Here Be Elephants

One of our friends requested a general rundown of a day. Although a ‘typical’ day doesn’t really exist, we’ll try to give some idea. If anyone else has any questions or requests for what you’d like to see more of or know more about, please leave us a comment or email us.

If we don’t already have a plan, the night before involves figuring out where we’re headed next. The only planning we did before leaving for this trip was the general order of countries we would visit. Other than that, we’re figuring out our next destination on a weekly, or sometimes day by day basis. Blogs, road mile markers, and google maps distances are used to figure out plausible nightly stops. The majority of the time we know where we’ll be staying the next day, though sometimes we set off in the right direction with fingers crossed that we’ll find an appropriate place to sleep.

Our wakeup times vary greatly and are dependent on how lazy we are and how far we’re planning on going. We’re usually up sometime between 6 and 9 am. From what we’ve read of other cyclists, this is far from typical for cycle touring. Most people are moving by the crack of dawn.
It’s something we’ve attempted, but our natural schedules refuse to cooperate. Once we drag ourselves out of bed, it takes about a half hour to re-pack and get out the door.

First stop is breakfast. In touristy areas this is invariably some variation on bread and eggs, in ‘local’ areas almost always soup and rice noodles. In China it was dumplings for breakfast, which are cheap, delicious, and greatly missed now. Three solid meals a day has become absolutely necessary and we’re both surprised by how much food we put away now versus during our previously sedentary lifestyles. We carry our Camelbaks (1.5L) and two spare Nalgenes (1L) of water at any given moment, and filling those up with preferably cold water is the last step before setting off.

Within an hour or so of waking we are able to set off on the road. In Laos we set off earlier to avoid the baking midday heat. In China and Vietnam this hasn’t troubled us, so we can sleep later. Lately we’ve shot for getting at least halfway to the next destination by lunch.

Between 12 and 2 pm we stop for lunch. In Laos, we tried to have a break in the shade for this whole period. In China and Vietnam, Lunch will be at some point in this time frame. In built up areas we will stop in a restaurant for rice and dishes (or sandwiches in touristy areas). If we can find a nice clear patch in the shade by the side of the road, we much prefer to cook our own lunch on our tiny camp stove. This is always either packet noodle soup or pasta and sauce (packets of dried pasta and cheesy sauce were a welcome addition to our larder in Vientiane). We supplement these bases with vegetables or barbecued meat bought that morning in the market.

The sun sets by 5.30pm in these parts, and cycling even in full daylight feel a little unsafe at times. As a result, we start worrying about a place to stay around 4 pm, especially if it’s one of the rare times we don’t really have a target destination in mind. There’s only been two times when we needed to turn on the headlamps and finish up the last few miles in the dark. Usually this makes for 5-6 hours spent on the bicycles with another hour or two for breaks or food during the day.

So that’s a typical day, minus all the interesting stuff you hear about on the rest of the blog.

AW + MD

~ by Elephants on December 7, 2010.

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