“It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of the country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them.” — Ernest Hemingway
To kick off this blog, I would like to set the stage by putting up a three-part series of short pieces on why I ride and what brought about my transition to cycle trekking as my primary form of independent travel, both short and long distance.
PART I: IN SEARCH OF A BETTER WAY
“All things living are in search of a better world.” — Karl Raimund Popper
Seeking a Purer Experience
As an avid, life-long traveler, I’ve always sought a purer, more genuine travel experience. Traversing several continents and a numerous countries, I’ve always looked to experience the environment and people in the most authentic way possible. Trekking through the Himalayas, across the Rock Mountains, along the High Sierra Nevada’s, and in the backstreets and neighborhoods off the beaten paths of over-exposed tourist meccas such as Paris, Kathmandu, Beijing, and Tangier, I’ve found being mobile and moving slowly on the land yielded much more engaging experiences, allowing me to more fully immerse myself and wade deeply into the environment, and to more closely engage locals and other travels along my way in the locations I was visiting, which is not possible when traveling by planes, trains, or automobiles, where one tends to encounter other tourists, travelers, touts, and street hustlers. [Read more…] about Why I Ride