After my first long-haul ride across Australia I was waiting for the next challenge.
And it came: a Canadian travel company, TDA, offered me a deal—drive their cars from Slovakia to Tbilisi, Georgia. Than back on own – cycling from Tbilisi to Trenčín via Istanbul.
Perfect plan, I thought: go there by car, pedal back home.
Cycling from Tbilisi to Trenčín via Istanbul—what could possibly go wrong?
Turns out, life writes better plots. Administrative tangles wrecked my neat “ride home” plan, and instead of pointing my wheels west I pushed farther east—toward the Caucasus and Azerbaijan.
I joined a ragtag crew pedalling the legendary Silk Road from Beijing all the way to Istanbul.
The Silk Road—no tourist brochure fluff here—was the ancient trade artery linking East Asia and the Mediterranean from roughly the 2nd century BC to the 14th century AD. It carried silk, spices and every kind of luxury (even, allegedly, the mythical “Mayo bicycle”)—and just as importantly, ideas, religions and technologies.
First stretch of the Silk Road ride
Stage one: done.
Astonishing!
A tailwind—on a bicycle that’s practically a unicorn.
Then came the climbs and bone-rattling gravel that hugged the Azerbaijani border.
Signs everywhere warned of live-fire zones, adding a dash of adrenaline to every pedal stroke.
Just as I feared, the road offered its own set of problems. 🙂
Stray dogs—persistent, sometimes downright aggressive—kept me on my toes. And my first real technical failure isn’t even on the bike: the tent pole snapped. With almost two months ahead, I need to find a way to keep my mobile home standing.
This journey is turning out longer and wilder than I ever imagined. As the saying goes, life is what happens while you’re busy making plans. And I’m ready for every curveball the road throws my way.
The ride is only beginning
Cycling from Tbilisi on a gravel bike—the Georgia cycling expedition has just begun.
