We love numbers. Throughout our trip, we’ve logged thousands of them. How far we went. How much we spent. How many nights in our tent. And you must love them too since a lot of questions we get are about ‘how many’ or ‘how long’ so while we’ve been preparing for our move to Holland and running like crazy all over our little corner of Canada we took the time to condense our 3 year world bicycle journey into the crucial stats, plus a few of our favourite moments from the trip:
- Kilometers pedalled: 47,849km
- Number of days: 1,102
- Daily expense total: Nearly €24,000 over 3 years (or €0.50 per kilometre)
- Extra expenses: About €12,000 for plane tickets, insurance, vaccinations and other necessities
- Countries covered: 30 in total – Canada, Britain, The Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain, Morocco, Portugal, Italy, Slovenia, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Switzerland, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, America
- Tenting nights: 475
- Free camping sites: 219
- Hotel rooms: 300
- Longest day: 162km coming into Montreal
- Average day: 73.05km
- Road days vs. Rest days: 59% days of riding and 41% days relaxing
- Best day: Climbing up to the lofty highs of Lake Song Kol in Kyrgyzstan (Friedel) and Arriving in Angkor Wat after 120km on the rural dirt roads of Cambodia (Andrew)
- Worst day: Getting pushed out of the way by an aggressive driver in Kazakhstan (Andrew) and Being followed and driven insane by the police (Friedel)
- Moment we both thought we’d die: Cycling from Sault Ste. Marie to Sudbury on the Trans-Canada Highway
- Most humourous day: Pushing up a goat track, with no hope of finding the road on our map, while accompanied by an entire Iranian village (it’s funny with hindsight)
- Favourite country: Iran – the hands down winner for lovely, hospitable people, not to mention amazing landscapes and monuments
- Least Favourite country: Kazakhstan – the often beautiful countryside was unfortunately overshadowed by terrible drivers
- Cheapest country: Turkmenistan at 10.56 euros spent per day
- Most expensive country: Turkey at 37.49 euros spent per day (the result of too much beer and a few days in Istanbul)
- One ‘what were we thinking’ moment: Cycling into Istanbul at sunset
- Number of flights: 5 – London to Montreal; Montreal to London; Almaty to Bangkok; Singapore to Perth; Auckland to San Francisco
- Towels lost: 1 in Germany and 1 in Malaysia
- Thing we least understand why we shipped home: Old underwear
- Thing we’re most looking forward to recovering from our boxes: Coffee maker and milk frother
- First thing we’ll buy when we have jobs again: A comfortable sofa!!
