlight for some good photo opportunities.

As we chit-chatted on the way up, Laura and I got to catch up on our 2014 year. There were ups and downs on both sides of the conversation, and it soon became apparent that this road trip was exactly what we needed.

I had never really considered Cairns as a place to go on a biking holiday, having only visited previously as a competitive runner about 10 years before. However after talking to Sue, Sarah and Lauretta, I knew I would be back in the future, and the road trip had barely even begun.

Laura Wilson: I wanted to stop and marvel at the scenery nearly the entire way up. We had been promised a beautiful view at the top of the climb if we summited before sunset, so rather than stop and take photos as we rode, we focussed all of our energy on making it to the top before the sun went down.

Loren Rowney: There’s just something exhilarating about riding on new roads. That unfamiliar territory. Not knowing what will come around the next corner. How much is this climb going to pitch up? What’s the view going to be like at the top? Are my legs going to survive!? All these questions float through your head as you keep on climbing in to the unknown.

When you finally reach the top, and you realise that yes, it is in fact the top of the climb, there’s a sudden sense of relief and elation! Yes! You’ve done it. You’ve made it to the top. I know it’s silly, but I silently pat myself on the back and smile to myself upon conquering a new climb.

Laura Wilson: The other women we were riding with have done this climb and seen this view quite frequently, but I think with us they were able to enjoy it from a visitor’s perspective. It was stunning, and Loren and I were soaking it all in – and I could tell Lauretta, Sarah and Sue appreciated our excitement. It’s easy to become immune to the beauty of your surroundings, but when you’re with someone seeing something for the first time, it serves as a reminder – like yeah, this is really good.

Loren Rowney: We had made it to the top just as the sun was setting. Chas and Drew jumped out of the car immediately to get the right angles for the shots from the drone. They were running around like crazy while we all stood there, smiling and laughing and talking about all that awaited us the next day. I was especially excited because the descent was up next, which is obviously the best and most rewarding part of any climb.

Loren Rowney: You know those days where you just go wow! That was a freaking awesome day! Well If I could list the best days in my life to date, this day would be one of them. Put me on anything that has two or four wheels, and I’m in my element. So quad biking, fat bike riding, horse riding and a helicopter ride to top it off? Well, that pretty much had me raring to go when the alarm went off at four in the morning.

It was a typical Queenslander start to day two. We woke well before the sun to make sure we were down the coast on Captain Cook Highway in time for the spectacular sunrise. As are most sunrises, it was worth the early alarm. Even being a Queenslander, the 4 a.m. start did hurt a tad, so I felt for my southerner companions. It was nothing coffee couldn’t fix, and thankfully lovely Sue provided the caffeine injection from her coffee shop.

Laura Wilson: Loren’s right. It was a very early morning, but it was easy to get out of bed because it was already so warm – and because I knew what the day ahead involved. Looking back, it’s amazing what we packed into 24 hours. We started out with a ride to the beach so we could watch the sunrise

Loren Rowney: I first met Laura two years ago at Tour Down Under. At the time, she had just recently started working in the cycling industry and was learning the ropes of the crazy world that is professional bike racing. I had just turned professional with Specialized-lululemon. We were both green and easily swept up in the circus that is TDU and our shared bike love.

Laura Wilson: I remember meeting Loren at Tour Down Under. It was on this 60km ride out to one of the stages. For me, that was a long ride – actually, I think it may have been my first long ride. I was that new to the industry. I was so in awe of her – so young and doing what she was doing on a professional team like Specialized-lululemon. And she was just the loveliest person ever. We were taking selfies during the ride. Well, Loren was taking selfies. I couldn’t take my hands off the bar at that point. She sent me the pictures after the ride, and I was all like: “Wow. A pro cyclist sent me a message.” I have a good laugh at myself about that all now.

Loren Rowney: As we walked along the beach taking in the sunrise and spectacular surroundings, we kept saying to one another: “How great is this!? How many people get to come and do something like this for work?” It was an easy transition from sharing our gratitude to discovering all else that we share. We quickly realised that our commonalities extend far beyond the bike – and that moment marked the beginning of a friendship away from cycling.

As we talked that morning, I realised we have the same fears, desires, hopes and dreams for ourselves. Friendship, food, love, travel – it was all talked about through this road trip. I find that it’s on the bike that you can truly get to know someone. It’s raw and real. All your emotions seem to bubble to the surface when your body is put under a bit of stress and releasing the endorphins that you get from exercising and doing something you genuinely love.

Laura Wilson: We’re both in much different places now then when we met in Adelaide. Our careers have evolved. Her family and my family have gone through quite a lot – divorce, cancer, depression, my mum died. We spent a lot of time talking about our family life. About how we’re coping and how we try to take strength from our struggles. I opened up to her because she asked the right questions and she left the space for me to answer honestly.

Conversation flows much more easily on the bike. I find that the longer you ride, the deeper the conversation gets. You do a morning ride, and you probably just talk about work or basic catch-up stuff. The longer you ride or the harder the terrain, that’s when the darker and deeper and more complex issues seem to surface. I think the toughness of the ride brings out your ability to tackle tough topics.

Loren Rowney: Post sunrise walk on the beach and some intense conversation, we kitted up and hit the picturesque Captain Cook Highway and met up with the other women for an easy brekky ride. The inaugural Cairns Ironman uses this road as part of the bike course in June, and if I was forced to be in a pain cave for 180km, I would want it to be right here. Nice undulating terrain with the mountains to your left and ocean to your right. Can you smell the serenity?

Laura Wilson: See that picture just to the right. That’s a classic case of food envy right there. The food at Nu Nu’s was amazing. We opened the menu, and I think we all shared the sentiment that we could have ordered pretty much anything and been happy with our choice. Which made choosing hard. I chose this healthy yoghurt and fruit parfait thing (pictured in the glass below). It was amazing how it was served. I was happy with my choice until…

…the food kept arriving at the table, and every dish was better than the last. It was a constant stop, stare and think – WOW! This is so good. I wanted to eat everything.

Loren Rowney: When we managed to stop gawking at the food, we ate and talked – and that’s really how we got to know the other incredible women around the table. I was particularly inspired by Sue, an Ironwoman, who managed to train around running a business and raising a family. And here’s little old me, paid to ride my bike, and that’s all I do. Every morning I wake up, I think how truly lucky am I, and this road trip just further reiterated this feeling.

Laura Wilson: The riding was amazing in Cairns, but I think it was all the extra activities that really made the trip feel like a holiday getaway for me. I’ve ridden my bike in some incredible places. I don’t get to the rest of the things we did in Cairns quite as often.

I could not stop laughing when we did the quad bike riding. Loren and I had the same ability there, which evened things out a bit. We could race each other and push each other in a way that we can’t on the bike because Loren’s so much faster and stronger than me. It was good to feel like I could finally go head-to-head with her in something!

Loren Rowney: As we tore up the dirt on quad bikes, toasted each other with ice cold beers and flew over the beauty that is the Great Barrier Reef, I think both Laura and I just let go. And that’s what this road trip was about – getting away with friends to ride bikes, have fun and put life on pause for a few moments. It couldn’t have come at a better time for me.

I came home to Australia in late October following a season spent in Europe and learned my mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer. This trip to Cairns was a chance for me to try and stop feeling guilty about my impending departure from Australia for the start of the new season. I was leaving my mum to face chemo without me, and while I knew she was strong enough to handle the challenge, I struggled with my inability to offer support in the form of my physical presence.

The situation is completely out of my control. And out of her control, too. My mum isn’t terminal. She’s got a very good prognosis; however, I still couldn’t help but feel sad and guilty that I was abandoning her as she embarked on this sort of scary journey. Which is where Laura stepped in, and through her own past experiences, helped me work through what was going on in my head. And it all happened because of the bike. Those raw emotions I was talking about? This was exactly that. We were able to ride up a climb side-by-side and unload. No judgement.

Laura Wilson: We tackled the Gillies Range Climb today. In advance, we decided we would climb solo and regroup at the top. I liked that plan. There’s less pressure when I can take things at my own pace. With my hip injury, I knew I would need to take my time.

I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve and share my fears willingly. I told everyone before we started the ride that I wasn’t sure if I could do it. “I’m not so fit,” I said. “I’m injured,” I reminded them. They told me it didn’t matter. That I needed to just get out there and climb. So, I did.

It was quiet around me. I took it all in – the sound of the birds, the smell of the humid heat, the sweat dripping down my face. I loved it.

That’s not to say it wasn’t a challenge. It certainly was. I got to the point where I started to wonder if I was really going to make it. Loren had ridden away from me and kept going, and I started questioning myself a little bit. Can I really do it? My hip is killing me. It’s a sharp, searing pain. Now my lungs hurt. Push through it, I told myself. I managed to keep climbing.

Loren was there with a huge smile for me at the top. You can surprise yourself on the bike. Overcome pain and tackle new challenges and redefine limits. It’s all part of the appeal, isn’t it?

Loren Rowney: Following our ascent and regrouping, we continued on the rolling hills for about 10km to the Cathedral fig tree where we stopped for something to drink and eat and to have a look around. As we rolled along the path, littered in leaves and seeds from the rainforest, we could see this magnificent 1,100 year old curtain fig tree dominating the surrounding rainforest. Everything seemed minute in comparison.

I told Laura how as a child I would already be up on that thing scaling to the top like a monkey. And so in bike shoes we went around the back where all the “tourist photo” opportunities are taken and took a very touristy and very satisfying photo of me scaling the trunk in bike kit.

This tree is one of those natural wonders where words can’t possibly do what you are seeing justice. It old and majestic and beautiful, and all we could do was take in and let the moment of wonder pass through us.

Laura Wilson: Not many sports allow for this shared experiences in the same way that cycling does. A lot of sports are more sterile, played on a field and away from the elements – and the sports that can and do take place in these incredible settings don’t often lend themselves to being besides someone in quite the same way. We stood in the middle of the forest together and marvelled.

Loren Rowney: I have to admit – before this trip, I wasn’t particularly excited that Cairns had been chosen as our road-trip destination. Most of the other places featured on CyclingTips had been far more exotic. Riding this close to home just didn’t have the same appeal. I’m happy to have been proven wrong. I can’t imagine a better adventure than this one.

Loren Rowney: Once we were refuelled and ready to roll again, our camera crew decked me out with GoPros for the best part of the whole ride. The 18km descent. They invited me to go ahead and “rail it” – and I didn’t need to be told twice.

I am definitely in my element when descending, I get a bit giddy every time I get to go downhill. I attribute this to the fact that I’m not an amazing climber, so if you aren’t going uphill fast, you sure as heck better descend really fast!

There is no better feeling than hooking in to a corner and feeling your tyres grip the surface of the road, as the sweat drips off your forehead and your jersey flaps in the wind. It’s just you and the descent, purely focused on what is coming around the next corner. Nothing else.

Laura Wilson: I followed Loren’s line as long as I could until she eventually disappeared into the distance. Her grace and speed as she soared down the road was inspiring. Riding with people that are faster, fitter and stronger can sometimes be demoralising, but when you can get over yourself and your own expectations, you realise how much there is to learn by surrounding yourself with riders that can challenge you rather than those whose wheels you can comfortably hold. And lucky for me, Loren was equally happy to ride side-by-side as she was to get in some good, solid training by herself.

