I know from the many trips I have taken; I usually learn something new every time. Taking a trip of this magnitude, I wanted to find out what their biggest lessons have been?
Enjoying simplicity. For this kind of road trip, you can only carry the most essential things. And in the long term, we ended up appreciating living with so few things. Is it the same in life? We think yes. Well, we're not saying that we will live like hobos for the rest of our existence, but keeping it simple for sure.
Taking our time. It took us few months, but we figured out that slow-travelling was the only way to achieve a 16-month adventure. You can't rush for that amount of time, right? For us, that means riding for about 100 to 150km a day average or spending 4 or 5 days at the same spot when we feel to rest (and if the place is cheap).
Being outside in our daily life is essential for us. I mean, we absolutely love living in cities, but we figured out that spending time in the nature is also much needed.
In a more general aspect – and I think, this is the very point of travelling – we enjoyed discovering new ways of living, housing, co-existing or eating. All these different cultures made us re-evaluate our own (in a good way). This is not about a specific point, but more like we've been shown alternative ways to do certain things, and from now on we can choose rather to stick to our western traditions or to pick in other ones.
Last but not least. We realised how much we love motorbiking and the solidarity it offers. We have obviously experienced it before in Europe; however, it took another dimension in the 'stan' countries. This was especially the case in Kazakhstan where the warmth and friendliness shown to us by the locals was incredible. Moreover, riding a Ural sidecar motorbike triggered so many nice encounters! We really enjoyed the bike Mongolia where the Ural created an instantaneous bond with the Mongolian shepherds
