Farewell Europe

Sama: Hi Everyone

We are in Istanbul for a short stopover on our way to Nepal. With our bikes securely packaged for the onward flight, we hired bikes for 2 days and soon came to realise how well engineered our Australian bikes are for comfort. The combination of the stiff framed Turkish bikes and the cobble stones had our bones rattling, nevertheless we persevered and soon found a beautiful cycle track that took us all along the Bosphorous, a narrow channel that divides the Black Sea from the Sea of Marmara, and Europe from Asia.


Sean: Istanbul is an interesting city with lots of beautiful mosques with big domes and tall minarets. We are staying in the old part of the city in a small hotel.  Today we visited the Aya Sofya, which started off as the major christian basilica of the Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, was later converted into a mosque in the 15th century, and is now a museum. The city's main mosque, the blue mosque, is right nearby and is almost as big as the Aya Sofya  and absolutely beautiful inside.

The Blue Mosque, Istanbul

Aya Sofya, main dome.

Lots of fishing in this town.

You can buy anything at the bazaar.

There are literally hundreds of ships in the straight. You can hardly see the horizon.

Sama: Our last 5 days in Germany were spent in the Bavarian Alps and walking some of the best mountain tracks that I've ever experienced. We arrived in the area by train, then cycled, and once again it was a wonderful experience to get to our destination under our own steam.  I'm now convinced that this is the best way to see any country, besides helping to reduce our carbon footprint it has kept us out of the larger urban centres and given us the opportunity to spend more time in small villages and rural areas.  I found the Germans to be absolute bike enthusiasts who have set up situations and infrastructure that make cycling an enjoyable experience, they also give lots of positive encouragement to anyone cycling in their country, although they didn't seem to understand why we had left Munich just as the Oktoberfest was about to start and became even more bewildered when I tried to explain that, even though we were from Australia, we had come to Germany for the mountains and not for the beer.

Sean: Next we got to Kathmandu via Sharjah. We are going to be working on a volunteer project in rural Nepal for about a month with an organisation called INFO Nepal. We may not have regular internet access during this time, but will update the blog if we get a chance.