Loren Rowney: We finished our ride at the Mountain View hotel, which I highly recommend. Not much beats cold drinks on a sticky hot summer day to close out a long day in the saddle.

Laura Wilson: It was straight on to the next activity from there – snorkeling! When we headed out on the boat across the open water, I remember thinking how cyclists tend to be the sort of people that are open to shared adventure and collective spontaneity. Can everyone get a group of friends together that will embrace the range of activities we did here in Cairns and have so much fun at every twist and turn?

As cyclists we become accustomed to exploring our surroundings by bike, it’s natural that the sense of exploration spills over everywhere else. I think about the girls that would just rather shop and sit by the pool and not get too dirty. I wonder if they know what they’re missing.

 
After the Dark Hedges we head to our next destination for the day: Giant’s Causeway. You’ll probably see dramatic helicopter footage of this on Stage 2 of the Giro and you can see why. Nobody knew what to expect but when we arrived and actually saw the remarkable cliffs, unique basalt columns and ocean background that looked like they taken from Game of Thrones, all anyone could muster was gasps of breath and “awesome”, “wow” and other eloquent expressions of astonishment. There’s not much more to say. It’s that sort of place.

The peloton of the Giro d’Italia will pass right by the Giant’s Causeway on stage 2, skimming along the coast road that runs just next to the huge hexagonal columns. Unlike the fast moving peloton, we weren’t going to come this far and pass right by without getting a close-up look at the natural phenomenon.

You can read more about the Giant’s Causeway here and here.

No bikes are allowed on the rocks — which is pretty understandable given it’s a world heritage site — but they should also ban cleated cycling shoes too. Kristof somehow managed to talk Szymon and I into clambering up the rocks to get a few snaps of us looking cool beside them. An impossible task to do with cycling shoes on, but anything for a photo.

If I hadn’t already articulated this clearly enough, the place is mind-blowing. I’d seen the sight on numerous TV shows and in photos but it’s not until you’re there that you can actually appreciate the scale of the place. Most of the columns are hexagonal, but some with four, five, seven or eight sides. According to what we saw and read, the tallest are about 12 metres high, and the solidified lava in the cliffs is 28 metres thick in places. It’s stunning; a real must-see destination for anyone that visits Northern Ireland.

After starting in Belfast and visiting the Giant’s Causeway, the Giro route follows Ireland’s north east coast before heading south and back to Belfast. We’d planned on riding a good section of the route, only avoiding all the major roads and the final short-run into town.

Along these roads there was clear evidence that a good number of Giro fans were already getting ready for the race’s arrival with pink tractors, sign posts and buildings a common sight.

As with the first day it wasn’t long before we were listening to locals advice and venturing off the Giro route. Torr Road had been highly recommended to us and while the steep hill couldn’t be included in the official Giro route we weren’t going to miss out on this local testing ground.

We were fortunate that we only came here to ride and not to race. These short steep hills are killers. I rode up each berg with everything I had 39×25 just to make it to the top and I was jealous of Szymon’s compact cranks. And when we reached the top of each power climb, we shifted to my 53×11 for a high-speed descent. Time after time. And by the time you just start getting up to speed, the chain drops back to the little ring. But it didn’t matter. All this effort is rewarded by one of the most beautiful roads we’d ever been on. It was built for riding.

The sharp and steep climbs were exhausting, and the roads that lead up to and away from it are equally as exciting, climbing and descending like a huge rollercoaster along the coast.

The multitude of little lanes that link the old villages and farms here are perfect for riding. The only traffic that we came across was the odd tractor or a quad bike chasing down sheep. The roads constantly look over the sea, dipping in and out to the coast, following the lay of the land. The steep hills fall away in to the water with sheep looking like they’re clinging on for dear life.

Some of the roads are so twisty in places that it seemed like the local council decided that the best way to lay a road would be to simply stand at the top and let molten tarmac find its own natural path down like a river. The result is some short sharp hairpins; hairpins that had all three of us grinning with excitement.

We took a wrong turn and got slightly lost and went off-course of the Giro route. We found ourselves on this amazing road with a cliff dropping off to the sea on the left, and a hill full of sheep on the right. Endless twists and turns with steep climbs without any traffic whatsoever. And always as we spoke about how it just couldn’t get any better, around the corner we’d see something that topped anything we’d seen previously. The best way to describe it was like coastal roads with mountains that appeared to have been stolen from the Alps or Dolomites with the Irish Sea in the background. Truly spectacular.

The alarm goes off at a stupid o’clock, it’s still dark but we don’t have to look outside to check the weather – the sound of rain tells the whole story right away. We try to ignore this fact and just eat a proper breakfast before getting into the car with the rest of the guys. Direction: Molde. The starting point for both of our rides.

Molde is known as the city of roses but it is not roses that are of interest to us. There is something much better here: the Molde Panorama. Supposedly, one can see 222 summits from the Varden viewpoint. We are not going to see them for two reasons: all of them are hidden behind the clouds, and our eyes are still half-asleep due to lack of caffeine. There is a café at the top but it’s useless due to being closed, which is quite normal here.

So we are standing alone at the top of Varden which can be accessed by a 5km hard uphill road: a little bit of tarmac, a little bit of gravel, profiled turns and a car park as well as a closed café at the top. The first gift-road cleared right away.

Today we are riding at the sea. We want to do the whole Atlantic Road, go round the Averoy Island and do 222 km – just like the supposed number of visible summits.

I must admit that I am not a fan of long distances and I have never ridden that much but it somehow doesn’t bother me. It is hard to be bothered by these kind of things when you are surrounded by such beautiful landscapes. You simply feel happy riding and knowing that in a moment you will experience arguably the most beautiful road in the world.

Atlantic Road – the name sounds serious. Everybody knows it at least from awe-inspiring photographs. The road twists and turns among small islands connected by tortuous bridges. All this is really impressive. There is one thing that does not come to your mind when you are watching these photographs. All of them are taken from a bird’s-eye view or from a hill that the photographer had to climb. But you are not a bird or a fleet-footed photographer. You are a rider who found himself at open sea and is kicking himself for choosing wheels with high profile rims.

However, the power of suggestion is strong and no matter how much you suffer, you feel that you are in a special place and you do not mind another closed café or a cold wind that constantly blows in your face. The wind is especially painful on Storseisundet, an unusual bridge that bends into a high and wide arch that makes you realise what ‘to gag’ means when you reach its top.

Do you need to connect two shores? Let’s dig a tunnel below the sea! It’s nice up to the halfway point – you are riding a couple of kilometers down. But then you have to go up again, slowly, without any reference point, waiting to be run down by a truck. Sheer torment.

The ‘mountain’, whose top is conquered after a heroic battle, is as high as zero meters above sea level. Never mind. We will start after the tunnel, we still have a distance to cover, anyway. In the rain.

The road is pleasantly wavy, our legs are pedaling nicely and our spirits are high. As if we had forgotten that the journey ahead of us is so difficult that one would have to lose a serious bet to embark on it.

We are wandering about a little on some perfect tarmac and then turn to a fishing village. We have a brush with death when Wojtek gets tangled in his rain jacket right in front of an approaching truck in the tunnel. Thankfully, the driver is Norwegian and Norwegians don’t know anger so he spares Wojtek and the three of us arrive at the next fjord.

This is the wonderful landscape Norway is known for. Fjords and ferries sneaking between them. They are everywhere and using them is as natural as stopping at the red light. This is how you travel through this country. And this is why it is so difficult to organize a bike race in these most beautiful locations.

But we are not racing; we are enjoying the first coffee break, even though the coffee tastes like dishwater. That’s right, coffee is not the Vikings’ specialty. We definitely aren’t in Italy. People here drink black and very strong coffee poured from a flask – so strong that you can set the spoon upright in a cup of it.

What is nice about the ferries is the fact that when all cars drive off them and go ahead, the road becomes completely empty until the next run. You can enjoy the views to the maximum. Unless you and your mates are fully charged with caffeine and you shift into your hardest gear, get into an aero position and push hard until the road twists smoothly around a fjord, pulling through and off in turns.

Only when we see a Trollstigen road sign and emerging mountaintops covered with snow, do we start to calm down. This is where the fun begins.

The Golden Route. A spectacular road built over eight years in order to connect two middles of nowhere for a reason that seemed important to somebody. Absolute madness. Thank you Norwegians for being this mad.

Thanks to the Norwegian panache for roadbuilding we can now fully enjoy one of the most beautiful roads on the planet. It’s sort of a mini-Stelvio, but there is no use comparing the two. There are many longer and steeper hills than this one around the world, but this road is one-of-a-kind.

It’s 18km long with 800 meters of elevation gain and 11 hairpin turns on the hillside, a waterfall going down the hill and pointed mountain tops looking sternly at us. The visibility is not too good today. From time to time we can spot something among the rain clouds. No problem; thanks to the awful weather the hill is all ours. So is the climate that resembles the final battle scene from The Lord of the Rings.

This is exactly how you feel; as if you were taking part in something really big. And even when you bonk, you know that at the top there is a café with an observation terrace facing the whole hill. A café, as it turns out, which is closed. Normal.

Fortunately, right beside it is a little shop with trashy souvenirs where we pay through the nose for typical dishwater from a flask in a styrofoam cup. The temperature is only a couple of degrees above zero and it’s still raining. Our morale is barely alive and when we set off from the summit expecting a downhill what we get is a steep hill going up. This kills our morale instantly. With our lowered heads we look like Chris Froome looking at a stem.

But that’s life – sometimes you have to suffer in order to get a reward. Our reward was a magical 30km descent that gave us a bit of all four seasons. At the top the wind and rain were as strong as in the middle of winter. A bit further down the hill the golden leaves changed the scenery into autumn, then thanks to green pastures we entered spring, and finally when the sun came out from behind the clouds, summer was back. All that and another ferry crossing revived our morale. We were going to need it.

It was getting late and there was still about 50km to go, including two hills. Piece of cake. Not really.

You already know that this ride is one of those you will remember for a long time when nobody is setting sprint finishes at road signs or putting the hammer down when pulling through. The talking is over and each of us fully focuses on riding. I love this moment when the chit-chatting ends and nothing interferes with the most important thing.

We fell into this trance, and finally reached the top of Eagle Road. It leads through steep switchbacks to the famous Geiranger health resort, which is actually a small podunk somewhere in the mountains. We took a longer break under the pretence of shooting a video while going down and stop to fasten the cameras here and there as well as stuffing ourselves with cookies to delay the bonk.

We reach Geiranger, everything is already closed and it’s getting dark. The worst thing is that we are still more or less at sea level and the last mountain is about 1500 meters above us. Wojtek hits the bonk irreversibly and is out. Karol and I pack the cookies that are left and set off to complete the ride of our lives.

We got into trouble because we tried to motivate Wojtek by telling him it’s a cakewalk, only one hill. We didn’t convince him or ourselves. We would laugh at it later but now we have to do it. In the fog, without talking.

Initially, I felt surprising well. I even left Karol a little behind, got into the granny gear and kept riding without watching the views, which were covered by the clouds. While riding I am thinking to myself that I must be close to the top, and then a huge stone appears by the road and says ‘600 meter over havet’ (“600m above sea level”). We’ve only climbed a little more than a third of the hill. I feel like a deflated balloon.

