Asia-Europe 2012

Same way I did in 2010, I was planning on writing a short epilogue to conclude the Asia trip. However, after reaching Los Angeles, I was swamped with work and had no time to acquire writing inspiration for one month. After that, I was unwilling to blog since doing so would have made me sad for being stuck in the same city with no real prospect of returning to adventure for months/years.

Fortunately, today we are once again travelling, and I am in the mood to blog!

Stats:

Palomina carried us 25,070km
We used other two wheelers to ride another 800km
We rode 3,350km in train (Lao Cai -> Hanoi, Calcutta -> Bombay, Yazd -> Bandar Abbas)
Flew 4,590km (Bangkok -> Kathmandu, Delhi -> Shiraz)
Roughly 1,000km by bus here and there
——————————–
Total over 34,800km in 7.5 months

Top countries:

Radu:

1. Iran – best people ever, unique architecture, best food ever
2. India – ancient sites, train rides
3. Turkey – Istanbul, Roman ruins, people, mountains, food, people

Laura:

1. Iran – hospitable people, architecture, food
2. Turkey – scenic country overall, Roman sites, hospitable people
3. Vietnam – cheap but very interesting tours widely available

Top sites:

Radu:
1. Angkor – most impressive think I have ever seen
2. Ellora caves – simply amazing
3. train rides in the Himalayas (1, 2)

Laura:
1. Angkor – looks like we have similar opinions
2. Ephesus – well preserved, large Roman city
3. Ellora Caves – what was I saying?

While this trip was far less than the Latin American 2010 trip in terms of adventure and scenery, it was way better on a cultural level. So many traditions! Such a wide variety of religions, life styles, languages. So different architectural marvels! Too much to absorb in only 7 months, but enough to remember the rest of our lives!

In Bucharest we sold Palomina 🙁 we had to part ways with our great companion because it was unfeasible economically to ship it back to USA. Furthermore, having it registered in Romania would have been costly so, unfortunately, she ended up being parted out and we got 1250EUR for it, 80% of what I paid 3 years before 🙂

We sold it thinking of the new F800GS of course, a fresh bike with better capabilities for the upcoming Africa adventure (I hope!).

That being said, we decided to change the mean of locomotion for the next few trips. No matter how great motorcycle riding might be, it is still worth trying boat, train, bicycle, aircraft touring and so on. So, I will continue updating this blog with trip reports from random destinations in the seven continents!

Special thanks go to:
1. my wife – Laura – for being such a great companion
2. my sister – Irina – for her strategic support by taking good care of my business for such a long time
3. my father – Cristian – for tactical support
4. all great people of Asia who helped us in so many ways

Thanks for reading!

When you see the flotation device on the screen of the laptop you know something is not right. Finally, after 3 years and 5 months since last Windows install, it happened: our beloved computer got sick in India (like we also did). A few days ago I decided to attempt a disinfection. But the kernel was badly affected so it wouldn’t boot at all. Fortunately, the built-in recovery system helped me backup the data on removable media and then I restored the hard drive to the factory state. Mission accomplished!

What is unusual about this computer is its toughness. You can see the metal frame since the plastic is already ground at the corners. It got covered with mud in Argentina, in dust in Atacama, got wet and dropped on cement countles times! It accompanied us in more than 30 countries on 4 continents. Neither the extreme heat of Mexico, the humidity of Vietnam or the rough roads of Brazil managed to break it and it still works without fault, 9 years since the manufacturing and 6 years since we purchased it.

So after removing the viral infection I was truly happy our Thinkpad X40 didn’t go the way the rest of our electronics (camera, gps, intercom etc) went!