Bicycle Touring resources
In this section we will provide more details about applying for our Kazakh visa in Bishkek, our three month Mongolian visa in Almaty and Martin's Russian visa. Remember that this is about us and our passport from Denmark and The Netherlands. For our Chinese visa in Bishkek, Ulaanbaatar ánd Seoul we made a separate post. Visa for [...]
The choice for our tent is important, because it is going to be home for the next year and a half. For us it was important the tent would be light, could work for us in multiple conditions, could stand alone, would have enough height and had entrances for both of us. Our previous tent was a tunnel [...]
Our sleeping bags have been a point of long discussions. They are going to keep us warm during the cold days. We were looking for down sleeping bags, although it is quite controversial, and we wanted to save as much weight as possible. This brought us to the idea of a quilt sleeping bag. We came across [...]
We have chosen for quite a full set up for photographing. We believe that being able to document this journey has great importance. Also we can used this to go deeper into certain subjects. Below you find the actual gear and descriptions of our camera and accessories on tour. Main Camera of choice: Sony [...]
Is this essential gear? To be clear: no, this is nice to have gear! We have chosen to bring certain electronic gear and to be able to use our electronics we have to be able to supply them with power, we have chosen to bring this gear so we can document our journey. Below we outline how [...]
This is how and why we will write gear reviews! "This is how… by TwistingSpokes.com". Reviewing our gear has never really been on our mind. Lately though after 21 months and more than 26000km on the road our gear is starting to prove its worth. So it has become clear what gear has worked really well and [...]
After a whole lot of investigating we have finally chosen our bikes for the journey, the Santos travelmaster 26". Both of our bikes are Santos Travelmaster 2.6 aluminum and are custom built for us. Before choosing our bikes we needed to decide on three important points: steel/aluminum, 26/28 inch, Rohloff hub/derailleur. The Santos Travelmasters 2.6 have been awarded [...]
‘This is how we stay warm in winter as low as - 30°C’ is a part of the series “This is how… by twistingspokes.com”. While cycling in winter sounds scary and cold, it can be a wonderful experience! We cycled off from home in the Netherlands during winter and crossed over the Alps before we got spring [...]
'This is how we maintain our bicycles' is part of the series “This is how… by TwistingSpokes.com”. Cycling on a well maintained bicycle is a great feeling. We give quite some attention to Mojo and Isaba as they are the main source of transportation. We really enjoy spending the time maintaining our bicycles, this does create a sense of [...]
'This is how we interact with locals' is part of the series “This is how… by TwistingSpokes.com”. During our journey we very much enjoy the interaction with local people on the road, in small villages and in cities. But communication and interaction is not always easy. In this post we will explain how we approach these [...]