Karol overtakes me and quickly disappears in the fog. I still have 400 meters of the hill until … the beginning of the final climb. Dalsnibba.

It’s a flagship gift-road that has been built specifically for tourists through hard work of many Norwegians and huge amounts of dynamite. It ends at the top of the mountain with a car park and a small café that is, yes, you guessed it, closed.

If you are going by car, you have to pay something at the gate but when you are on a bike you can simply go round it and enjoy the never-ending switchbacks and the view of Geirangerfjord from the top. Unless you’ve ridden there from Molde, in the rain and cold, and you’ve got no energy left whatsoever.

In such moments it’s hard to appreciate the switchback paradise … or hell. You are slowly zigzagging ahead, more and more snow appears on the roadside and it’s getting darker and darker. It’s really high but there is still no finish within sight.

These are the moments when you would love to throw your bike to the ditch by the road and start collecting postcards instead. But you know that if you keep going you will have the most beautiful memories. You know that the harder it is, the bigger the satisfaction, and that tomorrow you will laugh at all this.

Once at the top, the snow was everywhere and a perfect silence surrounded us. We opened a beer that tasted better than any beer ever has and basked in the feeling of happiness and satisfaction that only a ride this tough can bring.

Click on the image to see more information about the ride on Strava.

When Oscar’s tenure working FIFO was coming to an end, he suggested we go on a cycling trip in the spirit of the Morton brothers’ Thereabouts documentary. I saw this as a natural opportunity to return to Chiang Mai and resolve the unfinished business I had with the place.

When I rented a motorcycle there I was given a map and recommendation to ride a famous motorcycle loop through Mae Hong Son, a mountainous region west of Chiang Mai. At the time I thought it too serious an undertaking to attempt solo, considering I barely knew how to ride, but my curiosity was piqued. Now seemed the perfect opportunity to take on the challenge, but on a roadie.

I don’t recall when I convinced Oscar to take the plunge with me; he thinks he must have been drugged to agree. “I don’t remember ever agreeing to it and now it’s just happening and there’s nothing I can do about it,” he told a friend as our departure loomed and the difficulty of the route had sunk in.

The Mae Hong Son loop totals about 660km, with 13,000 metres of climbing and 4,000 bends. We planned to ride it in six stages, with two days off for rest and ‘tourism’.

After a few rides together in the Perth ‘Hills’, neither of us had a lot of confidence in Oscar’s ability to complete the route. Nevertheless Oscar remained focused, if not entirely optimistic. With a few hundred kilometres of training in Oscar’s legs, we each packed a small backpack with spare clothes and nothing else, stowed our bikes in cardboard and set off for Chiang Mai.

The trip didn’t start as we planned. As we dined out in Chiang Mai, we overheard the forecast for the next few days and both tightened — five days of rain during what was meant to be the dry season was not what we wanted to hear. The following morning we woke at six planning to beat the traffic out of the city, but were met with darkness and the steady patter of rain falling heavy on the roof.

Grimacing, we slowly readied ourselves to leave, but it was cold and wet and not even the excitement of first-day riding was enough to get the spirits up too much higher than the temperature.

This changed dramatically when we turned off the main highway on to the small road to Pai, our day-one destination. We were immediately jolted into rural Thailand, riding on a beautiful, smooth road lined with dense foliage interspersed by paddy fields and small villages. Rolling hills got the legs warmed up and our expressions turned to smiles, despite the relentless rain.

Then the road pitched upwards, straight into the clouds. I gave Oscar a nod and rode off ahead, leaving us both in solitude, walled in by fog on all sides.

Mae Hong Son translates to “the City of Three Mists”, named for the heavy fog which engulfs much of the region year-round, adding an element of mythical beauty to the majestic route. At sunrise, the fog lies heavy in the valleys, coldly hiding from sight anything beyond a one or two hundred metre radius.

When viewed from higher ground — the balcony of a well-located guesthouse for instance — the cloud drifts below, making islands of the surrounding mountaintops which appear to float on a sea of whiteness. As the sun’s golden rays take the edge off the nippy morning air, the fog slowly rises to reveal glistening dew-dressed greenery and terraced farmland.

But on a cold day like this the fog hangs around, cutting off the views though giving the road a supernatural sense. In the Pyrenees, a whiteout like this bites with a menacing cold, forcing you to grit your teeth as you plunge through its unpleasantness. Here, the fog envelopes you much gentler — it seemed the most natural thing to be surrounded by cloud as we tapped upwards along this beautiful road, surrounded by lush, rain-soaked vegetation.

At the top of the first peak we sheltered from the rain with some people selling bananas at the roadside, who invited us to share their fire. We loaded up on fresh fruit, which always tastes so much better in Asia, and continued on upwards.

The road climbed steadily for the rest of the day, and as steep hairpins directed us up the mountain, the foliage changed. Large deciduous forest took over the roadside — rainforest green gave way to the orange, yellow and red hues of autumn. Still the road climbed, treating us to rich flowing bends and jagged hairpins.

Eventually, after a puncture, some hot noodles, and countless false summits, we finally crested the pass and began the descent into Pai. Leaving the clouds behind us, we had clear views of the valley for the first time all day. We stopped to take a photo as a truck carrying an elephant trundled passed, reminding us we were a long way from home.

The descent into Pai was severe, the road spiralling downwards through hairpins with nearly vertical apexes. I believe Christian Meier laid it down on this road once, and you can understand how: long winding curves tempt you to ride on the edge, but exult in tightening late or scrunching up into screwy hairpins that would challenge on dry roads, let alone in the wet state we encountered them.

Rolling into Pai, legs weary, we jumped on the wheel of a lady riding her scooter into town. Somewhere between amused and bemused, she watched us nervously in her mirror as we cruised the last 10km at a steady tick, before sprinting away as we approached the town limits. After a solid day in the saddle, we arrived cold — but in good humour — at the first guesthouse we came across that could guarantee a hot shower, and crashed for the day.

Click here to see Luke’s Strava file for the ride from Chiang Mai to Pai.

We spent the following day exploring Pai on our bikes. There’s something very gentlemanly about having a rest day after only one day of riding. We visited the stunning local hot springs, got massages, and unexpectedly practised our Chinese at the nearby Kuomintang village, which was settled by fleeing Chinese after the Chinese Civil War.

The highlight though, was seeing Oscar nearly decapitated when an out of control motorcycle crashed through the front of a restaurant we were eating at.

The bike, careering out of control at the hands of a young tourist, sent pot plants flying before obliterating a life-sized cardboard cutout of the chef, and finally coming to rest — engine screaming full throttle — on the floor in front of our table, while a frantic Oscar pinned himself back against the wall in a desperate attempt to escape a horrible death.

Fortunately I was safe behind a heavy concrete table, and didn’t have to stop eating while watching, intently, as the calamity unfolded before me. Fortunately nobody was harmed, except the cardboard cutout.

We awoke the following day to some great news out the window. Glorious sunshine had replaced the rain — never trust a weather forecast in the mountains.

The road to the town of Mae Hong Son began with a long, sustained climb with only a few ramps over 10-15%, and sweeping views over the valley below. We both took it easy, enjoying the sunshine and letting our legs ease into the day’s riding.

At the top local hill tribespeople were gathered selling fruit and wares, while their children ran around in traditional garb getting photos with tourists. I lent one my camera and she ran around taking dozens of mostly blurry photos of us and her friends.

When it was time to leave I thought I’d never get the camera back — I ended up saying Oscar would pay her for it, so she handed me the camera and ran off to hassle my unsuspecting friend.

With the day’s major climb out of the way, we were both under the false impression that the worst was behind us. “It’s mostly downhill from here,” I told Oscar. “Gentle rolling hills all the way to Mae Hong Son.”

Brimming with optimism, we rolled off the summit and sped off down the other side. The descent was fast, lots of long sweeping bends and those loose hairpins that just beg you to lay the bike down and carve around like Casey Stoner on a Ducati. Before long we had knocked over half the day’s kilometres, and stopped for a hearty lunch in one of the many tiny towns peppering the route.

The next 60km nearly killed Oscar. Straight after lunch the road pitched up with vengeance — we had encountered the first of about six short but brutally steep climbs that we’d have to overcome before reaching our destination. Each was about 1-2km long with gradients over 30%(!) at their steepest; the sort of climbs you don’t so much ride up as crawl, where every pedal stroke is a struggle — totally belligerent sort of terrain that tests the spirit as much as the legs.

Each climb would be followed by an equally steep descent — thrilling roads that at times seemed to simply drop away before your eyes, forcing you back off the saddle and sketchily on to the brakes, so you could bring the speed down enough to throw the bike into another tight corkscrew bend.

Luckily the roads were in perfect condition; clean, smooth and wide hot mix without the gravelly and potholed sections that can make European alpine roads so unpredictable.

With about 10km remaining, Oscar was fading badly. We stopped so he could buy a Coke, while I went with a beer (it was that sort of day). By this stage he was looking very pale and after we climbed the last hill and rolled into Mae Hong Son, he was completely cooked. He lay down in our lakeside bungalow and was overcome by nausea.

He would spend the rest of the evening vomiting and sweating in bed in a state of delirium. Whether it was heat stroke or food poisoning, we’re not certain, but it wiped Oscar out. The ride was in serious jeopardy.

Click here to see Luke’s Strava file for the ride from Pai to Mae Hong Son.

The following morning Oscar was able to stomach breakfast, and after a massage decided to try and ride the 67km leg to Khun Yuam. If it got too tough he could flag down a passing ute and hitch the rest of the way. Fortunately, apart from one moderate climb, the day’s riding wasn’t too challenging — at least compared to the previous day — and with a bit of assistance from his charitable riding partner, who towed him up the last few hills, we reached the speck on the map that is Khun Yuam.

Here we began a tradition of staying in what Oscar described as, “hotels going for the ‘Lost Tourist’ niche market” — places where, upon your arrival, the owner asks in broken English: “How did you find us; all our signs are written in Thai?”

Our hotel in Khun Yuam was about 5km out of town, and a kilometre up an unsealed, rutted out track over a steep hill. I’d read about the place in the comment section of a website I couldn’t recall then and I’m beginning to doubt even existed now, but it was perfect. It had the feel of those grand hotels of Europe that are about a century past their best, but it was full of character, had a wonderfully friendly host and looked out across a valley decorated by a mosaic of rice terraces.

The trials of the past 24 hours evaporated as we sat on our balcony and watched in silence as the golden light of the setting sun danced across the landscape before finally dipping over the horizon. It was one of those perfect moments that makes everything you did getting there worthwhile.

Click here for Luke’s Strava file for the ride from Mae Hong Son to Khun Yuam.

The next morning Oscar was still washed out, but he told himself one of those little lies we all tell ourselves when the task ahead seems too much to deal with. “I’ll just ride for 20km — stretch my legs — then I’ll hitchhike,” he said, not for the last time that day; for when 20km came up he repeated it, then again after 50km. By the time we’d ridden 70km, 30km more didn’t seem too tough. On we rode.

Somehow, around sunset, we made it to Mae Sariang. Oscar had ridden through two days of hell, but now we had a rest day to recuperate and less than 200km left to overcome.

Our penultimate day on the bike was one of the longest and hardest on paper. Out of Mae Sariang the road rose over a thousand metres before rolling across a mountain range — steep rolling hills that offered no joy — for another couple of hours. Oscar was riding well, largely thanks to the serious doping program of ibuprofen he’d engaged in since his knees began hurting two days earlier. Nevertheless, it was good to see him without a grimace on his face.

