Advarsel!!!!! Dette indlæg er langt og i rå tekst, så ikke noget for danske skoleelever:)

Min tur til vinter startede da familien var på Bali for to år siden. Her mødte vi Salva, som var cyklet fra Spanien og ned gennem vest Afrika og op gennem øst Afrika og videre til Bali.

Det er en lille sej gut, som kører rundt på en gammel cykel, som ser ud til at være købt i Harald Nyborg.

Jeg synes, at hans sidste beretning er ret spændende og lærerig, så han fortjener et større publikum, hvilket er grundet til at jeg bringer den her.

Når Salva siger at noget er hårdt, så betyder det, at det er så slemt, så jeg nok for længst havde overvejet at opgive. Han er absolut ikke en type der overdriver eller praler om egne bedrifter.

Jeg skrev og ønskede ham en glædelig jul og gav ham linket med mine løse planer for turen og skrev:

but I am sure that the map of the finished trip will be a lot different.

Han svarede:

Of course! this is my wish for you! i hope you have a lot of unexpected problems! this is the wonder of travelling! Cheers from kobe, japan. write you soon. Salva.

Her er hans julerejsebrev:

Dear friend, how are you?

i am in kobe, central japan, which is perhaps the country i ever most wished to visit. i am in the house of my friend kim, living with his family, and this is a luxury experiencie.
japan has an extraordinary different and sophisticated culture, therefore, be able to live inside a family is just a wonderful gift.
after 90.280 km in nearly 5 years cycling, my body and mind are pretty tired. i need a long rest and put things in order. then, i will decide what to do with my life next.
i let you know about last months.

in beijing i had really good time with my polish friend adam. i wanted to stay longer but summer was ending and mongolia too close. for a nomadic life this is maybe the biggest ‘problem’: to choose between to stay or leave. such a problem, isn’t it? this is a good life, indeed.
so, after 3 weeks in beijing i left with some cyclist friends and very soon we started to enjoy a clean sky, leaving behind the polluted chinese skies. also delicious chinese food was left behind, unfortunately. i love it, and to be honest, i would not invest in a mongolian restaurant in my home country…

in august, the govi desert is not very tough. it is always windy and in parts sandy, but temperature was never over 42, 43 degrees.
there is no a clear road to follow. basically there are deep tracks in the land, a railway and energy\phone poles. all of them help. we followed sometimes the track closer to the railway, sometimes the poles, and we made it. along the railway is easy to find water in small stations every 20-30 km (but this means half day cycling in govi). far from there, we had to carry 10-12 liters enough for a day.
even with the great panorama it is not the most exciting desert in the world to cross. wind is coming from north and there are thousands of thorns in the sand, so we got lots of punctures everyday.
but they are building a new road. maybe next year finished. and already, the last 200 km are paved but we missed them because a huge mechanic problem. so, with sad faces we had to arrive by train in ulanbaator.

with everything fixed, more or less, we left for the steppes… my dear friend, this is one of the most beautiful and wild lands in the planet. all what you have is a huge view as far as your eyes can reach, a carpeted land of grass, clear rivers and a small track on the surface that in places can be even difficult to follow.
on a bicycle you are able to cross one or two villages a day (provided you do 70-90 km) but there are gers (yurts) everywhere, and they are extremely friendly. always invited us to go in, drink some tea and eat dairy products. much better than restaurants…
there is no rubbish, not a single publicity advertisment or sing of civilization. just nature. we lived cooking our food, bathing in rivers, sleeping in tent everyday, breathing pure air and enjoying open spaces, forested mountains, horses running on the rivers, eagles flying over our heads… well, this also means that you must carry on the bike a house and half bicycle shop, love cold cold water, rough roads with no bridges and consider that your tent is a confortable place to live in. do not come here expecting thailand tourism infrastructure!

in the stunning khovsgol lake we were up to 6 cyclist, 4 of us long distance travellers, good company! anyway, also i wanted to enjoy september with the silence of nature, so i went alone again. but only for 2 weeks. mongolia roads are very rough for bicycles, so imagine for a cheap and old bike as mine is. hardly i have a month without something broken.
i started to have serious problems and decided to cycled back to ulanbaator. so luckily, that my rear hub definitely broke at the door of idre’s guesthouse…!
well, friends, you may wonder if ulanbaator is a good place to fix a bicycle, and.. just come and have a look in the bikes corner at the big market.. that’s all you can get!
but, ok, with some chinese spare parts and some western ones (that i did not want to ask how they got), i fixed more or less my bike with the hope that they would last until the first russian city. and they did it!
i enjoyed a rest and slowly slowly, with the first nights below zero, the 1st of october i was at the siberian border.

if you are a traveler, you may ask yourself how this bloody gypsy spanish could get a russian visa on the road, since this is not allowed by russian laws. well, let’s say that even a gypsy can be lucky enough to have a friend in an important building of moscow, and i will tell you the full story with a beer some day…

but siberia was not easy for me. after 30 km i stopped in a farm to ask for water. dogs were very agressive and the man come to me. i saw a strange look in his eyes but i did not realized the problem until he ordered the dogs to attack me. fine. i managed to escape but i got some serious bites and lots of blood. back on the road, i did an emergency cleaning and a car took me to a close hospital where they stitched and desinfected my injures properly. very kindly.
so, i learnt very fast two important things in russia: some people are absolutely crazy because poorness and alcoholism and they are dangerous. the second, some people have such a big heart that cannot fit even in the kremlim. fortunately, the mayority of russians are the latest and you can indentify the dangerous people by the strange look on their eyes.

