Background

Elina has spend a year in Vietnam as a Fredskorps participant exchanged from The Norwegian Map Authority. Early during this stay she got the idea to home by bicycle. Read more about what Fredskorpset (FK) is here.

She also realized early that undertaking this trip as a single woman traveler would be risky. Both Elina and her boyfriend through 6 years; Ståle, found the period when Elina stayed in Vietnam long enough to be apart. And by the way Ståle didn't mind come along either. The crew therefore consists of Ståle & Elina. Others that might be interested to accompany us for the whole or parts of the trip, or even just here on erdetlangtigjen.no are welcome to take an join in.

We have no intentions of doing this of any spesific reasons other than our own obsession of seeing a little bit of the world. We are not doing it for charity like most british long distance tourers do, and it is no first time achievement, many have done this before us.

So why do we still want to take the trouble?

Simple and selfish enough we do it mostly to our own satisfaction. To see and explore new exiting countries, meet new cultures, and to get to know another part of the world – an adventure. We also do it to check the map to see if Vietnam really connects with our home country Norway, and to show how fantastic the bicycle is as means of transport. And, to see if we can do it. It is something satisfactory about the thing to manage to cycle home. In a way we then prove that the world isn't as big and scary as many claim it is. Do yo still think that this trip sounds like a bad idea? Be convinced here.

Elina consider this trip as the end of her stay as Fredskorps participant in Vietnam, and the trip is done in the spirit of FK. We travel in the belief that the world will become a better place if we all know more about the others we share this earth with.

En route we will also visit some of the countries Map Authorities (or similar) among them Laos and Mongolia.

A trip like this require a lot of planning and our best sources of information and inspiration have been the many other cyclists who have undergone a similar long distance trip before. Have a look at our collection of links to web pages that has been useful to us.

Finally we have to mention that we are enthusiastic geocachers, and that we have been underfed of the good cache trips the last year while Elina has been in Vietnam. We will therefore hunt caches in our way if there happens to be any where we pass. In addition we will release the travelbug (TB) The Cyclist in Bangkok to compete who will get home first. Have a look at the TB's page here.

You didn't have a clue about the paragraph above? Then you are probably a geo muggle. Have a look at geocaching.com to find out what a great fun geocaching is.