The smiles continued as we enjoyed a beautiful descent for almost 20km, down through a rocky gorge lined with deciduous trees that felt more like somewhere in North America than what we expected of Thailand. Eventually we turned on to the road to our destination, Mae Chaem, and began riding through a bizarre, barren, fire-ravaged environment reminiscent of the Australian bush.

With no shade around, the temperature began to soar and we both started feeling the toll the kilometres were taking on us. It didn’t get any easier, and soon we found ourselves riding up an almost vertical climb that didn’t seem to end.

Unlike the short bergs we’d encountered previously, this climb remained relentlessly steep for 4-5km. Sweat dripped from us as we stood over our pedals, fighting against the pain in our legs for every stroke, grinding our way upwards with pure grit.

Surviving that, we rode on, but we were broken men. Tempers frayed, an argument flared. Eventually things came to a head — punches were thrown — but by the time we rode into Mae Chaem all had been forgiven. The road had almost gotten the better of us, but we’d overcome, and now only the highest mountain in Thailand, Doi Inthanon, stood between us and the end.

Click here for Luke’s Strava file for the ride from Khun Yuam to Mae Sariang and here for his Strava file for the ride from Mae Sariang to Mae Chaem.

Doi Inthanon is a monster. It stands barely 2,500m at its highest — only a bump compared to its Himalayan cousins to the north — yet its prominence puts it in the realm of the toughest climbs tackled by the famous races of Europe. From Mae Chaem, it climbs for 28.3km at an average of 7% — including two sections 4km and 7km long at over 12% — for a total elevation gain of more than 2,000m.

We rolled out in the cold, foggy morning air. We ate breakfast together near the base, wished each other luck, and set off, each at our own pace. It was very quiet, and my breath made clouds of fog as I ticked off the first few kilometres. I was riding very gently, knowing what lay ahead, practically tiptoeing up the mountain as though it were a sleeping dog I was trying not to wake.

There were kilometre markers announcing the distance to the summit, but I tried to ignore them. As the grade increased, I settled into a cadence, a rhythm — Krabbe’s “Trance… rocking my organs’ protests back to sleep” — and climbed slowly, somnambulantly.

As the first part of the climb came to an end, after 90 minutes, I turned off on to the spur to the summit — and jubilantly dumped my backpack in a bush to collect on the way down. Relieved of the burden that seemed to gain in weight with every metre climbed, I discovered a second wind.

Somewhere in my mind a voice noted how ridiculous it was to feel like I was almost done, when 9km averaging 10% still remained. But I felt refreshed, like I was riding with a brisk tailwind. For the first time I felt free to dig the toes in and dance out of the saddle, to attack the sharply graded hairpins. It’s incredible what you can do when the end is in sight — to make the suffering end faster, to paraphrase Marco Pantani.

The way pain dissolves — effervesces — when you reach the summit, is something magical.

At the top of Doi Inthanon dozens of monks were among the many tourists who’d ridden in taxis to see the summit. I couldn’t help but feel they were missing out on something intensely spiritual by being driven up this magnificent mountain, by not experiencing the transcendent sensation that comes with hours of sustained physical effort.

After recovering at the top I rolled slowly down again, looking for Oscar. I met him 2km from the summit, the steepest thankfully behind him. I turned back up the road and pedalled up beside him, reached my arm around his shoulder and gave him some encouragement. Side by side, we rode the final stretch together, enjoying the sense of completion.

After descending the 45km down the eastern side of the mountain, we decided to call it a day. We stopped and bought a couple of beers, flagged down a ute headed for Chiang Mai, threw our bikes in the back before climbing in ourselves.

As the car sped off down the highway, we cracked a beer, felt the wind in our hair, and rejoiced at the end of a very special week’s riding.

Click here for Luke’s Strava file for the ride from Mae Chaem up to Doi Ithanon and down the other side.

We began the ride at the base of New Zealand’s highest peak, Aoraki (Maori for “Cloud Piercer”, we were told), also known as Mount Cook. We woke to a stunningly clear day but a day that was close to freezing in the shade of the mountain before the sun showed its face. To catch the “golden hour” we were up early, struggling to get on our bikes as our frozen hands battled with zippers, pumps and everything else we should have done in the warmth of the hotel room.

The cold should have come as no surprise — the day before starting the ride we had been on a Glacier Explorers trip to Tasman Lake, which sits at the base of Mount Cook and is fed by the Tasman Glacier. The glacier itself is 27km long and 4km wide and we were told it takes 600 years for ice to make it down from the top of the glacier to the lake, where it snaps off and forms icebergs.

We even got to see this in action — during our tour roughly 5,000 tonnes of ice fell from the glacier into the water. The noise was deafening and the captain quickly took evasive action as large waves moved towards the boat we were in.

The following morning, rolling out from the hotel on the first day of the ride, we were headed down towards Lake Pukaki. The wind chill only added to our discomfort, but the cold was soon forgotten when the sun poked its head over the mountains.

There are two starting points for the Alps 2 Ocean Trail. If you opt for the official start from Mount Cook, as we did, you have to take a chopper across to the other side of the Tasman River after just 7km of riding. Whilst this might seem a tad excessive (and it probably is), it had to be done if we were going to stick to the trail. Besides, there’s something about New Zealand that makes you want to do everything to the extreme.

As we rode towards the helicopter it was only natural that the Arnie Predator impressions started to come out: “Get to the chopper!!!”

On the other side of the Tasman River the trail hugs the shore, offering a technical section with river crossings and some big bits of loose rock. You often hear people say that trying mountain biking is a great way for roadies to improve their bike handling and I’d have to agree. The technical sections of the trail were great for giving the skills a good brush up.

The trail takes you away from Mount Cook but every time we stopped and looked back, the view of the sun rising over the mountain was stunning. In fact, almost anywhere we looked was stunning. It’s clichéd I know, but it definitely felt like we were in Middle Earth.

As with most regions of New Zealand, they did film some parts of the Lord of Rings films here. We’re pretty sure the location director would have come to New Zealand, taken one look around and then spent the rest of the week relaxing in the bar, job done.

Pushing on towards Twizel, we decided to take a dip in the glacially fed Lake Pukaki. It was as cold as it sounds but well worth it. Jason Menard, the manager of the trail, said he wanted to make this a compulsory stop for those doing the trail, as a sort of rite-of-passage. We were just glad the sun was out and we didn’t have much further to ride with wet knicks.

We had heard that if you start the trail at the alternate start point up at Lake Tekapo you go down a killer descent from a salmon farm to a hydroelectric power station. We decided to make a quick detour up and down the climb — the trail ran right past and it seemed silly not to. The views were definitely worth it, as was the descent.

Back down by the lake we completed the last section of the trail, a fun grass-flats section through an open plain into Twizel. On arriving we headed straight to Shawty’s Restaurant for a beer and their waffle fries which, we were told, are well known throughout the region.

Click through to see the Strava Route for day 1.

It was going to be hard to beat the weather and scenery the first day of riding had offered. We went to bed with the forecast of rain but woke to sunny skies, albeit stronger winds than the previous day. This was appropriate as we were going to be riding around Lake Ohau — which translates to “place of wind” — and soon enough we’d have our fair share of it.

Setting off from Twizel we had a warm up along the road next to the Ohau canal before heading over Ohau Weir where the gravel started. This was an awesome smooth shingle track around the lake, winding through low shrubs before we were spat back out on to the road which would take us to our halfway point, Lake Ohau Lodge.

To Andy and I it seemed very windy compared to what we get at home in Melbourne, and we had a stiff headwind all the way to the lodge. For this region though, it was essentially a calm day — winds over 100km/h are a regular occurrence here.

On our way up to the Lodge for lunch, we had seen a gravel road that seemed to snake its way up a nearby mountain at an impressively steep gradient. Looking at a map we found out it was the climb to the Ohau Club Ski Fields. We were told at the Lodge that we might be in for a bumpy ride as the road is only graded for the ski season.

After a moment’s hesitation we decided that we’d better give it a go. What we didn’t realise was how steep it actually was and how rocky the surface was. This was definitely a climb for mountain bikes with low gears and bigger tyres, but we struggled on anyway.

Rounding each corner we were greeted with more loose rock, and we dared not stray too close to the outside line for fear of the rather large drop that awaited. We even had a water crossing to deal with which was definitely a first for me on a climb. The views along the way were worth it though, and we’d say this is a must-try if you’re riding the trail, to see how far up the road you can get.

After a fairly sketchy descent, in which we were very thankful for our disc brakes and 32mm tyres, we turned back on to the Alps 2 Ocean Trail to start the longest climb of the day. This was one of the best sections of the trail, as it snaked its way through beech forests and out into the open, following the ridge line upwards.

We were told this section of the track is to be shingled at some point so we think, if the trail is of interest, it would be best to get out here while it remains in its current state.

After what felt like about 10 false summits we were over the other side and descending bumpily along a winding rocky trail, before it straightened out to awesome double-track through amber grasslands. It felt like being on a roller coaster — all you had to do was ensure you didn’t leave the track you were on for risk of catching an edge and going over the bars.

Leaving the grasslands behind we decided to take a slight detour to the unique Clay Cliffs which we had been told about. You can ride right up to and around these impressive pinnacles which reminded us of giant termite mounds.

The last section of the day’s riding took us into the town of Omarama where the local hot tubs were waiting. While the thought of sharing a tub with two other stinky guys wasn’t particularly appealing, I must admit I was looking forward to a soak after two solid days of riding.

Click through to see the Strava Route for day 2.

This was our longest day in the saddle but it also included the most road riding. Our cross bikes allowed us to open it up a bit and take advantage of the smooth surface.

Starting out from Omarama, the weather that had been so favourable for the last two days decided to turn on us — it became colder, greyer and wetter. The one thing this trail does as it heads from the alps to the ocean is takes you through an amazing range of scenery and terrain. This day was more of the New Zealand you read about: rolling hills, paddocks filled with sheep, low temperatures and another lake to ride around.

Even though this trip was about taking our bikes off road, it was nice to start the day with some killer road riding. We were greeted with a nice little climb up Otematata Saddle and a long and flowing descent off the other side. Flying down into Otematata, the trail took a left turn up to Benmore Dam, presenting us with a short, punchy climb.

While we couldn’t wait to get to the other side of the dam, start the descent and follow the road around the lake, we stumbled upon some hidden single-track at the lookout above the dam. We mucked around here for a bit in the dirt before heading over, down and around Lake Aviemore. This single-lane road around the lake was enough to make anyone happy. Flowing bends, a smooth surface, rolling hills and virtually zero cars.

We made a stop at Kurow Winery just out of town to fill up on cheese and bread and taste a few wines. It probably wasn’t the best idea with 70km still to ride, but we were there for the full experience, not just to smash out the k’s.

That’s the great thing about travelling by bike: you set your own agenda and you get to see more of what’s around you. That is unless Andy is smashing you up a climb; then you just end up looking down at your stem waiting for him to let up.

With our bellies full and our minds set on our final destination of Oamaru, the last bit of the trail took us into completely different terrain along empty gravel roads surrounded by green pastures. We headed past the distinctive Elephant Rocks — yes they were grey and looked like a heard of elephants — reminding me of Stonehenge. It was something about the grey statue-like rocks set amongst the lush green pastures.

