Author Archives: todd

Noakhali – Feni

It has become routine by now to wake up slowly at 6am and be on the road by 8am at the latest. Today breakfast was even included in the steep room price.

I cycled to the east, and the plan was to add a little detour before reaching the city of Feni for the night. North of Feni there is a kind of Bangladeshi pocket that reaches into India for a few dozen kilometers (see the map below). There is also a border crossing there. My idea was to cycle up to the northern tip of that pocket, have a look at the border crossing, and go back down to Feni.

But much earlier I had to stop at a river that had no bridge. I saw a few people climb up the embankment, and a boat in the distance. But it didn’t move.

Two men were dropped of by a CNG and a bunch of kids from the near-by village gathered around me. It took some gesturing to find out that the river was mostly very shallow – too shallow for the boat – and we would have to wade through to the deeper section where the boat was waiting. Funny.

From the other side of the river I continued, still heading east, towards the Dhaka-Chittagong-Highway. Not far from the highway I stopped at a building that looked like a Hindu temple – and was invited to lunch at his family’s place by a guy who was just about to leave the temple when I arrived. Suman was most lovely. He brought a friend, Tapan, who translated between Bangla and English, and I had lunch with his older brother, who showed me how to eat with my hands properly.
I learned that the local Hindu population had not seen the recent ‘communal violence’ (that’s the term used by the Bangladeshi government and press) by Islamists as other parts of the country. That is, their houses have not been burned down.

I left their place somewhat in a hurry, but it was apparent by then that I wouldn’t be able to do the planned detour. So I hurried along the crowded highway northwards to Feni, which I reached with last light.

Cycled: 97km

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Chandpur – 23N91E – Noakhali

Early start again. Today’s main goal was to visit a degree confluence, 23N91E. It is located between the cities of Chandpur and Noakhali in more or less uncharted, but certainly not uninhabited area.

I closed in on the confluence’s area by cycling through a couple of towns, Farudganj, Ramganj, and Chatkhil, and learned a little more about Bengali pronunciation. The -ganj ending, for example, is pronounced more like -munj.

I left the main road and cycled into a village (I don’t know it’s name) towards the confluence. And oh my god, I am indebted to The Confluence Project for making me go there. I have never in my life seen anything so beautiful as this village. Imagine uncharted paths, some wide enough for a car, some just wide enough for one person, lined with palm trees, winding their way between rice fields and houses. With the friendliest of people walking those paths, or washing themselves in the reservoir ponds between the houses, or working in the fields. Occasionally a cycle rickshaw or auto rickshaw (called CNG here) speeds past.

I was invited for lunch and unfortunately declined, as I didn’t know how long it would take me to find the confluence and reach the next city to find a place to sleep.

The closest I got to the confluence was 57 meters, with an error of 14 meters. I took the required pictures to submit to The Degree Confluence Project later. This confluence had been visited before, by a group of Bangladeshis, which is why I didn’t wade through the rice field it was located in to get any closer.

I reached Noakhali around 4pm. There was some confusion as to the name of the city. My paper map calls it Noakhali and I kept asking for it by that name. However, the locals kept talking about a Noakhali district and apparently weren’t familiar with a city of that name.

Cycled: 94km

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Dhaka – Chandpur

I started the day early and left Dhaka’s colorful chaos to the southeast on the country’s main highway, the Dhaka-Chittagong-Highway. Traffic was heavy, but that didn’t affect me much except for the dust all the busses and trucks and CNGs stirred up.

My first stop was in Sonargoan, which is a guide book-recommended sight, a kind of mansion from the Mughal era. It was a tad disappointing as not much was there to see. The (seemingly) one old building was still being restored, yet I had to pay the full entrance fee. By the way, just like in Dhaka, the official fee for foreigners is ten times that of locals, which I find ok (it’s still very cheap). I met Fahad and a bunch of his collegues there, who spoke some English.

A little while later I turned off the highway to find a way through somewhat uncharted rural areas to Chandpur, a port city at the Meghna river. The Meghna and the Brahmaputra rivers join in Chandpur district, kind of. Bangladeshi rivers usually are made up of many tributaries and split up in many distributaries. So what joins with the Meghna in Chandpur district is the Jamuna river, the main distributary of the Brahmaputra.

Before reaching Chandpur, though, I cycled through lovely villages. People were very friendly and helpful, and pointed me in the right direction. I sometimes found it difficult to make myself understood, however. I have to work on my pronounciation of Bengali words (place names in this case), which is not always straight forward.

