How many times have you dreamed about travelling the world but then decided not to go because of… yes… money! Well we have a solution for you! Cycle. You’ll save money, you’ll interact with people in ways you wouldn’t imagine and you’ll get fit in the process.
We didn’t think this is something we would ever do, we’re not professional cyclists, we don’t own bikes and quite frankly (before) we couldn’t think of anything worse BUT we couldn’t believe how inspiring our guest Nick was, he completely flipped our views of cycling around the world upside down and now its something we are going to do! For sure!
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[Music] hi guys and welcome to another mini episode of what the fo travel podcast with Nick and Amy this one is all about cycling around the world welcome along to the show thanks for joining us guys so like Amy said this month we are talking about cycling the world and we’re talking to a guy called Nick Thompson he has exactly the same name as me spelled exactly the same way which is pretty cool but we are not related as far as we are aware maybe my parents have had a colorful history that I’m not sure about so yeah we spoke to Nick about Cyclone the world and this is all thanks to our listener Stefan who is from Romania he wrote to us a while ago saying you guys need to check out my mate Nick Thompson who was cycling around the world so that’s exactly what we’ve done and this is amazing he’s from Norwich in England and one day he decided to go cycling and he hasn’t stopped and it’s been 4 years and he’s still going around the world they just couldn’t believe that somebody would do all that cycling for no particular reason why are you doing this I just felt like cycling so yeah we thought that Nick Thompson not my husband Nick Thompson this Nick Thompson would be a very good person to interview but we didn’t know quite how inspired we would be by the end of it so since interviewing him we’ve actually been bike shopping which I don’t think we’ve ever been bike shopping in our lives yeah we haven’t bought a bike to make that clear but we went to have a look didn’t we that’s true yeah we found out about the different types of bikes and the different bits that you can put on it for your luggage and stuff it yeah it opened our eyes to that side of life which cuz we’re not campers we’re not cyclist we’re not really sporty people but Nick blew us away didn’t he yeah absolutely completely opened our eyes and our mind to alternative ways of traveling we kicked off the interview with Nick by asking about his travels and just asking what has he been up to I think it was uh three years ago I kind of uh packed up sold all my possessions and kind of locked myself out of my old flat share in London and went on a bike ride essentially so I didn’t really have any proper plan except that I was going to head east vaguely in the direction of China and so yeah I kind of ended up cycling all Europe turkey to Istanbul went across turkey into Georgia and aaban hitchhiked on this uh container ship across the Caspian Sea into Kazakhstan and went all through Central Asia kind of following the old Silk Road essentially like your Mongol rally uh episode it’s kind of following a similar route all through the stands like usbekistan up into the pamam highway into jigan along kyrgistan into China by that point I didn’t actually have any plan for after that and I was running low of money I ended up working in China for a year as an English teacher just to replenish their bank account um and that gave me some time to think of what I wanted to do next so I then went up into like Western Sichuan and up into the Tibetan plateau and then down into southeast Asia I got as far as qual Lumpa before having to box and bike up onto plane I spent three months in Japan and then I’ve just finished uh cycling Australia basically from Darwin right down the middle to Melbourne and back up to Sydney yeah so I’ve been on the road for about 3 years now now um that’s about 25 countries and about 30,000 km in a nutshell in a very large nutshell that’s it I am not a cyclist exercise to me is not really a thing when I was a kid my kind of childhood sporting career was lost to Nintendo it was a means to an end I used my bike to get to work in the morning to avoid the northern line at rush hour and I guess I wanted to go traveling but I i’ I’ve been backpacking in Southeast Asia before and I’ve done like interrailing you I didn’t really want to do that I wanted to do something else that was a bit more of a a little bit more of a challenge and um I really like the idea of Overland travel so like you know not having a continuous Journey from your doorstep all the way to wherever it is you’re going to go or end up and I think 10 years ago I did a bike car with my dad like from Norwich to Bristol and that was the first time I kind of realized you can use a bicycle to go about beyond your immediate neighborhood beforehand I was always thinking you know you need a car to go anywhere Beyond a couple of miles but I thought if you have the time you can literally cross countries or continents on a bicycle and I think after a couple years of working not really doing what I wanted to do I just thought well I might as well just while I’m like completely unattached pack up and uh test that theory so there you go you heard him say it