Here Andy and I both had our first and thankfully only spills of the trip within about 30 seconds of each other. I slipped on an old water pipe on to soft grass and Andy fell over at 0km/h while clipping in on a rock. It’s funny how you can make it through two days of technical riding without coming unstuck and then it’s the innocuous things that catch you out.

Picking ourselves up we headed through Rakis Tunnel, an abandoned rail tunnel. At about 500m long with no lights, it was an unsettling experience getting to the middle and not being able to see either end. We might as well have been riding with our eyes closed.

There is an alternate route for those that are a little claustrophobic but we were glad we took the tunnel. It was refreshing to see the tunnel in the state it was; not boarded up and not spoiled by bright lights. That was one of many things we noticed in New Zealand — more seems to be left untouched. We kept saying to ourselves, “if this were Australia, there’d be a guard rail there.”

Heading into Oamaru we had a spin through the local gardens and then rode down to the sea; the end of the Alps 2 Ocean Cycle Trail. I’m sure we would have jumped off the pier into the sea if it had been warm, but unfortunately it wasn’t a postcard-like day. Cold, wet and with tired legs, we were quietly content to sit by the water and reflect on the journey.

It had been three days of some of the best scenery we’d ever witnessed, and experiences we wouldn’t have had in a car or on a guided tour. The whole ride was completely focused on the journey, not the destination.

Reflecting on this trip, I can’t believe I hadn’t been to New Zealand before. It’s quick to fly to the South Island than it is to get to many places in Australia, and the landscape is unlike anything you’ll see anywhere else. It’s a country with so much to offer and so many different experiences to enjoy. And one thing’s for sure: take your bike over to New Zealand and you won’t be disappointed.

Click through to see the Strava Route for day 3.

“Honestly, it’s [Richie] Porte’s favourite ride,” we were told — and not for the last time — as we threw on every scrap of clothing we had and rolled out of the warm comfort of the hotel and into the dark.

We were heading out on the infamous ‘Fish Shop Ride’, so named for a fishmonger long since departed from the banks of the Tamar River. An easy few warm up kilometres on the highway took us to the turnoff, and from there we rolled metres from the engorged West Tamar river.

As the sun hit the water the mist instantly rose, providing a wispy backdrop for our gold-lit morning. Small fishing boats became silhouettes as we wound our way slowly along the banks.

We took the road a little further than the traditional Fish Shop Ride, interested in checking out the picturesque cable-stayed Batman Bridge, as recommended by Buck Rogers from Vertigo Mountain Biking. It was a stunning start to the day.

Click here to for the Strava route from this ride.

After a lazy breakfast, and a bit of discussion about routes, we took the highway out of Launceston in the direction of Lilydale. We were headed to the small town of Scottsdale, and had been given varying suggestions on the best roads to take.

About 20km into the ride we decided to switch back to our original plan, and a quick consult of Google Maps helped us pick up a smaller road running perpendicular to our two other options.

Starting out paved, the surface quickly turned to the most magnificent hard-packed and billiard-smooth clay. Winding up the speed, and buoyed by Dan’s enthusiasm for non-Sydney strada bianche, the alarm bells should have been ringing.

We would need legs for the Sideling climb later in the day, but for the moment we were all caught in the present and hammered out a path to the Tasman Highway.

In the distance to the east we could see the glowing face of a large, rocky outcrop poking above the trees. We were running far ahead of time, so when we came across the lichen-covered and slightly inconspicuous sign pointing out the dusty path to Mt. Barrow we figured we should have a look.

Immediately upon exiting the highway the road kicked up, and would stay that way for the following, brutal 14 kilometres. Passing through farmland we entered the forest, which soon pressed in closer, eventually forming a canopy that would envelop us for the majority of the climb. Pitch, respite, pitch, respite. The pattern repeated itself again and again on the loose gravel surface.

Eventually the road popped out into a giant boulder field, the scale of which was difficult to comprehend. We were seeing evidence of a force much greater than we could imagine. Each boulder was as big as a person and the field of rubble stretched for a few hundred metres in every direction.

Picking its way through this barren rockfield was the barely made road, with only a sagging rusty cable hinting at the need for safety.

We agreed breathlessly at the top of the final switchback that this was Ben Lomond’s slightly more evil cousin. As we took in the views and gathered our breath, a couple (the only other people we had seen in the past few hours) came across and got chatting. They pointed out their property 7km below us and invited us over for a cuppa. It was going to be touch-and-go with the light, but we all agreed as we stuffed our hands into our armpits that some hot tea was exactly what we needed.

We rolled down to Mira and Sophie’s cosy property, and the five of us sat elbow to elbow around the family dinner table with our hosts and their friends “over from Adelaide for the week”. The fireplace made us dozy as hot cups of coffee and tea, sweetened with homemade honey, were thrust into our hands. Freshly baked cakes, chocolate, and nuts were passed around again and again.

“Everything around here has been chipped,” explained Mira. “We own the last little section of rainforest”. As custodians of this land, Mira and Sophie are intent on preserving it for future generations. Given they’re now past being able to tend to the property (“busted my hip a few years back”) these custodians of the rainforest have engaged transient backpackers to assist with chores in exchange for rent. If the hospitality we had experienced was reflective of the board, then there were some pretty lucky travellers getting around.

We reluctantly swung a leg back over the bike to continue on to Scottsdale. The Sideling climb a dozen kilometres out of town was beautiful, but the fading light and an untimely flat tyre saw us finish up the ride a little earlier and drive into town where a hot meal at the Lord Hotel was waiting.

Click here to see the Strava route for this ride.

Part of our decision to ride in the north east of Tasmania was the network of mountain bike trails that had been cut into the former tin-mining town of Derby. The handful of photos we had seen looked incredible, and we were keen to check them out for ourselves.

Clapping hands together to get the circulation going in the crisp and misty morning air, we were soon off, warming up on the gently winding ‘Axehead’ trail. From a roundabout junction we rode across to a deep valley, scrubbed clean of all vegetation.

In a quest to improve the efficiency of extracting tin from one of the biggest deposits in the world, the miners of the early 1900s had built an enormous dam high above the town of Derby. Nearing completion, the region was hit by monsoonal rainfall, so much so that the gauges overflowed.

The dam burst its banks in a catastrophic explosion, a wall of water 20-30m high shooting down the river and wiping away everything in its path. Such was the force that the rush took its own course down the valley and eventually surged upriver for a further seven kilometres. Standing in the high-sided granite valley, wiped baby-smooth after the flood surge, it was possible to get a sense of the scale of the forces involved.

Heading up the tightly twisting climb we soon settled into a rhythm. The care and attention that World Trail had put into this course was immediately apparent — from rock-wall switchbacks, to groomed berms and regularly swept trails.

“Basically when we are building a new trail we will drop a bunch of pins on the map indicating any key features we want to include – there could be up to 70 of these,” explained course designer Glen Jacobs. “We will then essentially join the dots, using the natural flow of the terrain, and looking for interesting features to link the dots, whether it’s a rock, old tree, or a viewpoint”.

There were no shortage of incredible things to see along the way. MTB photographer Tim Bardsley-Smith called them “the most scenic trails in Australia” and we certainly weren’t willing to refute that claim.

The Krushkers climb eventually rolled out into an exhilarating descent through the forest. There were enough features on the descent to kept adrenaline levels high, including a variety of optional small rock drops, deep berms, and pump sections. A couple of the sections were so good that we snuck back up the trail to hit them more than once.

Returning to the central roundabout we took a few twisting and descending options to return us to the trail head (Sawtooth’s lush green setting was a favourite). We were all utterly smashed, so a trip to The Corner Store was well overdue. If that name sounds familiar it’s because owners Norm and Jess Douglas also own The Corner Store at Mt. Buller and Forest in Victoria and both are well familiar with the bottomless pit that is a trail-earned hunger.

We met Glenn Jacobs back at the trail head. He wanted us to check out his latest masterpiece, ‘Dambusters’, which was due to open the following week. With the offer of a shuttle up to the dam we were in no position to refuse the opportunity to christen a new World Trail path.

The meandering trail wound its way among the giant eucalyptus trees lining the dam. Heading up from there we were faced with roughly 20 minutes of sustained climbing. This is where the clever trail design comes into play — The level of variety in the trail’s twists and turns, coupled with the change in topography and flora meant we were sufficiently distracted from the effort.

As soon as we crested the climb we were immediately thrust into berm after berm, many of which included a drop of a couple of metres. Weaving in and out of the trees, this was mountain biking at its best, a feast of incredible, flowing lines. The technical features were replaced with a fast pump descent.

That single descent, still soft and waiting to be packed in, had us all whoop-ing our way down the valley. It would have been worth a trip across Bass Strait for this line alone.

Checking out the profile for today’s ride, we knew we were in for a lumpy one. Thankfully we had a handful of highway k’s straight out of Scottsdale as a brief warm-up, and then it was straight into the Sideling climb. We all reminded each other multiple times that this was a warm-up, and that we needed to keep our powder dry for a day of climbing.

It was a good idea in theory.

A cruising descent brought us back through the town of Derby, and from there we chatted through a dozen k’s on roads with wide shoulders before the twisting and climbing took over, and the road narrowed. There had only been minimal (and very friendly) traffic to this point, but with the narrowing of the road it all but disappeared for the day.

After a couple of rollers we finally started one of a few sustained climbs for the day, winding past large granite boulders, and under a thick canopy of temperate rainforest. As we were climbing the soft mist started to finally form into a light rain. After a week of dry weather we took a cautious descent down the twisting and greasy road. As Dan stated, “this is perfect collarbone conditions”.

We couldn’t help but make multiple stops to take photos, as each corner revealed an even more stunning fern-filled backdrop. As we rolled into the small town of Weldborough we all had one thing on our minds – a cleansing ale and a big meal at the local hotel.

Full from lunch and slightly wobbly after perhaps a little too much ale we rolled out of the town and straight into the final significant climb for the day. The gentle gradient gave way to a bit of a kick through a lush myrtle forest featuring ancient trees with giant sagging, dripping beards of moss and ferns.

It was a stunningly beautiful end to the day’s climbing, because from here it was (more or less) all downhill until we hit St. Helens and Binalong Bay.

With the smell of saltwater in the air a swinging rusty sign was all the motivation we needed to make a quick final pit stop for a dozen, briny freshly shucked oysters. We rolled into Gardens, and Bay of Fires, content after the past few days’ riding.

All of the terrain we encountered, from the popular West Tamar routes through to the temperate rainforests and incredible mountain biking, had convinced us that if this is what one small corner of the state can offer, we would all need to make a trip back to Tassie soon.

Click here to view the Strava route for this ride.

I’d met Taylor Phinney a few times in Boulder but we’d never hung out. He’d struck me as a very charismatic but also very professional guy. The sort of guy that knew what he wanted and how he was going to get it.

When I arrived in Boulder this year, Taylor messaged me out of the blue and asked if I wanted to come hang out that arvo. “Ok, sure”, I thought. I was interested to see how he was doing after his well-publicised accident and subsequent recovery but I wasn’t sure what to expect.

