by Thijs van Litsenburg
Joëlle and I are shivering and trembling in our tent, somewhere in Turkey on a mountain of about 2,000 meters altitude. The Georgian border is nearby and Lake Çildir is just a stone’s throw below us. The weather conditions have changed from peaceful to brutal violence within a few minutes. It seems as if there are a hundred photographers around our tent to capture us on film, so many flashes we see. The thunderstorms are unapproachably hard. It rains and pours and we are terrified. Trees don’t exist here and we are on a fairly open plain. We are not experts, but from our mothers we learned that camping on a barren mountain with thunderstorms is not smart. We have nowhere to go. We hold each other and try to sit as still as possible on the insulating mats. They are made of non-real-conductive material, it seems to us. If lightning strikes, we may be the safest this way, we logically reason. The only thing we can do is wait. Half an hour passes. After that, the storm fortunately subsides. We get away with a fright. It is one of the (fortunately scarce) moments when we ask ourselves why on earth we want to cycle to China on a tandem.
It must have been about two years ago. I’m on a cycling holiday in Japan when I tell my friend Joëlle that I would like to go on a cycling trip together. Until now I have always gone alone. To Athens. To Budapest. A tour in Italy. And a long tour through Japan. Exploring the world alone on the bike for weeks, sometimes months. It’s a great way to travel. Joëlle is an adventurer, so her answer is quickly “yes, we do”. She just doesn’t want to cycle behind me the whole trip. This is how the idea of going on a tandem was born. We choose China as our destination, because we feel that it is ‘the other side of the world’.
On April 1, 2025, our journey started. We are now almost 10,000 kilometers, 15 countries and half a year further and Joëlle and I have arrived in China in one piece, tandem and all. We have visited countless bicycle repair shops along the way. A recurring phenomenon during my cycling travels, as I always go out with second-hand equipment. We have received an inspiring amount of hospitality. The further away you drive from Europe, the less people have, but the more they want to share with you. We have climbed countless mountains. It has been -2 degrees Celsius, but the mercury has also touched 40+ degrees. We enjoyed all the memorable surroundings, the beautiful nature and the many songs we sang on the tandem. We have also regularly been through it and asked ourselves why we would cycle another meter the next day. It has been a very special trip and China is a country that surprises us in many ways. The luxury, delicious food, technological prosperity and bizarre infrastructure make China a great country to travel through. At the moment it is mainly our destination, but we will definitely come back here without a bike to immerse ourselves again and deeper in Chinese culture. Now we long for our house again, because it is not on a mountain and thunderstorms are relatively harmless.