he is not a cyclist I guess before talking to him we assumed yeah he was like a pro cyclist really fit but that as shown we can all do it and I bet there are people listening right now same as me and Amy who never even considered a bike as a way to travel we’re all thinking buses and planes and trains but once you pay for a bike of course that cost money to pay for the bike but once you’ve bought the bike you can then go anywhere in the world for free like this is mindblowing yeah and like we said it really opened up our mind so at this point we’re thinking right okay so maybe we could do it we’re not that fit we’re not pro cyclist the same as him can we do this so we asked him what type of equipment do you need for something like this and what sort of budget are we looking at so I don’t actually carry a backpack the bike does all the work basically I just pedal so I’ve got kind of um on the wheel like on both of the wheels like and there’s a big bag on top like the bike carries about up to about 90 kg of lugged like of equipment and so I’m completely self-contained I’ve got the tent I sleep in most nights uh I’ve got stove for cooking and carry food water clothes for like all four seasons so I’ve been able to like you know cycling across deserts or cycling at 4,000 m above sea level in the winter people use different things depending on their budgets like I’ve seen people with an old secondhand thing they’ve just refurbished themselves and gone on the bike trip there are like specialist kind of touring bikes which have all the places you can screw in racks for p as well or but a mountain bike is absolutely fine I wouldn’t recommend a road bike it’s a bit too lightweight not very strong but people do it I I end up not bothering having a bnip because I just end up blowing it um but because my outgoings are so minimal it’s essentially how much I want to eat and that’s kind of the main expense and that’s something that I’m pretty liberal with I eat for a hobby these days um because burning off the calories anyway it’s uh it’s pretty good you can camp for I camp for free most nights just find some of the wild Camp put up tent and I’m gone in the morning your outgoings are absolute minimum and I think that’s probably another reason why I chose the bike as a way of traveling and I think it’s a really good way of traveling because if you don’t have a big budget but want to travel for a long period of time if you’re camping and that it really does stretch out that money you have now I would say guest Nick’s mind and my mind working the same way there so on the daily all he thinks about is what do I want to eat yep so I feel like this life might work out for me so you can essentially travel for free yeah and then eat as much of course you have to pay for the food but because you’re doing all the exercise you can eat as much as you want tick free travel shitload of food like this is sounding better and better as we go on it really really is uh so something I want to point out before we move on uh he mentioned pias and we didn’t know what they were before the interview they’re like little bags that go on the side of your bike I think they go on like the side of the back wheel where you can kind of keep your luggage so that’s what paas are of course earlier we did mention that Nick is not a pro cyclist but surely you need some sort of Fitness level so we asked Nick you know how fit really do you need to be to do this when I first started it was like March I still kind of haven’t recovered over you know the Christmas holidays but you just pedal as as far as you feel you could and like my first I did like 40 km or something you you pedal until you get tired you stop you have a bit of food then you keep going if you can um until you find like you’ve had enough of the day and you stop and you find somewhere to sleep and then you repeat that over and over again making sure you eat more than you think you need and slowly that distance gets a little bit further every day until you cycled across the continent basically I think two weeks it took me to kind of build up a level you know a relative level of Fitness to kind of feel like I do this every day but there has been times when I have to for NP all this I want to have a break and you do like if I’m having a bad time or if I’m dir tired I’d have a day off at least once a week anyway as a rest day but if I’m feeling really tired I’d go find a city go into a hostel if it’s in Europe or that I’ll just check in there for two or three nights and just have a proper break and at the end of the day I’m I’m traveling like I’m a traveler who uses a push bike I’m not a cyclist who’s traveling so you know I’m there I want to see a city I want to stay for a few days and there have been times when I’ve hitched the ride or um taking a bus or a train I’ve not set out to do like every inch of the way if you want an excuse to eat whatever you want twice go on a bike tour and if you travel for food like if that’s one of the rain me you travel go on a bike tour because you can just like in Thailand I played the game called grazing which is just going around the night market and you constantly had to have something in your hand eating for two hours um actually a friend did join me in Japan for a week uh her first time everone like a bike trip like this um she just f out and spent a week in Hokkaido