The countryside is generally flat. That is, there are no hills at all (with the exception of the eastern border areas with India and Burma/Myanmar, but that’s a different story). Villages span across a large area and consist of many reservoir ponds and rice paddies interspersed with houses and yards. The roads are more track-like and – not surprisingly – not always paved. Traffic is refreshingly low and cycling through these rural areas is very pleasant.

I had to cycle on dams between flooded rice fields, and cross rivers on narrow bamboo bridges and with row boats. Great stuff.

Cycled: 104km

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Dhaka

I woke up quite early and left the hotel around 8:30am, taking the bike and heading for the city. There were only a few things I definitely wanted to see: the National Museum and Sadarghat, Dhaka’s main ferry terminal.

Dhaka’s traffic can be called ‘heavy’ at best. There are millions of bicycles, cycle rickshaws, motorbikes, CNGs (three-wheeled autorickshaws), cars, and busses in the streets, plus pedestrians and three-wheeled cargo bicycles. The streets are almost always busy and traffic jams are a common thing. The driving is … colourful and unpredictable. Brake lights usually don’t work, and neither do indicator lights. Everyone can, and will, stop (almost anywhere on the road) at any time. But cycling here is actually fun, provided one has had their morning coffee and is fully awake.

I had just been strolling around Sadarghat for like 5 minutes when I was found by Jiewell (pronounced like Joel). He suggested a boat tour on the river. I was hesitant at first, as I suspected a scam of sorts. Eventually I agreed, though, not without haggling the price down a little bit. He revealed that he owned 5 of the boats used by people to cross the river between Old Dhaka and South Dhaka. We were in one of his boats. The boats are made of wood, maybe 4 or 5 meters long and 1.5 meters wide.

On the river, Jiewell revealed that he was also a tourist guide and offered to show me around. South Dhaka first, to see “real local life”, and then the most important sights of Dhaka. The look into South Dhaka’s life and work was indeed amazing. People were amazingly friendly and happy to show what they were working on. I also liked the ‘life on the river’ and the ferries at Sadarghat. They are massive. The other sights, e.g. the National Museum, a mosque, the national Hindu temple, were not so impressive.

Needless to say I got ripped of in the end and (voluntarily – sigh) paid him more than what would have been appropriate.

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Arrival in Dhaka

The flight to Dubai was quite comfortable. DXB is ridiculously massive, though. The flight from Dubai to Dhaka was delayed because “the weather was a little less than what we need to land”, according to the captain. We eventually departed almost 3 hours late. When landing at 10:30am I understood what he was talking about, Dhaka was covered in dense fog. Or was it smog?

A couple of weeks ago I went to the Bangladeshi embassy in Berlin to apply for a visa. I was told that no one would want to stay for such a long time in Bangladesh (I applied for 90 days, which is supposed to be the maximum for a tourist visa), and my application was not even accepted.

Now at Dhaka airport I received a 30-day visa-on-arrival without any problems. My bike’s box, however, had been treated horribly, but luckily the bike itself was perfectly ok. I put it together under the watchful eyes of 2 kids, and cycled into the mayhem that is Dhaka’s traffic, feeling very happy, curious and tired.

My first stop was in Dhaka’s Gulshan area at a book shop, where I bought paper maps of Dhaka and Bangladesh, before I checked into the first hotel I came across in the early afternoon.

This trip is going to be slightly different from previous ones. I didn’t bring tent or mattress or cooking utensils and am traveling very light. That is, I only brought my frame bag and a 30-litre backpack which will be strapped to the bike’s rack.

I went out to look for some food, when I was chatted up by a guy who turned out to be gay. That itself wasn’t a problem, of course, but he kept hitting on me which got annoying quite quickly. It was interesting nonetheless, as he told me for example that the gay community is quite large in Bangladesh (“pretty much everyone is gay in Bangladesh” – I would think that’s a wee bit exaggerated?) as it is easier to meet with men than with women. And he showed me a ‘safe’ restaurant.

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Building a Skin-on-Frame Kayak

This gallery contains 20 photos.

The past week I spent in Vestfossen, Norway at Anders Thygesen’s workshop to build a traditional Unangan iqyax, also known as Aleut baidarka. Continue reading

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The End

This is the end of the Spring 2013 Balkans trip.

