The gallery of my latest China visit is finally done. Some nice pictures from the start and end days of my motorbike trip to Tibet are available now in the China 2010 gallery. The Tibet pictures will get an own gallery soon.
Due the recent earthquake in the Kham area, we are forced to take another route to the "classic" Tibet provinces Ü and Tang. We will start in Xining and take the Qinghai route from Golmud to Nagqu over the northern Tibetan plateau before reaching the "classic" Tibet. The changed route is now a "Historic Tibet" tour, since the new trip leads mainly through current Tibet and the former Tibetian province of Amdo.
The motorbike tour from Chengdu to Lhasa will start in May 2010. Starting from Chengdu the route will follow the southern track of the Sichuan - Tibet Hwy. As the Lonely Planet China states, it "is one of the world's highest, roughest, most dangerous and most beautiful roads". This is followed by a tour through "classic" Tibet to the Mt. Everest basecamp and back to Lhasa.
2009: The Nordkapp trip by Motorbike
In June/July 2009 I wanted to make a real long-distance trip to test my personal capabilities and find out the technical problems of my motorbike. Since I've never been in the Baltics and Northern Europe finding a basic goal was easy. With such a long trip in a limited time of 4-5 weeks you have to set a focus on some areas. Mine was the Baltics and the Atlantic coast of Northern Norway.
Travel Information
The trip was about 10200km done in 31 days. Unfortunatly I ran out of time at the Lofoten islands and so I had to rush through Sweden, Denmark and Germany. Due time reasons I took the car train from Berlin to Vienna.
The weather was most of the time ok and the temperature was between 15-30 degrees. Only from the middle of Finland to the Nordkapp a cold weatherfront with rain cooled down to 2-8 degrees. The Nordkapp was (as most of the time) foggy with sight to 10-30m. I could not even see the museum from the parking lot.But the next day along the Norwegian coast there was sunshine and prefect weather for nearly one week. Half of the time I used a tent and camping sites, especially in Skandinavia.
Due limited space at the motorbike I took the Lonely Planet Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania and the Scandinavien Europe guidebooks. The Baltikum book was excellent (5th Edition May 2009), but the Skandinavian book (8th Edition 2007) was total crap.
I used the Michelin maps 781 Baltische Länder/Pays Baltes 1:500 000 and 711 Skandinavien, Finnland/Scandinavie, Finlande 1:1 500 000. Both were ok, but the Skandinavien map is not sufficient on the islands of Norway, since it does not contain lots of small ferries. But you get good and free maps in the Nowegian tourist offices.
I planned my routes with Garmin MapSource and even bought the map upgrade to City Navigator Europe NT 2009. THIS WAS NOT A GOOD IDEA (at least for my Garmin Quest 2). Before I had complete coverage of whole Europe. Afterwards I had to chooce if I want to install Central Europe with the Baltics or Scandinavia. Since I planned my routes with MapSource, I thought I can upload the corresponding maps along the route. This worked, except my the memory for routing waypoints ran out in Norway, so I had no routes from the middle of Norway back home. Another drawback was that I moved to Sweden earlier than expected, so I had no detailed maps on my GPS.
In Scaninavia it is common to pay with the creditcard and pincode (Mastercard/Visa, not Maestro) at the petrol stations. Only during normal working hours you can pay cash at some stations. Check with your bank if they have unlocked this feature at your card.
Detailed Trip Information
Below you find a detailed route map of this trip.
Unfortunately I'm currently too lazy to write a trip report, but you can view the Google-maps enabled gallery in the Nordkapp 2009 section.