cycling around um and that was really nice I’ve been independently traveling alone but I’ve met heaps of other cyclists on the road as well Central Asia is a real popular kind of place for us lot who like do a bike tour you got some amazing scenery it’s wild it’s a really interesting place to ride and it’s a real kind of bottleneck essentially there’s Russia to the north which is awkward for visas um to get enough time to cross such a big country and Afghanistan to the South which um for obvious reasons is a bit tricky so yeah it’s a real like there’s one road essentially going east and west and you meet cyclists maybe two or three times a day on some places so you tend to meet a lot of people I also traveled with a guy in Australia just met him on the side of the road he was doing a similar route and we cycled together for a couple of weeks which is nice it’s good to have the company that’s good to hear that as well as we mentioned earlier eating whatever you want it actually doesn’t seem like a lonely trip he was just saying how he’s met a lot of people doing exactly the same thing so immediately you’re going to be on that same level with someone you’re like oh you’re cycling I’m cycling we’ve got that in common Let’s Travel together yeah and I really like that he calls himself a traveler that is cycling around the world rather than a cyclist that is traveling around the world cuz that’s where we would come from if we were going to cycle um but now I thought that was a good point we continued the chat with Nick as you can imagine cycling around the world you might not be always sleeping in hotels or hosts or Airbnb or even couch surfing sometimes you’re going to be camping on the side of the road like he said he’s got that cooker with him so he can cook his food you can imagine that sleeping in a desert by yourself there’ll be snakes or you know someone could just pick you up and find you when you’re sleeping it could be quite scary out there so we asked him what’s the scariest moment you’ve had while doing this the scariest moment I’ve ever had was Rochester in Kent I think on like day two it’s just a bit of road rage you know this was my second day I was bre very slow up this hill with a boat that was way too heavy for what I could do and it was I think morning rushia and I held up this guy for a bit longer than he wanted to be and just you know he kind of undercut you know cut me off shouted the window flip Birds I think that’s the only time only everyone’s ever been aggressive towards me there times when people have being nice like you know unquestionably you know invited me into their homes and all that I can’t count the number of times that’s happened but yeah only once I’ve ever felt like in danger and that was in the UK about like people and interactions I think turkey is probably one of the uh most amazing experiences I’ve ever had like whenever I was going through like these kind of people would see me like I’d stop into a cafe have a cup of tea they’ see their bike they’d see a foreigner in some Village which doesn’t often get them coming through yeah they like you end up buying me a cup of tea and then they’ll start chatting through like Google translate and just asking what the hell am I doing here usually i’ get invites to come back with them to their home to have dinner and then or just to you know to sleep in their house or something like that it was insane the amount of invitations just I’d receive on the road um if it’s just a tea or if it’s a meal or just yeah it’s incredible I I spent two days in this Village in Turkey once just because I think I arrived there it was going to rain that evening and they just kind of went up to me like is this going to have there is bad weather coming you will stay with us tonight as a matter of fact and then I sort of helped him out in like you know the it was a Cherry Cherry Farms in the area so I helped them out the Harvest time it was then and then they like gave me like three bagfuls of these like you know fresh organic cherries to carry on the road with me which when you’re on a bike is kind of inconvenient because carrying all that weight but it was just so nice to like you know receive that turkey is one of them you’d have to really find a place to Camp that is hidden if you didn’t want to talk to anyone like after a he like a long day if you just want to kind of go to sleep at like you know 8:00 at night or whatever you’d have to be really strategic in where you find somewhere because otherwise someone will see you and then they’ll invite you or do something nice which um but it’s just so inconvenient sometimes but uh I think turkey for the people in terms of like epicness I’ve got to say like Central Asia to Tajikistan and kyrgistan there’s this road called the Pam Highway which is really famous like amongst I think like Mongol rers and cyclists Alik R about this place you’re like up and 4,000 met above sea level you’re on the border with Afghanistan which kind of doesn’t lose it street cred to makes you fat sound like a Hardy Adventurer even though it’s really like safe like we heard some gunshots one night and then the soldiers the next day told us oh yeah that’s just some bored kids they found a gun after week and they’re constantly using it but like the just like the SE scenery and like it’s such a Wild play you can see the um Hindu Kush