Initially this gap year wasn’t about cycling at all. But we quickly agreed that we didn’t want to do the classic backpacking.

So what made us decide that a bicycle would be a good idea:

• We like cycling a lot more than driving a bus or a car. The latter ones even make us sick, so that wasn’t much fun to look forward to.
• We heard about a great cycle adventure in the Himalayas a few years ago and have been dreaming about it ever since.
• We want to travel slow to take a good look around, still have a good pace to cover some distance.
• We’re not interested in the big touristic attractions. We prefer seeing all the aspects of a country (not only the pretty, busy ones), being in the middle of nowhere, meeting with the people, taking a deep dive in local life.
• We want to be flexible and go wherever we want. Or take the roads that locals indicate we definitely should go.
• We want to take along some camping gear, to have the freedom of sleeping in the middle of nature (where possible), but also to save on our accommodation budget. And you just carry more easily 20kg of luggage on a bicycle than on your shoulders!

So here they are, our most important belonging during the trip: 2 spanking new travel bicycles, ready to bring us to new places and make us sweat! I just hope we won’t have too many flat tires…