Berlin to Bangkok Pt. II (Rijeka to Istanbul)

Hi! We are Max & Stephan and we cycle from Berlin to Bangkok. On my previous post, I already talked about the journey from Berlin to Rijeka. Now let’s get into Istanbul!

From Rijeka on we cycled along the Croatian coast and did a bit of island hopping. This was amazing since the traffic on the islands was much less than on the main coastal road. We followed the coast to Omis, where we decided to head towards Bosnia Herzegovina. Turned out to be the best decision, less traffic, beautiful mountains, super friendly people! I can really recommend the giro trail following a former railway connection from Sarajevo to Dubrovnik. We enter Croatia again for a day (mainly to see Dubrovnik) and the continued towards Montenegro (again beautiful nature and mountains). Especially the route after Kotor was amazing! We followed the altitude meters and climbed more than 1k consecutively, the view was worth it. The next days we were heading towards Albania, following the tt bicycle paths (can recommend). Make sure to stop at Lake Shkodër! We skipped Tirana because of traffic and headed towards the mountainous region of Albania, our goals was to reach north Macedonia, and afterwards Greece, back into the EU! Finally the first gyros haha 😅 Greece felt already quite different and we really enjoyed the Mediterranean Sea. When we crossed into Turkey, it felt crazy. We really cycled to Turkey. What the hell 😅 over 3500km and 30.000 altitude meters ✅ Entering Istanbul was the craziest thing ever, check out the photos! 😅

Here you can find the route: https://www.komoot.com/collection/2776628/-berlin-to-bangkok

Our insta: https://www.instagram.com/ber2bang

Cheers,
Max