I spent the previous days with friends in Belgrade and Pančevo. Amongst other things, we went to see the finals of the Serbian Water Polo (aka water ball) League A between BVK Crvena Zvezda (Red Stars) and Radnički Kragujevac. Of course Crvena Zvezda won! ;) Quite emotional and great fun to watch!

This morning was a little stressful. I had to leave at 5:15am to cycle the 21km to Belgrade and catch the train to Budapest. Of course I slept too long and left too late, so that I arrived just a few minutes before the train’s departure.
I had no ticket for the bike but the conductors said it’s ok to buy one on the train. Later, somehow, I forgot and fell asleep. The Hungarian conductors were not so relaxed. They kept the bike compartment locked shut. “No bike ticket? Problem!” I had the choice between ticket with receipt or “special offer”. I made it clear that I had just a few Serbian Dinars left, no Hungarian Forints, no Euros. Had I bought the ticket in Serbia it would have cost me around 500 Dinars. Eventually they were happy with the 1200 Dinars I had (approx. 10 Euros) which was still much cheaper for me than the 40 Euros they had quoted before (ticket + fine with receipt). And I had just paid the first bribe in my life…

Tomorrow I’ll head back home.

This trip was a tad different compared to all the previous ones. Not only did I not travel ‘on my todd’, we also cycled less kilometers per day than expected. Baby steps, we called it. Something I had to get used to, but it was definitely worth it.

The Balkans are amazingly beautiful. Sometimes I wished we’d had more time to stay in some places. Melnik, Lake Prespa and Srebrenica are just a few examples.

There were few places were war-inflicted damage was still obviously visible. Many houses in the villages were abandoned and rotting away, but in most cases, and to the untrained eye, it was not obvious whether they were left because of the conflict, or what had caused the damages in the first place. After all, rural depopulation is a common phenomenon not just here. I’m pretty sure, though, that the war is responsible for much of the depopulation.
We saw mined areas in Kosovo near the border to Albania, near Srebrenica, along the Croatian/Serbian border, as well as near the Greek/Bulgarian border (unrelated to the war).

The societal issues between the ex-Yugoslavian ethnicities are very well present. Political statements printed on shirts or sprayed on walls are not uncommon, e.g. pro or contra an independent Kosovo, depending on the region. I haven’t come across open hatred, like e.g. between Azerbaijanis and Armenians.

My worries regarding entering Serbia with the Kosovar stamps in our passports were unfounded. We had no problems at all.

We cycled a little more than 1800km in total.

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Novi Sad – Pančevo

I started late, with just some burek for breakfast, and had a look at Novi Sad’s port again, the right one this time. :P Still no luck with any vessels going to Belgrade.

So, cycling. It was mostly sunny and the tail wind was awesome. The ride went by quickly. Total average speed was more than 25kph.

I’m staying with friends in Pančevo. We went so see some of their friends to watch the first round of the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest. Some things seem to follow me. :) Serbia didn’t make it to the finals, unfortunately.

Cycled: 118km

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Ilok – Novi Sad

I slept in this morning and left around noon. Crossed the Danube to Serbia and started looking for something, anything, that could have transported me on the river, just for the fun of it. The port of Bačka Palanka, the first town on the Serbian side, was fenced off and closed. Later there were lots of small boats ashore, but none on the water. I followed the EuroVelo 6, a cycling route that crosses Europe from the Atlantic Ocean to the Black Sea, to Novi Sad. The weather was chilly and it kept drizzeling. Two years ago I followed the EV6 from Pančevo for awhile.

In Novi Sad’s port I started looking for a ship again. The only one there was a Ukrainian vessel that didn’t want to take me. :( Traffic is almost nil on the Danube. I’m a bit confused.

Novi Sad is Serbia’s second largest city. It has lots of bars and restaurants, a large and crowded pedestrian zone, and lovely narrow alleys. I quite like it.

Cycled: 57km

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Brčko – Ilok

It rained heavily all night. The forecast had predicted that it would stop raining sometime in the morning so we waited, but at 11am it was still pouring. We spent our last Bosnian money on burek for breakfast and crossed the river Sava, which forms the border with Croatia here, to the village of Gunja.

The Sava, by the way, flows into the Danube in Belgrade. Two years ago I was standing above the confluence of both rivers, at Kalemegdan (Belgrade Fortress) with friends who I’m going to visit in a few days, at the end of this trip.

Back to Gunja. We checked bus and train schedules but there was nothing that would save us from the weather. So we cycled on.

