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Paris to India by bike


Scrapr

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2 dudes strike out on their own. A daily diary from the 70's. Peugeot bikes stiffed them but Gitane was awesome for them. Bikes w/gear was $142 ($916) 

the budget was $2.00/day...approx $12/day now. They ended up at $2.45/day ($15 today) 

I'm only to Marseilles. Don't tell me how it ends. 

https://ridewithgps.com/ride_reports/4601-paris-to-mussoorie-by-bicycle-part-1-fra?otu=

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1 hour ago, petitepedal said:

Is it in book form? Sounds like a good read...the last one I read "This Road I Ride" seemed to be more about the personal journey and inner struggles than the actual bike trip...I was disappointed.:(

It's in this is what we did today form...so far. Ex:  rode all day...15 mph tail wind. Camped in farmers field on a nice soft mattress of grass. 

Broken into 3 parts. I got it from Ride GPS. I had to laugh at the first part where they were toodling around Paris...We're badly out of shape Hami & me

No lycra in sight

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I’m reading this account, @Scrapr  Quite interesting. I’m almost through Yugoslavia with them. 
Obviously I haven’t got to the bus crash yet. 
 

Just kidding. Don’t know if there’s a bus crash. But probably. My Dad was on a business trip and got in 3 crashes in 3 countries over there. Greece Turkey and Iran. 

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3 hours ago, petitepedal said:

Is it in book form? Sounds like a good read...the last one I read "This Road I Ride" seemed to be more about the personal journey and inner struggles than the actual bike trip...I was disappointed.:(

I don't mind a well-written cycling travelogue that blends in both.  I dislike day by day journal like books where the text is mechanical and not written in a literary manner. Stuff like that I get very little sense of the local culture, environment, etc.   A well-written travelogue is not a lab testing book... it should be a book of stories with a human touch...with some clear themes.

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14 minutes ago, BuffJim said:

Finished it. Awesome stuff. Dangerous part of the world to attempt something like this. Probably even more dangerous in 2020. 

I am to Croatia. I like it a lot. I find the check ins to the AmEx offices funny. I'd forgotten that was a thing. I think trying to enter Iran with an American passport might raise some eyebrows. And possibly Turkey

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On 8/22/2020 at 10:21 AM, Scrapr said:

It's in this is what we did today form...so far. Ex:  rode all day...15 mph tail wind. Camped in farmers field on a nice soft mattress of grass. 

Broken into 3 parts. I got it from Ride GPS. I had to laugh at the first part where they were toodling around Paris...We're badly out of shape Hami & me

No lycra in sight

large.jpg

 

I feel this might have been @Page Turner in his Yuthe. 

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On 8/22/2020 at 3:58 PM, shootingstar said:

I dislike day by day journal like books where the text is mechanical and not written in a literary manner.

Heh. I have this book. It is the most mundane thing I have ever read. Dry as a popcorn fart. Full of riveting phrases like: ”Weather tolerable cool.” Almost no personal insights whatsoever.

....and yet it gave me a very good idea that’s what his life was like. Up and down the Champlain canal. Pick up a load, sail up or down the canal, drop the load off....and do it again.

But when he does let himself into the narrative, it jumps off the page. When his son decides to go to school to be a telegraph operator, not a canal boatman, he says something like “...its just as well, this business is no good anyway”. When his wife dies, he says “All I have in the world is gone” and it just leaps off the page. 

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8 hours ago, Scrapr said:

 

I feel this might have been @Page Turner in his Yuthe. 

...one of the great tragedies in my life is that when I was stationed in Italy for that year, they had us working 12 on and 2 off.  So all I did to relax was hop in the Alfa Spyder and cruise up the autostrada to Rome at 120 mph, or eat out at one of the many, many fine restaurants around Naples.  Didn't even look for a custom Italian bike to bring back with my household goods.  And sold the Alfa in Italy, because I knew there was no way it would work out with 4 years of college in the forecast.

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youse guys are fast readers. I'm only to Istanbul. Maybe I should move my finger faster? So i got sidetracked. In IST they mentioned Hotel Gungor. So I tried looking it up & didn't come across anything that looked good. But i did see this trip report. London to Istanbul. Not great writing but you sort of get a sense of things. Best paragraph

As I rolled away from the armed Turkish soldiers at the border, I began to breathe for the first time that day. When I got to the Greek side, two border guards confronted me. “Where’s the hasheeesh?” I laughed out loud. I wanted to hug and kiss those guys. “Me?? You think I’m crazy.” They didn’t believe that for a second, but when I said, “I am so glad to be out of Turkey,” that was music to their nationalistic ears, and they waved me on. “Enjoy our country,” they said proudly,

https://www.alumni.upenn.edu/s/1587/images/gid2/editor_documents/classes_and_reunions-non_reunion_docs/1972_memories/memory_13.pdf?gid=2&pgid=61&sessionid=ed716550-43a9-4e65-b808-40e6c6b4f885&cc=1

 

 

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