mountains in the distance you’ve got like the white capped mountains like 7,000 M tall and you’re just cycling there on a push bike struggling to breathe damn those Turkish people being nice too friendly I can definitely relate to that though because I am one of those Travelers where so sociable love hanging out with new people and all of that but once I’ve done it for like a few days straight I need my time on my own that’s where I refuel that’s where I get my energy from I need to have some down time so I appreciate that yeah but a good problem to have the locals being too nice that’s so funny though I want to show that clip of audio to anyone who says like oh you’re going to go to Turkey that says dangerous or you’re going to go to Eastern Europe or the Middle East oh my God I love the fact that the only problem he had was in Kent in England and he’s been almost everywhere around the world so that is fantastic show that to anyone who doubts you know that the world is a nice or safe place yeah definitely and it kind of relates back to uh one of our last mini episodes where we spoke to another Nick so many Nicks Indigo traveler where we spoke about how the media portrays different countries so if you’ve missed that definitely go check it out all right so moving on we wanted to know what this whole experience has taught Nick I think I’m definitely more resilient than I have been it teaches you to like when you’re when your bik’s broken in the middle of nowhere and you’ve got to kind of fix it or find the solution to something like maybe your tent broken or something you find yeah like beforehand i’ kind of have a like a little panic attack and just like you know completely what am I going to do I should say I’m not a mechanic I’m probably the least technical person in my family it has taught me to be better problem solving so there’s that element I guess I’m more open-minded as well like in terms and more like open as a person for social interaction much more than I was especially when you’re living in London and you all you do is like you know you don’t talk to strangers at all there’s something really similar which I use a hell of a lot it’s called warm showers and it’s basically like um it’s exactly the same kind of setup as couch surfing you know if you’re staying in a house you can host people but if you’re on a bike tour you will then get in touch with these people it’s specifically for cyclists and for people on bike touring trips it’s works exactly the same uh as that and I use that quite a lot throughout it’s all over the world basically so I’ve used that quite a lot and when I arrived in this city in changu I was ending up staying with these French C French and Turkish couple who did a similar trip I have they uh in cycling from France all through Central Asia to China and they stopped and through just personal context they got this job in this English school so it was kind of a combination of like personal connections but also I was in the right place at the right time right now in China I think China is a very relatively easy place to get a job as an English teacher at the moment with the kind of developing economy and Rising middle class their demand is really outstripping Supply so the companies that are like employing foreigners as English teachers you know always looking for new members of Staff basically it was quite easy to get a job in that sense like as a native English speaker I had I was pretty much I fit the bill entirely I emailed them like on one day I had the interview the next day and the third day I had a job I just signed a lease of an apartment for a year and it was like you know it was I had to kind of find some clothes that weren’t like you know covered in dirt from Central Asia and stuff basically so uh yeah it’s um it’s a good place to stop and save money because the you you’re on a relatively good salary you can save a lot the money cuz the cost of living is so cheap as well you normally get a housing allowance um but yeah it was an interesting year I’ve arrived in New Zealand yesterday I’ve got six weeks here Winter’s just about to start so I’m a little bit apprehensive after spending 9 months in Australia I’m wearing every item of clothing I have at the moment so um and I’m inside so after here um I’ll got a flight book to Colombia and I’ll want to do like a month of uh Spanish classes I think I think that’ll really help especially because cycle touring has that kind of interaction with locals in these Villages where they defin definitely won’t speak English because not many tourists go there I think that’ll really just help that engagement with the local population and after that I’ll head down head south down all through the Andes I’m heading basically the end goal is um USU in like the southern tip of Argentina and p through Patagonia and at that point I don’t know I’m not 100% sure where I’ll go next I’ve got a couple of options I’ve got like Portugal and back home to the UK or Morocco and back home depending on how much money and Sanity I have left maybe it’ll be like Western Africa or if for some reason I really want to delay coming back home I’ll can go to South Africa and go all the way back there it’s completely open-ended as I say like I might get to wasw and think enough is enough I’ve had my you know Fair sh I’ve been by that point I’ll probably been in the road almost