3:45pm — that was when he said to come over. “That’s weird,” I thought, “Pretty specific”. “It’s probably to fit in with his intensive recovery regime,” I concluded and rode over. His place wasn’t at all like I’d expected. Giant unfinished canvases hung from every wall, records were spread out over a desk — no bikes in sight. It was the sort of chaos I could relate to. Suddenly 3:45pm made sense.

We spent the next couple of months riding and staying out way too late and the more I got to know him the more I realised, despite all the other things he had going on in his life, there was something he was still looking for. And the bike was still a big part of that. Lach and were planning our trip and I thought Taylor would get a lot out of it, so I asked him. He was into it straight away.

And so three became four.

The most worried and skeptical I was all trip was before we’d even left. There were bags, vehicles, people, maps, food, cameras, plans, ideas and expectations. People were wondering what to wear, what hashtag to use, what was sponsor-correct. I was worried for the guys we were bringing along — what would Cam and Taylor think of this thing we called ‘Thereabouts’? What did they want out of this ride? Could this trip provide it?

Rolling through familiar and beautiful terrain to begin our journey did nothing to calm my nerves and when we eventually stopped in Idaho Springs for something to eat it didn’t feel right. It all felt forced. I didn’t feel like I was on the free-spirited journey I’d planned. Maybe that was it; I’d planned on it.

We rolled out of Idaho Springs full of pizza and coffee. We’d managed to dodge the weather thus far and looked to have a clear and pretty straight forward 3-4 hours ahead of us. Sure there was a 12,000-foot pass to navigate but nothing out of our control. We decided to leave our support cars behind and hit the 10-20km of bike path from Georgetown up to the base of Loveland Pass. I was all for it.

Two kilometres later there was a small snow drift over the path; nothing we couldn’t handle with one foot still clipped in. But then the snow drifts began to increase in frequency over the next two kilometres until finally the path was covered. My nerves began to settle; the challenge had been set.

I looked at Cam, Gus and Taylor. I was sure someone would suggest the sensible option of backtracking and taking the main road. Silence. I smiled. As we walked on, the snow became deeper until it was well over our knees, stopping us dead on every third step, killing our momentum. It was Taylor who blazed the trail and I cringed every time he slipped or fell, remembering the injuries he seemed to have forgotten.

Our cleats and our toes were totally frozen, but that didn’t matter much as there was no longer any rideable terrain. Still silence. These guys were getting it. I smiled to myself, afraid of ruining the moment by laughing.

What must have been an hour later, Taylor and I were side-by-side in a maze of snow that had no foreseeable end. With no idea if we were above, next to or nowhere near the bike path we had set out on, we started laughing, throwing our bikes forward then crawling the three meters to reach them. We repeated this process, sure it was the most effective method of crossing the now waist-deep snow without sinking. We continued, but now that our pace had dropped to less than 2km/h we knew we’d never make Breckenridge by nightfall.

With the distant sound of the freeway making its way through the trees we all decided it was time to try and hike it out to the main road. It was probably less than a mile as the crow flew and it seemed easy enough. However, the reality on the ground was a dense pine forest and a nice mountain stream separating us and the I-70. But again, we trudged on, no questions asked. The river wasn’t that deep, and I thought it would be best to cross without shoes. So did Taylor, but he was wise enough to remove his socks.

We pushed through the river and scaled a small dirt cliff up to the I-70. Not one mention of turning back, not one complaint, not one face without a smile. Why did we just do that? There was no finish line. No one to see what we were doing.

As we sat in the shoulder, digging out our cleats, and drying our socks, my fears from that morning were gone. “Yeah, these guys get it.” Three of my best mates, bikes, no restrictions, no rules — that freedom I hadn’t felt since Uluru. With three hours still to cover we headed for Loveland Pass, all a little more certain of why we were headed to Moab. It didn’t matter that our motives were different.

I arrived in Boulder at 2:30am, perhaps not the most appropriate time to arrive given we were meant to be rolling out at 9am that morning, but knowing the type of journey we were about to undertake it seemed perfectly fitting.

Out on the road, it didn’t take long for the small talk to die down and for the first competitive encounter to take place. As we reached the Peak to Peak Scenic Byway, Taylor decided it was time to light the fuse and attack like he was shot out of a cannon. He flew over a roller and bombed onto the decent and from that moment on it was boogie time.

As expected the descent was absolutely balls to the wall and at 3,000m it felt like I was breathing through a straw. Just as we made contact with the flying Phinney a siren sounded from a local county police car — we’d been nabbed for speeding! Well, not all of us; just me as I was the one leading the chase. It turned out Taylor was doing the speed limit but as we were chasing him down we were going faster. Fortunately the friendly police officer simply gave me a warning. It was the perfect way for Thereabouts to begin.

The competitive juices were flowing again on day two with a seemingly inevitable showdown on Independence Pass. A TTT to the bottom was followed by a restrained-but-not-all-that-enjoyable tempo. And as we took a sweeping left-hander to begin the steepest slopes of the final 5km, it started teaming with snow. This was going to be memorable.

Immediately, the most credentialed cyclist of us all, Taylor, seized the upper hand and went to the front setting as searing a pace as is possible into a headwind, teaming snow, and aboard a cyclocross bike. Lachlan and I had pride at stake and stuck to Taylor’s wheel like glue as he churned over his compact crankset with Phinney fury.

I slipped into mountain TT mode and began to think of those images of Andy Hampsten climbing through the snow and winning the 1988 Giro d’Italia. I dreamed of what it must have been like to be wearing completely inappropriate clothing for the conditions whilst going on to become one of the greatest cyclists ever.

While I may have been wearing baggy shorts and a Geelong Football Club jumper, and Andy was riding his way towards one of the most prestigious leaders jersey’s in cycling, for those couple of kilometres I thought I was actually on the Gavia Pass.

All four of us are facing an interesting period in our lives as professional cyclists and being with these three guys really helped give me perspective on some of the things that I’ve struggled with during my career. I was reminded of the fact that it doesn’t matter how you get the job done as long as you get it done.

There are always going to be plenty of difficult and challenging days but that makes the successful days all the more enjoyable. It’s about finding what helps you to deal with those hard times and how you learn from them and become a better athlete in the process.

Riding with these boys reminded me that I love riding my bike, I love riding it as hard as I can and I love, above all, the friendships and camaraderie cycling has allowed me to enjoy over the years.

People have ridden further, longer, faster, over harsher terrain, in more distant lands and with less support than us, and all before we began this thing we call Thereabouts. We never set out to break any records, so what was it that we did set out to do? Was it to do something original, to somehow explore ‘the other side of the sport’? Or are we really just making a video selfie crossed with an American Apparel catalogue?

That’s the sort of thought that manifests itself when you’re tired, when things aren’t going exactly the way you planned them. I stood on the side of the road chewing, with mindless exhaustion, on a piece of wild asparagus — a gift from a young, stoned farmhand we’d just run into.

Four days ago I was so confident this group had a story worth talking about; a story that needed telling. But as I listened to Cam talk about getting our documentary on TV, and watched Taylor ask our photographer to get another shot of him standing in the road — this time at a lower angle and a different pose — I couldn’t help but wonder if we’d all just become caught up in looking cool.

After Uluru I thought I knew what we were in for. I trusted in the landscape, the effort, the teamwork and the strangers to draw something out in us. I wanted these guys to feel the same way I did when I rolled into Uluru. Yet standing there on the side of the road outside of Hotchkiss, Colorado I couldn’t see the forest from the trees.

This thing we were making couldn’t have felt less personal. We were just parading around in front of the cameras as if we were changing the game but we were just on a glorified training ride, supported, from town to town. Was it different this time? Or has Thereabouts always been like this and I’ve just been drinking the Kool-Aid I mixed for everyone else?

I finished my stalk of asparagus, the guys snapped off a couple more photos and as we pushed off towards the town of Delta I was sure I had my answer. Sorry fellas, sorry sponsors, sorry punters. I have to shut this thing down. No film, no photos, no stories, no life-changing journeys and existential lessons. We’re gonna pretend it never happened.

Then we turned right instead of left. A little dirt road instead of the main highway. Literally, the road less travelled.

Eventually the car had to turn back and we had no choice but to walk. We’d entered the Adobe Badlands and for the first time in a week we didn’t have any cameras on us, no Instagram and no documentary to think about.

We began to separate on the trail, our patience fraying as we started to get fed up with each other’s unavoidable misfortunes. I wondered if anyone was going to snap; to tell everyone else to f&*k off. As my exhaustion began to further manifest into cynicism, I found myself hoping for it. We emerged from the trail several hours later, Cam riding an irreparable flat tyre, my camera broken, and all of us a little frayed around the edges. But somehow we were still together as a group.

Sitting at a bar in Delta after more than several unorthodox attempts to repair Cam’s tyre, and with 70km still to ride, Taylor began the call for Cam to hop off. It wasn’t long before I joined Taylor and the two of us tried to selfishly convince Cam to pack it in so we could get on the road and finish the ride before dark.

Cam, although showing rare signs of frustration, resisted and threw his leg over, pedalling off. Somewhere inside I guess we all knew that Cam would never quit like the rest of us would have. We were gonna have to ride the last miles into the fading light together, regardless of how slow that was.

The start was slow — real slow — with Taylor and I pulling on the front whilst Lach took up pushing duties at the back. We were all dead quiet. About 25km in we stopped so Cam could remove the inner tube from his now completely decimated tyre (like that would make a difference). He punched two Cokes and the rest of us just sat and stared as if dazed meditation would provide a fix that’d give us an extra 5km/h. It was a grim scene.

We hadn’t even reached the halfway point and the fraying that had started in the badlands was becoming a tear in the fabric. I’m sure the only reason we didn’t just leave Cam to fend for himself was because no one wanted to be the first one to say it. I know I thought about it.

Upon resuming and without a word Lach and I fell in behind Cam and began to push. We began to gain speed and as Taylor fell into formation and the three of us began to push our speed notched up above 45km/h.

It’s hard to express the change that occurred in those first 500m after we pushed off. I was ready to write off the whole trip; I was finished. But as we all fell in line together without a word and with our cohesion boosting us forward, all of that washed away.

I was then and am still now embarrassed for even thinking the things I had about three of my closest mates. I was choosing to ignore the snow, the mountains, the river crossings, the burritos, the badlands and the people we’d met in the past week. I was trying to predict what the adventure was going to be, trying to force it to happen instead of letting myself be part of it. A huge smile broke out across my face as I felt Lach’s hand on my back, I then put my hand on Cam’s back, my head down and we all pedalled on.

As we finally took the pressure off the pedals and slowed on the outskirts of Grand Junction, I looked at the others and their smiles said the same. We had all been a part of a strange and unconventional victory; a victory to the better halves of ourselves.

I know the stakes weren’t life or death and there wasn’t anything really on the line except our friendships, but sticking it out together and triumphing against that busted-arse tyre was the kind of bizarre experience that I’ve only ever had on the road from Delta. It’s the type of thing you need to experience for yourself before you’ll understand.

I don’t regret thinking those things about my mates; to me that is the beauty of cycling. It forces you to think things, to feel things and to confront things. It challenges you in the most uncomfortable ways and sometimes that’s exactly what you need to appreciate what’s right in front of you.

We were freshly caffeinated and the Rocky Mountains were nearly behind us. Mt. Sopris stood majestic to our left; McClure Pass, the last mountain pass of our journey, lay directly in our path. We rotated in four, opting for long pulls at the front which meant more time at the back to think, more time to dream.

