After 103 days of cycling 4’526 kilometres, we made it. We finally arrived in Istanbul.
Exhausted, tired, happy, alive and very content with ourselves. I am laying on the couch and I can’t believe this is it. We cycled all the way from France to Istanbul.
From time to time, I check Google maps. Just to make sure. Yes, the little blue dot is there far east on the edge of Europe, that’s where I am.
How did all this happen?
We set off somewhere in May in the middle of France, south of Paris. Set off to a bicycle trip not really knowing where to go and what to expect from such a journey.
Our heads full of expectations and loaded with excitement and luggage, we started pedalling.
Because if you want to move you still somehow need a destination, we set for crossing the Alps by bike. Why? Because we like the mountains and to be honest, because it sounds quite cool as well.
After the Alps we cycled around in Italy and somehow were drawn eastwards. Before we knew Slovenia was laying before us. That’s where it started to become, almost a game.
Just one more country… one more.
It didn’t take us long to ask where the river we followed since Austria would flow to: “The black sea” And if “crossing the alps by bike” sounded exciting, how crazy does “cycling to the black sea” sound?
Before we knew, anyone asking us where we were going, we heard ourselves replying “To the black sea”, much to our own surprise!
I am guessing it was somewhere in Serbia, probably between one mission and another. Maybe in one moment of calmness, in which we forgot how exhausting it is to pedal up and down with a fully packed bike, that one of us must have mentioned “Istanbul”.
Neither of us took it seriously and before we knew we were on the way there. Always waiting for the other one to give in, but no one did.
“Why are we doing this?” we are asking each other, or ourselves, laughing or in tears, screaming or whispering, at least once a day.
That’s how we got to the doorstep of this huge, old city. Only to realize, that getting in was a whole adventure for itself.
Horror stories of roads, trucks, highways.
Tempted to take a ferry or a train, but at that stage our ego is there to remind us of what sounds cool and what doesn’t. And “cycling all the way from France to Istanbul” does. While “cycling from France to Lüleburgaz and take the train to Istanbul” doesn’t really.
Maybe it’s stupid, maybe not. But after over 4’000 km of pure cycling, it would feel like cheating, to not complete the last few kilometres the same way than all the other ones. Pedalling...
On the 103rd day we make it, alive and in one piece. All the way from south of Paris into Istanbul by bike...
...pedalling day after day, we end up here on the doorstep to Asia!
Thank you all to stop by and to have stopped by since I started cycling in France, it was a pleasure to share this adventure with you!
All photos and words are my own, taken and written by me.