i spent 4 days in hospital where nurses and patients took care of me, for no money. as soon i started to walk, i started to cycle too, and with the help of some painkillers i arrived in ulan ude, the city with the biggest lenin head in russia.
i spent 2 days invited by a hotel and also i realized that russians were very interested in my story. they are very romantic, old fashioned, and they like very much the idea of crossing the world on a bicycle, exposed to nature and living in fragility.
in africa and asia, only few people share the western love for adventures and challenges, once and again they always asked me ‘why?’, so i was very happy to be accepted, and supported. they respected my style of living.

well, i boutgh some winter clothes and started the next stretch, to chita city. october is still fine and it was only arriving in chita when i had first very cold nights and happy breakfast at -16 degrees in my tent… this is pure taiga land, with few villages and kafes, so to get water became a problem since small rivers were under ice, and some food freeze very soon in my bags. still, i was fine.
i woke up before the down (days are short), cooked breakfast and put  in a flask extra podrrige for the road, also water in flask, and in the afternoon i cleaned my tent of ice to be ready for the evening. some camp spots were very beautiful, always hidden in the taiga forest. sunsets are very long and beautiful in october.

in chita i made some friends and i was invited to stay with nastya and misha, very good an sport-people. i was worried about the next stretch, to skovordino city, because of unsafety reputation and distances much more longer. there are many reports of assalts but i wanted to try. i was stupid.
220 km after chita i was assalted. a guy with a motorbike broke my wheel and i was in the middle of a lonely road with a bad circumstances scene.
but, in somehow, i enjoy a protection from the sky or wherever, and one car passed by and stopped. 3 men helped me, the bandit ran away and they drove me back to chita.
i had again a taste of russian kindness. nastya and misha took care of me as a brother. i was very sad because in 5 years this was the first time i felt unsafe (even though i crossed some war regions in africa, kurdistan or afghanistan, i was never scared before).
nastya spreaded the story and very soon many good russians supported me and asked how to help. after the dogs and the bandit, i was not in the mood of suffering a third problem, i thought that life was giving me some clues to avoid a fatal third one…and some days later i put my bike in a truck and i crossed this dangerous region for far east russia.

my friends wanted to drive me until blagovenchensk region, which is civilizated and safer, but i still wanted to taste again coldness. so, i started to cycle again in skovordino, some 600 km from the attack place.
there was too much snow and cold. for 3 days i was unable to camp, because it was the first winter snow fall, and pushing the bike to find a hidden place for camping through one meter high snow…too much for me! i could not leave the road, which already was very iced, so i had to adapt the ride to the towns distances. sometimes 70, sometimes 115 km.
by the way, november starts to be very cold. you need winter tyres there. a spanish bikeshop from barcelona gave two spiky tyres as a present.

in towns i was always welcomed by the townhall and got a place to sleep, warm. sometimes a school, stadium, theather, soviet flat, and very often they invited me to stay in a hotel. very friendly and helpful people. russians always wanted to give me food, clothes, money… they are very generous and they were very worried for me about the cold on the road.

during the day i cycled and made short breaks to eat very fast some biscuits. then kept going. -15 or -10 degrees is not a nice temperature to have lazy breaks! even in the afternoon, when it was -3 or sometimes 0 degrees, i did not stop too long.
actually, the coldness gave me a lot of energy. it made me feel stronger and always in the mood of moving, happy. i never cycled before in such a cold weather and i think i was also happy to be facing the challenge of coldness without many troubles. it is easier than you are thinking!

later, there was less snow and i camped again on the way to khabarovsk. so i had again lovely nights inside my freezer. funny to wake up and have the inner tent absolutely iced because of transpiration!
so, i arrived in khabarovsk just starting to snow again. it lasted 4 days and blocked roads and airport, made streets look like a skiing resort. for russians it is normal but for me it was very beautiful. now, i love snow and coldness!
i stay there with my friend boris and family, very good russian people.
then, i started the last stretch. to vladivostok. this was the hardest for me. the road was very iced, cars were dangerous because of slippering wheels, and cold, very cold. never a maximum temperature over -7 or -5.
i started to feel tired, maybe because last 10 months with tibet and mongolia have been very demanding and i did not rest properly. so, i began to have cramps and pain in some tendons. i had to slow down to 50-60 km a day. mostly i camped in snowed forests but also i stayed in towns where russians always hosted me.

in east russia, like some other parts in the world, there is no tourism. so, travelers can enjoy a taste of how the world was before the tourism boom. i love these regions. maybe there are not big monuments to see, lovely ruins or sugar-sand beaches, but you get a deep contact with the people and for me that is the real reason behind travelling.
since you are not a tourist but a foreigner travelling, very fast you are treated as a friend, somebody who is passing by and need help to keep going. russians always opened their houses and hearts for me.

eventually, very tired, i arrived in vladivostok in a beautiful morning, plenty of snow, and i saw the ocean. the end of euroasian continent, the end of a long journey. and i got such a big energy and happiness that my body stopped painning.
i had to wait somedays for the ferry to japan, and i was welcomed by my friends vladimir and nina, russian 4×4 travelers. i met lots of people in city, made lots of friends, and all of them treated me very kindly, as a close friend. they made me love russia and russians. i will come back again!

well, now i have to rest. finally, i gave kim back the lucky coin he gave me almost 4 years ago in cape town.
i want to experience japanese culture, make some money, and decide what is next. i would like to cycle the whole america, but let’s see. first, i have to rest a bit.

i wish you a happy christmas and good new year.
salva