A few kilometers later, in Drenovci, we split up. András is heading northish, directly to Hungary. I’m going northeastish today, and to Belgrade (southeastish) eventually. It was 2pm by now.

The rain stopped soon. I cycled along the Croatian/Serbian border, on dirt and gravel roads, through a massive and swampy forest at first, and through farmland later. Everything was muddy, and we, my bike as well as myself, received our fair shares of dirt, too. I like. :)

Occasionally the areas left and right of the road were marked with warning signs. There are still landmines there.

The villages had beautiful churches (and houses). There are no mosques here. Closer to Ilok the condition of the churches became worse. They are (most likely) not in use anymore.

I reached Ilok, the easternmost town of Croatia, at the Danube. I’m the only guest in Hostel Cinema, located in a grand, old(-looking) house. Probably downtown. I’m not really sure about Ilok’s geography.

Officially the hostel will reopen for the ‘season’ next week. Though the guy who runs the place said that there is never really much going on in Ilok.

Cycled: 100km

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Zvornik + 10km – Brčko

In the morning we were visited by an old guy in rubber boots. He was very friendly and bubbled away in Bosnian/Serbian/whatever. Unfortunately, we didn’t understand a single word. He stayed with us until we left, sometimes watching our every move, sometimes not caring at all.

We continued to cycle along the Drina, on mostly flat roads, through village after village (often a village would begin just a few meters after the previous one ended). We had a bit of a head wind, though, which became worse when we followed the river to the west.

The weather was nice and around noon we stopped to unpack, dry, and clean all our stuff in the sun.

About an hour or two from Brčko, when we were already fighting the head wind, the sky darkened. We found a hotel in town just in time before the thunderstorm hit.

Cycled: 91km

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Srebrenica – Zvornik + 10km

Srebrenica has many sad stories to tell.

The saddest, of course, is the 1995 massacre in which more than 8000 Bosniak boys and men were killed methodically within just a few days by members of the Republika Srpska’s army in an attempt of ethnic cleansing of the area. We visited the Srebrenica-Potoćari memorial and burial site upon leaving the town. The long list of names of all those killed is carved in stone there. Not all the graves are filled. The process of finding mass graves and identifying the remains is still ongoing. Very few of the persons responsible have been brought to court.

Before leaving the town we had quite a long and interesting chat with … hm, I’ll just call him ‘a random guy’. He didn’t say it explicitely, but from a few comments of his it seems clear that he and his family are Bosniaks (that is, Bosnian muslims) originating from Srebrenica. He told us about the de-mining process (it is a slow and dangerous task, carried out by Bosnians, by the way), about corruption and the billion dollars that were sunk in Srebrenicas rebuilding, and about the region’s touristic potential. Lots of interesting projects, by the way. Let me know if you’re interested in an unpaid summer job. :)

He also told us of the Guber, a stream that is very rich in different minerals and which has its sources (up to 40) in the mountains a few hundred meters above the town. Each of the sources contains different amounts of several minerals, and according to local knowledge can be used to heal or help with certain diseases. We immediately decided to pay a visit to those sources.
He went on to tell us about a project by some foreign rich dude. That guy wanted to build a spa in which the Guber’s waters would be used to treat people suffering from e.g. multiple sclerosis. He went through all kinds of hoops to obtain all the necessary bureaucratic permits and started building. Half-way through the permits were revoked, probably to extort some more money. A nice example of a corrupt government.

So we cycled up into the mountains to have a look at the Guber and another sad story unfolded in front of our eyes.
We found the less than semi-finished spa high up in the hills, fenced off, built across the Guber which now flows in concrete tunnels underneath the compound. Two unkindly placed plastic pipes spat water from two of the Guber’s sources. We climbed around the fences to have a closer look inside. The uglyness of the whole thing was hard to believe. The formerly beautiful valley had been extended to make room for three large buildings and a pyramid-shaped fourth one in the center. Age-old staircases to one of the springs had just been cut off and the paths were ‘dangling’ with no way to reach the spring anymore.
There were signs everywhere that made it clear that construction had been stopped from official side and any work was forbidden.

What an unbelievably horrible example of capitalism and greed, and above all, totally gone wrong. A lovely place that was free for everyone to enjoy and use has been destroyed and was going to be turned into an exclusive spa for a few with money. The corruption within the Republika Srpska’s government then made it unusable for everyone.

We left in a sad, angry and disappointed mood.

The remaining cycling for the day went by quickly. We followed the Drina river to the north on the Bosnian side of the river, leaving the mountains behind. The countryside is getting flatter.