Cam in his baggy mountain bike shorts took the longest and hardest pulls. The group poked fun at him, calling him a robot because he was so strong. “At the front. Engage.” Not much else was said. This was Day 3, Aspen to Hotchkiss, and frankly, after already 15 hours in the saddle over days 1 and 2, we didn’t have much more to say to one another.

As the boys all passed me I was struck by the contrast between the dark grey road and the lush surrounding Colorado greenery left over after an abnormally wet spring. I was overcome with a sense of clarity that I can only describe as therapeutic.

Surrounded by three close friends, my companions on this journey, I briefly became merely an observer of life. I took in the colours, and the scents. I felt the warmth in the air and the dull pain in my legs from our daylong paceline speed which fit somewhere perfectly in between comfortable and uncomfortable.

I mused that this fleeting sense of clarity was a feeling that people search for in everything they do. This type of journey was the sort often taken by the troubled, the depressed, the alcoholics, and the drug addicts. I, we, and they, journey to escape ourselves and our day-to-day routines. The purpose of a journey is to clear your mind and reset yourself in space.

On the road your struggle is very real and clear. Life is simple; life is lived point A to point B, food becomes fuel for travel, and a bed and roof provide shelter and much-needed rest. Everything you normally take for granted in comfortable, day-to-day life gains more meaning and, in turn, your daily efforts as a human gain more meaning.

You revel in the gift of sunlight and shiver with misery in the cold and the rain. A sense of accomplishment takes hold at the end of every day; every day that slowly begins to separate itself from being a weekday or day of the weekend. Time begins to lose meaning; daylight begins to signify a time in which things are done and achieved, and the night time becomes a time for resting and preparing for the day ahead.

McClure Pass loomed in front of us. As it was the shortest of all the passes we were to attack on this journey it proved to be my best shot at a little victory. I took off early and my knee clicked all the way to the top where it began to snow. As I rummaged around for my jacket in the follow car, the snow thickened, and I tried not to dwell on what that meant for us on the road ahead.

We rolled off and were quickly greeted by a blinding sleet. Lachy stopped alone to adjust his hood; Cam, to everyone’s amazement, still had only shorts on; and Gus was ever-quiet as he had been the previous days, preoccupied with all of the details of directing the documentary while taking part in it. The snow that had turned to sleet eventually turned to rain and finally stopped by the bottom of the descent. With the cold and wet, our happy place had quickly turned miserable.

Minutes prior I had felt on top of the world, clear-minded and content — now we were cold and wet and facing a headwind that cut deep through each layer of clothing.

In an attempt to keep warm we resumed our pace line, but the water from the road sprayed in my face whenever I was in the wheel. We took long pulls rolling down a valley, cold and wet, with none of us really sure how far from our destination of Hotchkiss we really were. We made our final pit stop at the top of a small rise and checked the map, discovering we still had about 30 kilometres to go.

Stiff legs greeted me as I hopped back on my bike but as we got going again the sun poked out of the clouds and the road began to dry up. We popped out of our valley to a vast and green Western Colorado landscape. The view was overwhelmingly beautiful. The mountains were grey and snow-capped and sat atop a postcard-green base. The sky in front of us appeared endless with storms dotting the horizon, much like the storm we had just endured.

For the second time that day I allowed myself just to observe; to observe all of the gifts of this moment; the gift of sunlight, of dry roads, of a tailwind, of a gentle downhill road and of good company. Our clothes slowly dried in the warm breeze and I couldn’t help but remark on how happy I had been before the storm but how much happier I was after the storm, even though the surroundings hadn’t much changed.

My level of appreciation for comfort had deepened immensely and I lived in this moment of gratitude as presently as I could, knowing that this moment, like every moment in our lives, is fleeting.

Photo gallery

Just as we were about to collapse on the side of the road after our feeble 40-kilometre effort, we spotted a couple of older cyclists motoring towards us from the other direction. They both had smiles on their faces so large that you could see them grinning from 100 metres away! I’m still not sure if was the joy of seeing another human being or if they were just so relieved to finally be riding with the wind behind them – I assume that it was a combination of the two.

It turned out that these two 70-year-olds from Canada had just ridden all the way around Iceland during the country’s coldest spring in 40 years, and this was the final day of their journey. No wonder they were so happy to see us!

In spite of literally being blown off their bikes and “nearly freezing to death up in the north” they assured us that we were in for “one hell of a trip”. People like this are what cycling is all about. In their 70s and they’re still riding around with their mates and exploring new places? I can only hope that I’m still riding at that age.

Filled with enthusiasm after our encounter with the two Canadians, we pushed on into the 60km/hour block headwind. The only thing that enabled us to keep going on days like this was our extreme sense of optimism, or stupidity, as some would suggest.

It’s the optimism gene that so many cyclists are burdened with. If we didn’t have it, we probably wouldn’t have decided to ride around Iceland in the first place.

Every time I approached the crest of a hill or turned a corner, I convinced myself that the final destination was just on the other side. Deep down I probably knew that this was unlikely but you need to be able to trick your mind in order to keep your body going.

It was supposed to be the easiest day of the trip but I can honestly say it was the most difficult 90 kilometres of my life. I’ve been on 200-kilometre rides and climbed some crazy mountain passes but nothing compares to riding into an Icelandic headwind.

We finally made it to Laugarvatn at 10pm, just 10 minutes before they closed the kitchen at the local hotel. I daresay there would have been tears if we couldn’t find any food. We celebrated our survival with three homemade pizzas and a couple of beers, and agreed that tomorrow we would be heading to the west!

We woke to the sound of rain the following morning but even that couldn’t dampen our spirits. Our decision to go back towards the west meant that we would have a 60-70km/hour tailwind for most of the day and that we would hopefully be back on schedule by nightfall.

We basically just rolled for the first hour or so until we reached Þingvellir National Park, taking full advantage of the wind at our back. Þingvellir is home to Iceland’s historic parliament but more interestingly it is one of the only places in the world where you can actually see the boundary between the North American and European tectonic plates.

Apparently you can even dive in the crystal clear water that separates the plates but given the temperature, we settled for a ride along the boundary instead.

By mid afternoon we had already covered more distance than the day before and it felt like we could keep going until midnight, given that the wind kept blowing in the same direction! As we were approaching Iceland’s western coastline Dave even set up a wind sail contraption on the front of his bike in a bid to stop pedalling all together.

Foolishly, though, we hadn’t been keeping an eye on our route on Google Maps and soon noticed that we were riding towards a 20-kilometre ‘car only’ tunnel that was supposed to take us to that night’s accommodation. Upon closer inspection we discovered that we could still make it to our guesthouse if we rode the 65-kilometre detour all the way around the fjord to the other side of the tunnel.

The fjords in Iceland are long and narrow inlets of the sea that are always incredibly beautiful but slightly frustrating when you’re trying to get to a town on the other side.

It was lucky that we couldn’t take the tunnel because the roads that took us around the fjord were exactly what we were hoping to find in Iceland. With the ocean on one side, spectacular cliffs on the other and no cars or tourists to ruin the quietude, it really was one of those perfect cycling moments.

In the space of a couple of days I had experienced some of my best and worst moments on a bike. This trend seemed to continue throughout the trip but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Iceland definitely has some of the most beautiful roads in the world but they wouldn’t have nearly the same allure if they were easy to find.

The fact that you have to deal with the elements and travel so far just to reach them makes it so much more satisfying when you finally get there.

Over the next few days we started to get into more of a routine now that we knew what to expect. When the weather was bad, we would knuckle down and try to cover as much ground as possible and when the sun was out we would stop to take photos and appreciate our obscenely picturesque surroundings.

If the calibre of a ride can be measured by the number of times we stop for photos then Iceland would undoubtedly be on top of our list. It got to a point where we had to ban ourselves from taking photos for certain periods just so that we would reach our campsite by midnight!

Even with these self-imposed limitations it was difficult to ride past giant waterfalls and glaciers without getting the cameras out. Often we would find ourselves riding into the early hours of the morning.

And this is the problem with riding a bike in Iceland. The sun never goes down so it becomes so easy to ride all day and disregard sleep altogether. There was one occasion in particular where Dave decided he wanted to check out a waterfall at 1am. We did a little 50-kilometre return trip in the middle of the night and then managed just two hours sleep before it was time to hit the road again.

I usually wouldn’t be able to function properly with this amount of sleep but there’s something about the constant daylight and the fresh air in Iceland that provides you with an extra kick of energy.

After five days and 500 kilometres we had only reached Stykkishólmur, a charming little fishing village on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula on the west coast. By this stage we were both suffering from serious ankle injuries (possibly due to the dramatic increase in cycling and the stupid amount of weight we were trying to carry) and were resigned to the fact that we couldn’t possibly make it all the way around Iceland’s coastline.

We still wanted to see the Western Fjords so we decided to leave our luggage at the hotel and take the ferry across to the fjords for a day. The following day we would hire a car and drive all the way across to the east coast where we would resume our ride.

Although we only spent a day in the Western Fjords, it was easily the highlight of the trip. The northwestern corner of Iceland is the most breathtaking and one of the least visited parts of the country, making it perfect for cycling.

We only had seven hours before the ferry was due back to pick us up but that gave us plenty of time to explore the empty coastal roads and even ride up into the mountains where we found metres of snow still lining the roads.

I think we both really wanted to stay in Western Fjords but we had to get back to the ferry so that we could keep to our original goal of seeing as much of the country as possible.

After a long, eight-hour drive through the north of the island we finally arrived in Egilsstaðir where we begun the final leg of our journey back down the east coast.

The Eastern Fjords were much like their spectacular counterparts in the west except there were far more cities and more tourists making their way up from Reykjavik. With town names like Breiðdalsvík, Fáskrúðsfjörður and Neskaupstaður we quickly gave up on asking locals for directions and even resorted to referring to them by their first letter when we were talking to each other.

By the time we reached our third fjord in two days Dave was becoming frustrated by the amount of time it was taking to move south. This fjord, however, had a tunnel that you could apparently ride through so we did a quick Rock, Paper, Scissors (see video right) to decide our fate: the 40km gravel road that went around the fjord or the five-kilometre, dodgy-looking tunnel?

Luckily I won and opted for the gravel road, which looked horrible to begin with but opened up into one of the most beautiful coastal regions we had seen on the entire trip. The road was carved high into the cliff so we had amazing views out across the islands and the vibrant blue waters of the Norwegian Sea.

Once we had finally left the indirect roads of the Eastern Fjords behind us, it was all about exploring some of the famous sights on the way back to Reykjavik. While we still had to cover 100km per day to get back in time, the winds were more favourable than earlier on in the trip so we could afford to have some time away from the bike.

Iceland’s south east coast is packed with natural wonders so our last few days were easily our busiest. We camped on the glacial lake at Jökulsárlón, hiked up to the Skaftafellsjökull glacier, swam in Iceland’s oldest swimming pool, pitched a tent in the middle of Fjaðrárgljúfur Canyon and visited some of the island’s most impressive waterfalls.

While this was all definitely worthwhile, the roads in the south east weren’t actually that great for cycling. If all you want to do is ride your bike in Iceland, then I would head straight to the Western Fjords where there are far less cars and some mind-blowing stretches of road.

