Cyclists We Have Known

By now we've crossed paths with quite a few other bicycle tourists. Two weary Australians pushing the limits of traveling endurance. One was on a solo China-to-England trip and too tired to keep a record of his journey. The other one (we've mentioned him already), a sunburnt, road-hardened traveler heading south towards the African continent, two years on the road and no end in sight. No energy for a blog.

On the other hand, many tourers tend to have a particular expedition in mind and have created an online diary of their schemes. We benefited from reading about other people's experiences while we were planning our trip. Now we'll be following blogs to hear about the path we chose not to take. We hope that as bicycle touring gets more popular, there will more and more information available, and more and more people will be tempted to try it.

• A four-man German machine whizzed by as we were having lunch by the side of the road in Turkey. They were traveling from Dresden to Damascus at the breakneck pace of 150 km a day. (We hope to meet up with them when we reach Dresden, in a few weeks.)

• Last night we camped just outside Sibiu, Romania and met a guy just starting a year-long journey from his home in Marseilles, ending at some yet-to-be-determined location in Asia. You can find the story of his trip here.

• We didn't actually meet this French couple, but we stayed at a couple of the same hostels they'd passed through in Turkey (they must also be using a Lonely Planet guidebook) and heard about their trip. They're embarking on a two-year, round-the-world bicycle tour. Their impressive site (in French) is here.

More details on our own experiences in Romania to come, soon...