Hello!
I’m Binni – a long-term traveller. In August 2021, I set off from Germany on a bike journey on “the Beast”. Duration and specific route as yet unknown.
Why the whole thing? After university and completing my training, I travelled to wonderful New Zealand for almost a year in 2013. It was probably the first time I had really marvelled at nature, lived and felt a certain sense of freedom. Even on the plane back home, it was clear that that wasn’t it yet. Subsequent holidays were unable to replicate this feeling. The urge to really travel again grew and grew. After a major accident and subsequent recovery, it was clear that I needed to plan something again. I started learning Spanish at the adult education centre and researching a trip through Latin America in a van (unfortunately, none of the Spanish remains). But life kept getting in the way and plans were postponed. At the end of 2019, I came across travellers on the internet who were “simply” travelling by bike. And that was the igniting moment: travelling by bike seemed so uncomplicated compared to a van trip – a bike would be easy to repair, easy to transport across national borders, less of a burden on the travel budget. And I could actually set off from home. A week after this realisation, the petrol cooker was already ordered especially for this trip and it was clear: I’d be setting off in summer 2021!
I travel completely selfishly out of pure enjoyment. As a silent observer, I travel slowly from country to country, observing the people and their culture, literally inhaling the nature around me.
Statistics for the first 887 days
The route
Roughly in the beginning, the idea was to cycle further and further east to Japan, from there to catch a container ship to Mexico and then on to the South American continent. On the way, the aim was to cycle through Iran and over the Pamir Highway. Without a plane.
You definitely have to have dreams and then start to realise them. It certainly won’t always work out, but something great will come out of it. I’ve already been to Iran, but Central Asia and Japan were not accessible by land in spring 2023. So after travelling around Cyprus, I returned to Europe through Turkey, with an extremely interesting detour through Moldova and Romania. In the summer of 2023, there was a short visit home, followed by a crossing of the Alps in Switzerland and then heading towards Barcelona. There I boarded a ship with my bike in mid-November and set foot on the North American continent in Florida 14 days later. In January 2024, I arrived at the Mexican border – from a different direction than I had originally dreamed of, but I’m here. And now I’m off on the great adventure of Latin America!
How long and how far? Until the budget is drained or the desire to travel dwindles.
Map
last update: 10th Jan 2024
The map is integrated externally by OpenStreetMap (https://umap.openstreetmap.fr).
Open the map on OpenStreetMap in full screen.
- blue and red dots: approximate position of the end of a day stage
- red dots have also linked a blog article
- orange dots mark special places
- blue were travelled by bicycle
- black were travelled by car
- on red lines, the journey continued on board a ferry / boat / shipr
- green lines were travelled by bus
- on orange lines it went ahead by railway
the Beast
The Beast is my faithful travelling companion. It comes from the Leipzig bicycle manufacturer Rotor and is based on a “Meteor” frame welded from a Columbus steel tube set. It is desperately waiting to be presented here in more detail.
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