Adventure
In this episode of Maudi and Eric world cycle tour, they battle through some harsh and rugged Icelandic conditions. Despite the cold, wind, rain, river crossings, and dirty roads, their grit and determination allow them to experience another of Iceland’s epic scenes.
Mehdi Balamissa and Gabriel Martin cycled 3 months and over 7,000km, crossing 13 countries, from Paris to Doha, Qatar, so that they could cheer for the French national football team, Les Bleus.
From Wheels to Wander’s YouTube page »
Iceland has been calling us for years and finally we set out to explore. From the airport down south we cycle upwards to the remote northern Westfjords. Immediately the landscape is captivating and adventurous, with fields of lava and volcanos. The fjords are big, otherworldly and we wonder what it would be like to grow up here. Maudi celebrates her birthday in the backcountry and we get a big scare when have to cycle a bit of the ring road we were desperately trying to avoid!
Later in the comments section they write »
Iceland has been calling us for years and finally we set out to explore. It totally lived up to the hype. Wild, barren, windswept and moody. A different kind of beauty than any other place we toured before. We hope you will enjoy this new series! Let us know what you think about it? Thanks & Have a great day, E&M
» Adventure Trend notes on Iceland
Belén Castelló and Tristan Bogaard take us on a seven-day, 430km bike packing loop in the Naryn region of Kyrgyzstan, near the Chinese border.
In September 2022, downloads of the EuroVelo GPX tracks became available, for free!
This much requested and long-awaited functionality means we can now visit the official EuroVelo site, download the GPX files we need, and plan our cycle trips with added confidence.
With this new functionality, we can connect routes and countries and customize our journeys, cycling from Atlantic shore to the Baltic states, and from Northern Norwegian fjords to the Mediterranean coast.
As the EuroVelo network covers over 90,000 km of cycle routes, this new functionality makes it easier to plan our next cycling adventure.
EuroVelo has an easy to follow how-to article using various apps.
An overlanding and adventure driving legend has died. Loren Upton was in the first team to cross the Darién Gap by land and drove around the world on a north-south course, part of a journey that would take more than 40 years to complete. Upton is survived by his wife, son, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter. He was 87.
Born in Southern California in 1935, Upton joined the Marine Corps in 1952 and served for 4 years. Following an honorable discharge, Upton began a career in bridge and highway construction — experiences that provided the challenge he needed in his life and that helped build the skills needed to head to some of the most inhospitable terrain in the world. And then, drive across it.
Like many of us, Loren was fascinated by tales of the world’s great explorers: their goals, their journeys, and their stories.
To put his own mark on the world, Upton set a life goal of becoming the first person to circumnavigate the globe in an American-made vehicle. »
This series is about Nathan Starzynski’s journey in the summer of 2022, cycling across the 10 provinces of Canada.
Episode 1 takes place in British Columbia, and was filmed May 21st – June 15th, 2022.
Driven by a desire to explore, adventure travellers have an appreciation and respect for experiences over material possessions. They are romantics that live modestly and will tolerate discomfort so they can explore new places and people and chase freedom in wilderness environments. Discomfort, annoyances, and setbacks, to a certain degree, these are all part of long-term travelling.
Adventure travellers are problem solvers and stewards of the environment. They value the freedom and ability to travel outside developed regions and away from busy crowds. They understand that greater adventures often only begin where comfort ends. That being uncomfortable means challenging your preconceptions, as well as your body. And they welcome it as it often leads to growth. They have an appreciation and respect for diversity, local culture, and a deep desire to connect with nature.
It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.
» Sir Edmund Hillary
Adventure travellers will appreciated the fleeting pleasures of the first daylight, a warm dry breeze, the smell of sunbaked rocks after a summer rain, the cool breezes as daylight starts to wane, the pressures of salty ocean wind beating against the skin, the solace only found in complete silent solitude and surrounded by the extraordinary.
Adventures are not on perfectly planned expensive holidays in exotic locations doing adventurous things. They are not doing extreme sports and adrenaline junkie stunts. Those activities are drama for sports, entertainment, and other things.
Adventure travellers are solid, honest, pragmatic, low-key, steadfast, consistent, independent, adaptable, resilient, passionate, persistent, tenacious. They believe in personal responsibility, integrity, bucking up, planning ahead, dreaming. They don’t take shortcuts. They tread lightly, have kind hearts, long term objectives, and persevere.
They expect much from their gear because they depend on it, and sometimes must push it to its limits to survive. They know their gear intimately, they maintain it, and when possible, they restore it. The vehicle-dependant adventurer traveller’s vehicle is their largest and perhaps most important piece of gear. But adventure is not about the gear. The gear facilitates their journey. But getting there is only part of the experience. A passion for the natural world is what drives many adventurers.
Adventure becomes hubris when it blinds you to the suffering of the human beings next to you.
»
The things that keep us comfortable, also often bind us, and hold us back. The unknown of a long journey is confusing, bewildering, challenging, lonely, as we are reminded of what we left behind, and the long road that lies ahead. Leaving the calm, the familiar, our safe place, in pursuit of the unknown, is at times harrowing, but at often breathtaking, and empowering as we grow from our self discoveries.
When adventurers return from long expeditions, and take time to reflect, they are tempered with the certainty of greater knowledge found only beyond the wall. The adventure traveller feels more alive on long explorations, in far-away places, exploring the rest of the world, not knowing what tomorrow will bring. This is where the adventurer finds himself.
When we face the hardest of trials, we find ourselves and what we are made of. This is the key that keeps the adventurer moving forward, pushing personal boundaries, beyond his personal wall.
I judge you unfortunate because you have never lived through misfortune. You have passed through life without an opponent—no one can ever know what you are capable of, not even you.
» Seneca
Sixty years ago, in 1962, Kenichi Horie was the first person to sail the Pacific Ocean solo and nonstop.
The Japanese adventurer has achieved a number of other long distance solo voyages, including sailing around the world in 1974.
Well-known Japanese yachtsman Kenichi Horie, 83, arrived on June 4 off the Kii Peninsula in western Japan after crossing the Pacific, becoming the oldest person to sail solo and nonstop across the world’s largest body of water.
Horie set sail from San Francisco on March 26 on a voyage lasting 69 days. The trip, which covered about 8,700 km, went relatively smoothly. But he had to battle through bad weather at times, sailing into a storm and high seas immediately after leaving San Francisco. In his online diary, he wrote, “Can’t do anything but wait for it to pass.” In a later entry, he simply wrote: “I’m fed up.”
It was the latest achievement for the octogenarian adventurer, who in 1962 became the first person in the world to successfully complete a solo nonstop voyage across the Pacific from Japan to San Francisco.
Sixty years later, he traveled the opposite route.
Elsewhere » The Guardain / AFP / CNN /
© 2024 Your Mileage May Vary
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