When I woke up on the final day of the trip, I finally understood why those two Canadians were so happy. Although we didn’t complete the entire 2,000km loop that we set out to do, we still rode 1,300 kilometres through some of the most beautiful and challenge environments that I’ve ever been faced with on a bike.

Whilst it was sad to be leaving this crazy world behind us, I couldn’t help but feel happy and relieved that we were actually going to make it.

Travelling by bike is the best way to see a country – you explore all day until you’re out of energy and then spend your nights trying new foods and recounting the day’s events over a couple of beers.

Compared to travelling by bus or car you get to experience the country on a completely different level; the sounds, the smells, the people, even the way the earth rises and falls beneath your feet – all things that go largely unnoticed within the walls of a motor vehicle.

As we were riding back into Reykjavik, I realised that this was especially true for Iceland. The earth is literally alive in Iceland and there’s no better way to experience it than on your bike. The crisp clean air, the sounds of glacial rivers rushing alongside the roads and the strong scents of hot springs and tiny fishing villages are what make Iceland such a unique and memorable place.

While there were some days when we wanted to throw our bikes into a volcano, Iceland also gave us the best roads and the most extraordinary landscapes that I’ve seen anywhere in the world.

It’s definitely not for everyone, but if you’re after a ‘life changing experience’ and you’re prepared to work for it, you should definitely pay Iceland a visit.

Our first port of call was to be the Cameron Highlands, famed for rolling tea plantations and a spectacular sunrise. The Tour de Langkawi had bypassed it this year but with what Sea Keong, Danial and Zie had been telling me it was an area that should be top of our to-ride list.

The initial plan had been to hit three regions: the Cameron Highlands, the Genting Highlands and finally Frasers Hill. But even before we left plans started to change. The news that the Genting Highlands was shut to traffic due to building works immediately had us whittling our destinations to two locations; a shame but no problem. But it was to be what we’d initially planned as a quick pit stop at a petrol station on the way to the Cameron Highlands that was to have us re-scheduling once again.

Seeing a man keel over, lose consciousness and then shake uncontrollably isn’t what you’d expect or want to experience while stopping to fuel up. But this is exactly what was playing out in front of us while in the petrol station’s rest room.

We, along with what seemed to be a tour group, watched as a man dropped to the floor and had an intense epileptic fit. With his friends looking perplexed, shocked and scared at what was unfolding they slowly leaned in preparing themselves to restrain him from his vicious shaking. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, I recognised what was happening, being epileptic myself. I stepped forward and offered a hand, telling his mates to refrain from restraining him.

Zie was soon on the phone to the ambulance while I helped make the guy comfortable. Slowly he regained consciousness. It turned out that the poor guy had just arrived in the country for work; he’d traveled with friends from Nepal clearly looking and hoping for a fresh start at life. He’d had one episode of fitting in the past but was unaware it was epilepsy. It was a sad story to hear.

Sat in the car with the air-con blazing away a little while later we were all a little taken aback. Talk turned to us realising we were all pretty damn fortunate in our lives. None of us had ever been forced to leave our country of birth to find work just to make ends meet. The thought of “had we just helped or hindered the guy in his new life here in Malaysia?” rumbled in my mind. Was the cost of an ambulance going to cripple him financially? Was his job going to still be there when he was ready to resume work? It was an odd feeling and you could feel the puzzlement and mood change in the car as we drove off.

With us all reeling from the day’s dramas we soon came to the conclusion that we’d skip Frasers Hill as we’d seen it in the Tour. Instead we’d just enjoy the Cameron Highlands to its fullest — no dashing about, no spending a ton of time in the car racing from location to location, no skimming an area’s surface just so we could say we’d been there, done that. The service station situation had us all agreeing that we were on a road trip and the essence of that is to enjoy it without worry. Instead of a road trip this was quickly turning in to what we dubbed “a playground ride”.

The Cameron Highlands are situated roughly 200km north of Kuala Lumpur. The original reason we’d picked it out as prime road tripping territory was partly the long 40km climb it offered. We entered the Cameron Highlands from what I was told was the ‘good-looking’ side; Kampung Pahang would be our starting location.

The first day’s aim was to get to the hotel at Brinchang, roughly 65km from our drop-off point. With most of these kilometres of the upwards variety we knew we were going to be pushed to complete it before the sun set. With a mix of clammy heat, legs that hadn’t turned a pedal in over a week and the slight gradient I knew I’d feel the climb.

The road cuts its way through a thick forest of overhanging trees. It’s a road that, for me as a European, felt a world away from what I’m used to riding on. We were surrounded by dense greenery with corners that didn’t let us know what to expect until we rounded them, and a back drop of animal noises that overpowered the small birds I’m used to hearing. All I had to guide me was Sea Keong and his stories of where he’d been dropped in a stage of the Tour de Langkawi a few years back and at what point he’d dragged himself back in to contention.

The first village we passed through was Jalan Tapah. The whole place sits along the roadside — shacks narrow the road down on each side. The silvery waterfall pouring from high above down to the yellowing rock face and on into the trees below is the main tourist attraction.

The coloured shacks all look slightly bleached by the harsh sun, each vying for tourists’ money. Fresh fruit, locally-made gifts and hand-crafted furniture were all on display; the smell of cooked fish and chicken begged for us to stop. Once through the village the hillside started to crank up. Nothing too serious but from here onwards the gradient never really subsided until we hit the main town close to the top.

It’s also where the right-hand side of the road briefly opened up to allow a glimpse of the elevation we’d already achieved. To the left the foliage got even denser.

With Sea Keong looking at ease and me chugging away, we started to pass small huts tucked away in the forest, each clearly built from materials found in the forest. It was as if time had forgotten the area. These were the homes of the local indigenous people of Malaysia, the Orang Asli. Many still live off the land, with some earning a small income from selling handmade goods to passers-by.

Riding past large families all sat in the entrance of their homes we shared the occasional cheer or wave. We made a mental note to stop and investigate a bit more the following day when time would be on our side.

With night slowly creeping in we finally rolled into the township of Brinchang. Hungry and sweaty — more from keeping pace with Sea Keong than the heat — I noticed the night market. In his wisdom Sea Keong made a beeline for the illuminated stalls.

Decked out in lycra, aboard flash-looking bikes, in the dark of the night, chowing down on the local cuisine, we soon became the unexpected attraction of the market. People wandered over, shoving their kids in our direction and whipping out their cameraphones, snapping away. The place was alive.

We gorged on fruit that actually tasted like it should, skewered meat in rich sauce and the local milky tea tarik. Shattered but raring to see what the morning would bring we hit the sack.

Our reward for waking up at “silly o-clock” was the view of almost fluorescent pink sunlight drowning a mountain side of tea plantations. It set us up for a day of adventure like no other.

Perfect conditions, tarmac that weaved its way through the rolling hills and being fuelled by the previous day’s market purchases caused a massive outbreaks of smiles among the four of us. As Danial and Zie vanished in to the undergrowth to look for “perfect angles” Sea Keong and I investigated the narrow roads, dashing through corners that seemed to have been designed with cyclists in mind.

Before long we came across a small, broken and clearly little-used road which pointed upwards to the highest point of the Highlands. Like any good cyclist it was a road we weren’t going to ignore.

The uneven and at-times sketchy road surface took us through yet more pristine plantations with green, lush, low-slung hedges of tea leaves below the road. The view from the top opened up giving us a firm idea of how big the highlands actually were.

The forests stretched out before us before dropping away into the morning mist below, further reminder that a return trip would be in order to fully investigate the area.

The descent from the top was just as difficult as the climb; a gaggle of steep sharp corners on the rough surface had us yanking on the anchors for most of the way down. Brake blocks squealed as the tyres struggled to keep us on a trajectory that would safely see us around the corner rather than in the tea leaves below.

In the lower plantations and with breakfast beckoning, we headed for the Boh Tea cafe. Make no mistake: this was a cafe and not a coffee shop. Ordering coffee here would, I’m sure, see you forcefully ejected. And doing so would result in you not being able to relax in possibly the best brew shop I’ve had the privilege of putting my feet up in.

Sipping tea on the balcony that overhung the plantations and chatting the usual cycling nonsense would have been a difficult task to leave behind, but knowing we had equally as interesting places to visit made us keen to move on and throw our legs over the bikes.

Pointing the bikes downhill we soon reached the huts that had intrigued me the day before. With several of the locals sitting by the roadside we stopped and immediately the conversation started as our bikes were keenly checked over.

Not speaking the local dialect I attempted to chat in few exaggerated hand signals with pointing. Sea Keong was able to speak in a broken dialect and we soon discovered that the main man among the group was in fact Michael Jackson … or at least he claimed to be. A few attempted moonwalks in cleats and a line or two from Thriller and we were all soon laughing.

It didn’t take long until Michael wandered over to his hut and returned with a long hollow cane. It turned out to be a blow pipe, several meters long and used in conjunction with wooden darts made from a tree sap; darts that, surprisingly and slightly worryingly, were loaded with enough poison to kill a wild boar. Trading bike for hunting pipe we each checked out each other’s tools of the trade.

Looking at Michael you know he’s had a tough life living off the land and bartering with tourists. When Zie, Danial, Sea Keong and I found out Michael was only 35 years old it came as a shock. He looks older and clearly suffers from the multiple bodily pain and prangs that you’d expect an old-age pensioner to have.

For the second time in as many days the reality of how fortunate we are was brought home to us. We’re roughly the same age.

As Sea Keong and I rode away we discussed how different our lives are. Even though Michael’s born and bred in the hillside and lives a life of hunting and sheltering in a small hut, he clearly knows his value and how to earn from it. It’s obvious he knows how he and many of his friends have become, for want of a better expression, ‘tourist attractions’. It’s a little sad, but they seem happy with the deal.

Back on the bikes we dash down to the next section of the road. Pushing hard on the pedals I try to keep with Sea Keong but he’s on top form and easily making my legs hurt. If we were out training I’d be angry at myself for being dropped but with scenery like we’re passing through it makes up for the humiliation.

Dashing around corners with little braking and the odd calculated gamble soon sees me back on Sea Keong’s wheel.

Arriving back at the village of Tapah Perak we decide to grab some of the food we’d had to skip on our ascent of the hill. Popping into one of the street vendor’s premises we tuck into rich-flavoured fish and noodles. Sitting roadside eating good food that looked a little questionable we got chatting to the owners. It turned out that a few of the stalls and shops here are owned by the same family. Before long we are introduced to the sons and brothers and cousins, handed more fish and fruit and then sent on our way.

Back on the bikes and yet again full with food we soon find ourselves on the lower slopes of the mountainside. The day’s sun is setting, the heat still stifles and Sea Keong still tears it up. Sprinting (or getting dropped less slowly in my case) we burn the last of the day and our energy.

Danial and Zie holler from the car, each taking turns to hang out of the window to get a good shot of us enjoying ourselves. Then we’re back at where we had been only 28 hours before.

In just over a day we’d crammed in more than we could have dreamed of, met people that would leave a lasting impression, ate some great food and on top of it all had an absolute blast on the bikes.

Sure: things hadn’t gone anywhere close to the original plan, we hadn’t claimed Strava KOMs and we definitely hadn’t burned more calories than we’d consumed. But it had been a trip that had us swearing we had to do it again … and next time with zero plan in place.