The Route

The route I travelled

My adventure started very early in the morning in Zurich, Switzerland, where I stood on the board to skate to the main station. At the main station, there would be a bus waiting for me to take me via Germany and Poland to Lithuania. I had scheduled to start the first leg of long distance longboarding in Lithuania, following the coastline of the Baltic Sea.

Lithuanias coastline is short, so it didn't take me long to reach Latvia. The Latvian coastline took me north to Kolgas Rags, where the Baltic sea and the gulf of Riga meet, then southwards along said gulf and into the capital, Riga. A short intermezzo at a surf festval later, I was skating northwards again, along the Estonian coast. Rapid progress made a detour possible, so I skated around both of Estonias biggest islands, Saaremaa and Hiiuma, before continuing towards Tallinn. Tallinn was the endpoint of the Baltic leg, a one month 1200km adventure, full of awesome nature and the most welcoming people, that I will never forget. Turning east from there I ventured towards Russia.

There I first had to cross part of the country before starting to skate, because Russia is just to big. I entered via opulent St. Petersburg in Russias very west, travelled to Moscow by train, changed to the Trans-Siberian railway there and drove through Russian forrests and villages for four days. Then I arrived in Irkutsk, the capital of Siberia and closest city to the starting point of my skateboarding in Russia, lake Baikal. I ventured to the lake where I finally wanted to skate. Sadly I misjudged the street conditions, the amount of traffic and also the advantages of the newly built trailer that I had with me then. This slowed me down so much and made skateboarding there so dangerous that I had to abort skateboarding after a couple of days and just hitchhike most of the way to Ulan Ude. In Uland Ude I not only entered the Trans-Siberian railway again, but also met up with Kyra Gähwiler, which would accompany me through Asia. Another three days in the train took us to Vladivostok, in Russias far east, from where we planed to enter China.

The first stop in China was in a city named Harbin, famous for its ice festival and its smog in winter. Due to Chinas sheer size we had to continue to ride trains until a lot further south, and stopped at some points along the road. We did an overnigt hike on an unrestored section of the great wall near Beijing, travelled through Xi'an where once the silk road started, visited the birth place of kung fu in the Shaolin monastery and ended in the mega city of Shanghai. It was there where we suddenly had the idea that we should go as close to Tibet as we could, and skate down from there. So we endet up in Shangri-La in Deqen Tibetan autonomous prefecture in northern Yunnan province, from where we skated over passes as high as 3700m. The thin air slowed our progress, and after 300km we had to stop and exit China by train again, as our visa where about to expire.

This led us into Vietnam, where we had a short stop in Hanoi to adjust to the hot and very moist Vietnamese climate and prepare to continue longboarding. We had decided to skate southwards on the Ho Chi Minh highway, a beautiful, smoth surfaced road that swings through the mountains and ricefields of Vietnams backcountry. And for the next two weeks we had exactly one day of sunshine. Still we managed to skate 490 km, completely drenched, until we reached the Phong Nha-Ke Bang national park, where we not only stopped but also visited the biggest dry cave in the world. After having a few days of at the close Vietnamese coast, we decided it was time to escape the rain, and jump west over the mountains into Laos. 

One ridiculously full bus ride later we arrived in Savannakhet. We didn't need a lot of time to prepare for longboarding in Laos, as there was exactly one road leading southwards anyway. That was both good and bad, as on one hand navigation was easier than ever, but on the other hand there was no way to escape the horrible street surface. After pushing it for 200km, we had to give up, as longboarding was not sustainable for both us and our equipment in the road condition we found.

A bad omen for Cambodia, as most travellers that we met that where coming from there had reported even worse streets in Cambodia. But you know, you have to see for yourself, so we gave it a shot. The route we chose was traversing the country from east to west close to its northern border with Thailand, and had just recently been built to faciliate the access to the border for the military. Well maybe it was built for tanks or other heavy military equipment, but definitively not for longboarding. Another abort. Getting a little frustrated and hungry for adventure, after a few days following the well trodden tourist path, we decided to go off the beaten track, and buy a small wooden canoe, to paddle south on the mighty Mekong river. A wonderfull experience, 150km full of peace and stunning vistas.

After our christmas holidays on an Cambodian island, we moved further along the coast direction Thailand.

And exactly from the Cambodian/Thai border on, we started longboarding again. Thailand revarded us with wonderfully smooth street surface and scorching heat. We skated through vast areas of fish farming, through industry parks, through beach side resort towns, and sometimes even some rice paddies or forrest. After 500km, we had reached our destination in Bangkok, stopping at the city border at the airport. This was the last stretch that Kyra skated with me, and after we had spent a week in south Thailand, she went back to Switzerland, and I continued southwards to Malaysia and Singapore.

In Malaysia I did not skate, as for one part I did not have a board for a short period, and for the other part it was simply too hot.

But it gave me the time to carefully consider my next step, which will be the complete north to south crossing of New Zealand.

All in all I have now travelled roughly 23000km through 11 countries, of which I did 2720km on my longboard. And there is still a lot more to come.

 

Here's the link for the actually travelled route on Google maps:

 

http://goo.gl/maps/fGSgm

 

 

The initial plan

This map shows how I initially envisioned the route.

My route will lead me first for a short stop in northern Germany, then continuing to the Baltic where I start with the first leg. From Lithuania on through Latvia until Estonia, I will follow the coastline of the baltic sea until I reach Tallinn, the capital of Estonia after some 1200 km of skateboarding.

From Tallinn, I will enter Russia by bus to St. Petersburg. From St. Petersburg to Moskow I don't now yet, I think a train will be necessary. And in Moskow, finally, I will buy me a ticket for the transsiberian railroad until Irkutsk, where I finally will continue the long distance skating in Russia. After 450 km I will reach Ulan Ude, where I will jump on the transsiberian again to get me to Vladivostok, on the far eastern end of Russia.

From there, the hassle beginns to enter China by Bus to Harbin. After only a day or two in Harbin, I will head to the capital of China, Beijing, where I will probably have to do some administration stuff before I can continue the long distance skating in China, don't know the exact route in China right now though, keep checking my GPS tracking guys!

China will end in Nanning, that I know, because there I will jump on a apparently awesome sleeper train to Hanoi in Vietnam.

Vietnam, aaaah. Finally, the visa-hassle free period starts. From here on, all will be either without visa or with visa on arrival, man am I looking forward to that. That is also the reason why I purposefully have not planed the southeast Asia part in great detail, I want to start floating here, just have a look where the next nice looking road takes me. The plan is though to stay near the coast, in order to do some awesome fishing.

I think safe to say is that I will end up in Bangkok at one point because everybody does. But that will not be the end, no. From there I just skate on down the Malaysian peninsula until I hit Singapore.

Then I have to decide, Indonesia yes or no, we will see...

But either from Singapore or from Jakarta I will try to find a passage by boat to Australia (at this occasion: does anybody know anybody who has heard of someone that has a cousin whose sisters boyfriend searches for some crew on his/her cruise to Australia? No?).

Nevermind, I will be in Australia at some point, skating down the eastcoast up until Sidney, from where I will jump over to New Zealand (again, sailing anybody?). After shredding some Maori roads, I will do my last shippassage to Tasmania, where for the first time I will not skate somewhere far away, but just do a roundtrip around the Island along its coastline until I hit the starting point again.

That is about the plan I have, subject to change every five seconds. And yeah, if I like it somewhere I will just pitch my tent for a few days and enjoy the scenery.