We expected rain for the night. We found a sandy, mosquito-infested, somewhat ugly place directly at the river for the night, had a quick bath and a quick dinner, and disappeared inside our tents just as the thunderstorm started.

Cycled: 74km

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Mokra Gora – Srebrenica

When I paid our landlady this morning I felt a bit cheated. Apparently she had quoted the night’s fee for one person yesterday. The cheap room became somewhat pricier…

The morning weather looked fine, but when we left Mokra Gora it was drizzeling.

Our plan was to reach Srebrenica today. For that we had 3 major climbs to manage. We started with the first one right outside Mokra Gora, then descended a little to Kremna, climbed again to almost 1000m altitude, and descended to Bajina Bašta at around 300m in the Drina valley. We crossed the Drina and entered Bosnia and Herzegovina again. From there the last climb was back up to 900m, which took us 2 hours. The weather had improved again but at the top it was chilly, around 13°C.

The descend to Srebrenica, especially the last kilometers, was fascinatingly beautiful. The road goes along a mountain ridge with steep green slopes on either side. Despite the difficult conditions, people cultivate parts of the slopes and have built houses next to the road.

We had climbed more than 1600m in total today and were quite tired, so we checked into the first pension we came across after our arrival in Srebrenica

Cycled: 79km

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Somewhere along R114 – Mokra Gora

There was more rain last night but the morning promised a sunny day.

We continued on the road to Bosnia and Herzegovina, mostly down-hill. At some random junction we stopped to check the GPS and were quite surprised to see that we were already in Bosnia and Herzegovina! No border signs, no check-points, no nothing. We were in a village and I asked an older guy what this was, Bosnia, or Serbia, or what??

He said ‘Bosnia’. ‘Until the bridge down there, then there is Serbia again.’ We were completely confused. It turned out Goran, that was his name, had worked in Austria for 37 years and speaks German (with quite a bit of an Austrian accent that was hard to understand sometimes), voastehst mi? We asked if we could refill our water bottles and were invited to sit there with him and his son. We then were ‘forced’ to: 3 glasses of rakija (a strong home-made spirit, I gave up after 2 glasses), a beer, a couple of boiled eggs. We received one litre of rakija, a bar of chocolate, and a couple more boiled eggs for the road. In between his nephew came over (with more eggs) for a rakija, we asked all kinds of questions about the war and the borders, and he told us things about his time in Austria.

So we were in Bosnia, but a Serbian enclave was just down the road that is not on any of our maps. His son was a Serbian border guard and he received his pension in Serbian Dinars. Total verrückt, voastehst mi? His son (and also his nephew) had fought in the war for 3 years.

Eventually we said Good Bye and cycled on – slightly tipsy – but soon had to stop at a Serbian border check-point. Ah, we were entering the enclave! Nope, we were leaving it, we learned. A few kilometers further – a Bosnian check-point. Now we were in Bosnia proper, finally. Oh, and the Serbian flag was hanging from quite a few flag poles in Bosnia. Total verrückt do, voastehst mi?

Another climb, another down-hill section, another grand canyon. The Balkans are really, really beautiful…

We left Bosnia and Herzegovina in the late afternoon for Serbia – again. This time it was expected, though. We are in Mokra Gora, a couple of kilometers from the border.

Cycled: 64km

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Djurdjevića Tara – Somewhere along R114

We continued our ride in a northish direction to the town of Pljevlja, where we had lunch and discussed our options. Either northwest to Bosnia and Herzegovina, or north to Serbia. We modified all our previous plans and got tricked into riding to the north by the routing engine.

So at 4pm we left Pljevlja and climbed out of the valley towards the Serbian border. To our surprise there were no road signs pointing at Serbia and traffic was very low. The Montenegrin check-point consisted only of a small hut manned by 2 or 3 border guards, who happily gave us our exit stamps, and a gate. To our confusion there was no Serbian check-point.

From the border the road went down-hill quite nicely, and we could see an impressive-looking canyon ahead. It became obvious that we would cycle through there. But it was quite late already and we pitched our tents above the entrance to the canyon, not far from the road at a quiet spot.

The road we’re on goes more or less straight from the Montenegrin border to Bosnia and Herzegovina. The distance between the borders is just some 30km and there are no main roads (maybe there are some tracks) that connect this part of Serbia with the ‘mainland’. The area is beautiful and seriously invites for some hiking.

Cycled: 67km

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