four years now and uh I started this trip when I was 25 and now I’m kind of almost 30 and I’m thinking might need to start thinking about you know real life again I’ve been avoiding it for quite a long time I’ve had a good run so maybe it’s becoming more popular every year you see looking just hashtags Instagram of things it’s becoming bigger and bigger as a way of try of aware of travel I think which is really cool but then also you through these like you know social networks you meet other people that you think whatever I’m doing is amazing then there’s a guy who just blows me out the water basically like so there’s a guy doing it almost the same route as I have on a unicycle there’s a guy on a penny faring that has been around the world as well like yeah never level of insane you think you’re doing is always someone that is crazier basically so that’s worked well with timing so the time we’re recording this right now uh I heard like two days ago that a guy from England has just been the first person to complete a journey around the world on a unicycle and that’s what Nick just mentioned that just blows my mind so where is he keeping his stuff is he has he got his backpack on his back when he’s doing it I don’t know the details but yeah he must be wearing a backpack that must take a long time on a unicycle wow I I just can’t even comprehend that yeah amazing so you see there are all these alternative ways of traveling I feel like these people are going to be like you travel on public transportation that is so like 19th century but yeah people are just doing it their own ways public transport in the 19th century maybe I meant 20th century so we asked Nick what advice he would give us if we wanted to do something like this which I think is quite likely yeah I’d say so have a go uh you’ve got a bike in the garage you’ve got a backpack go out you can plan this as well like just go out of your house with like a tent and you know tiny little stove or if that if even if you don’t have that just go to a pub and get a meal cycle at your house find a wood or a grassy bit camp overnight wake up when able to Sunrise pack it with 10 and come home that is essentially my life just a little bit shorter if you like it great if you don’t like it it might not be for you but just have a go like there’s a lot of gear that I’ve bought over the years which is kind of a bit specialist and you if you go on online thinking I want to do a bike tour and you look at all the equipment that you apparently need to buy it might be a bit inhibitive whereas you can go out just with a backpack or your old bike that’s a bit Rusty in the garage it’s been sitting there for years but yeah just have a go see if it agrees with you if you like that way of travel in the UK maybe I’d wait until summer just right but uh yeah that’s um really good otherwise um there’s some really good websites of guys that have done like round the world trips in the past that have got heaps of information there’s this one I think called um Tom’s Bike trip.com he’s been like doing this travel for like 10 years now or something like that and it’s just everything you need to know about bike travel in terms of equipment or just you know and he’s very much that relax kind of like you can just use whatever you have don’t let that prevent you from going on a bike ride and I think that’s a really good idea because like you know like anything there are certain things that you think you need but really you don’t you can find me uh mainly on Instagram @ cycling elsewhere that’s where I post my things there’s also a Facebook page cycling elsewhere or um my very seldom updated blog I’m a bit behind on that which is cycling else.com just when I tend to write up little stories about what I’ve been up to uh if You’ got any questions you can do that through the Facebook page that’ll be the best way of getting a response hopefully I’m I’m looking forward to getting back on the right bike after a couple months off working in Australia basically starting all over again like after 3 months off any level of Fitness I had has disappeared it’s day one all over again there we go thank you so much Nick for joining us so the name of his like social media platforms again is cycling elsewhere but of course we’ll tag him in all of our social media posts about this episode and we’ve said it before really this has totally opened our eyes to alternative ways of traveling that we never ever would have considered before yeah and it’s come at exactly the right time because like we said on our last episode in September we are quitting our jobs for good we’ve actually already handed in our notices and we are going to be traveling around the world full time we don’t know when we’re coming back we don’t know how long we’re going to be gone for if we’re coming back so we’ve saved a load of money and doing things like this cycling around the world will keep our budget going for longer so I’m definitely open to this that will bring this episode to an end inspirational stuff we’ll see you guys on the next episode of what the fo travel podcast see you please feel free to get in touch with the show you can do that by checking out our website www what theot trvp podcast.com from that you can find all of our social media channels we’re on Twitter Instagram and Facebook our email address is what Theo podcast gmail.com