Cycle2nature

Another personal achievement which we are proud to have experienced as a team and couple. Already 1.600 kilometers cycled in the beautiful country of Tajikistan, an interesting country with an amazing culture and gorgeous mountains! Above 4300 meters of altitude we have celebrated Jevsej’s birthday with an impressive starry sky, stars that could be all the people that we have around us and we’ve met during this fantastic trip! This journey is making us stronger together and rich in our heart, wealth that we continue to share around us! Thank you to all of you 🙏🙏

Our dreams became a project, our motivation leads us to surpass ourselves and our Love to listen to each other and take care of each other!! Finally, the result is that we became stronger together.
The main objective is not the final destination but it was/is to be together and to experience with the others, which we achieved during 2 years on the road!!! We went far East and we feel that we have achieved what we wanted to reach in this direction.
From the Netherlands 🇳🇱 to India 🇮🇳
From Rien to Delhi!! 🚲🏘🏡🚲to🛺🌇🏙🛺
Here some Statistics:
Unlimited numbers of horn 🔊📢📣📯🔔🤪
Millions of smiles 😊😆😁😄😃😀🙂🥰
Thousands of interaction 🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂
19.000+ kilometers 🥳🥵🥶😱😭🤗
400 days cycling 🚵‍♀️🚵
342 nights in the tent 🌳🌲🏕 🌴🌵
106 invitation 🙏🙏🙏
49 days backpacking 🥾🥾
47 degrees max 🥵🥵
43 flat tires 😫😩🤬🤬
22 countries 🌏
10 minus degrees min 🥶🥶
2 years 💪💪
1 Team 🪢

Last post here was about our one year anniversary on the road.
In 15 days we will celebrate 2 years!!! Time is cycling instead of flying and love & motivation are always growing like our nature that we are constantly observing.
With more than 18000 kilometers with our bicycles and more than 1 month just with our backpacks, we have crossed and experienced 22 countries and got more than thousands of thousands of smiles and warm welcome that we don’t keep for ourselves by doing the same around us.
You have noticed, it is not so easy for us to use this social media were everything is going so fast, the expectations are always higher and the responsibilities with the community as well. But for sure our website was and is the one that really reflects our path and pace. We also apologize if we don’t always reply immediately to all the messages that we receive. Nowadays we are used to get everything on time or as soon as possible. Some companies are even trying to develop things that you can even get before you even needed it... this rhythm is dizzying and not fitting to what we wish for us and everyone. Cycling is giving this opportunity to learn about slowing down and to enjoy the real moment and sharings.
It is also giving the opportunity to meet with simplicity and we will never say thank you enough for all those open arms that we got on our road.
To all of you Thank you from the heart🙏🙏🙏

Let’s share our one year anniversary on the road!! 🎊🍾🥂🎉 What a journey and achievement 🤗🤗
One year ago we jumped into the unknown and we only knew that we will share love and happiness 🥰🥰 finally we received 1000 times more 🙏🙏
We have crossed so many different landscapes and we met so many cultures, enjoyed a lot of moments and received uncountable smiles ✨🙏 ✨🙏
Joyce, peaceful, sadness, happiness, tears, believe in, hope, scared, unsure, unbeatable, proud, team spirit... and the list is longer with all the emotions that we have experienced during one year!! Life is a beautiful adventure and we are lucky that we have found each other to experience such a beautiful journey. We are definitely stronger than before and always stronger together 💪💪 Our instincts tell us to continue our journey, we will now discover Georgia 🇬🇪 and we always feel free to go wherever in the way we want.
On the group picture you will surely recognize the French couple that are also in other posts 😊 Indeed we met them in Croatia, saw them again in Montenegro, then Albania and enjoyed new year in Greece with them 🤗 We have celebrated together our one year anniversary in Georgia 🥳🥳 What a beautiful coincidence, they have started their trip one year ago as well, with their van and now they are three inside 🐈‍⬛ We have to admit sometimes we also ask ourselves why we have decided to do our trip by bicycle 🤔 and the answer is “never compare and listen to your heart”.
Looking at this beautiful year that we have spent, we can only confirm that it was amazing to cycle through the nature and the emotions provided by all the achievements are immeasurable. We will continue to push our pedals, feel the weight and work together because we want to cycle2nature.

To close this chapter of the beautiful Albania 🤗 we can share some interesting street arts that we caught while we were visiting Tirana and Korça (much more pictures to see on our website 😊).
The street art was also used for some military bunkers that are part of Albania’s landscape. From 1960 to 1980 around 173000 bunkers were built all around the country, sad memory of the communist government who has invested in those bunkers instead of more needed developments for the country. Part of the history, they are now used for different purposes like art, memorial, storage, coffee bar or just abandoned. To finish, we saw interesting spider webs in some cities 🕸 walking in the street and looking up at the sky, you will see an indeterminate number of cables connected to the telephone and electrical network!! At the end you will be lost by following them if you want to see where it is starting or ending, but it seems to work 🤞

In Albania we stayed for 23 days, we have cycled about 2 weeks and we also took 1 week to rest, visit, do some repairs and maintenance but also to work on our website. 🤗
We would have loved to stay longer but the winter was already showing up, temperatures were going down and more rainy days were joining us during the journey.
Actually, the temperatures are not the real problem but humidity, rain and wind are definitely not the jackpot to enjoy 100% to ride your bicycle and also to feel safe... We were unlucky and the weather forecast was showing the bad winning lottery ticket 😰 therefore we had to go a bit faster.
Despite the weather, we have enjoyed to pitch our tent in this beautiful nature and to cycle off road! Sometimes it was extremely difficult and we experienced again how we were and are a good team together 💪💪 It was not only about the physical aspect but also the psychological one. The gravel road is the best to challenge yourself and your team 😅
In fact, even when it is hard the more enjoyable moments are when you finished to climb the big mountains front of you and you discover a beautiful new landscape that is appearing slowly in front of you. It is like your birthday and you are opening your gift, you don’t know what is packed but you know that it was prepared with love for you. The nature just packed so many gifts for us 🤩 and even with big clouds behind or in front of us, we are contemplating the beauty of our world with the eyes of children. Naturally, we observe our new destination with excitement and we share all our thoughts and discoveries together!! “Wow!!! Look there !! Did you see this!!! So beautiful!!! We are so lucky!!! How many people passed this way and saw this beauty....” to be able to share those moments, it is unique, nonesuch like this authentic country!!

In Albania we meet again lovely people on the road 🥰 It is not easy to be far away from the family even more when Christmas is approaching but we are lucky that all the people that we meet are sharing so much love with us! Sometimes we forget to take a picture together, sometimes we only take a picture with our camera and we are not always connected... But for sure all the names on our thank you list are there to remind us those lovely moments that we spent together. We had fantastic sharings in Albania!! Thank you Jan for confirming our choice to go through the mountains! Thank you to Leo and Jaric for the spontaneous exchange on the road !! Thank you team open eyes to share your beautiful projects! Thank you Roberto for your warmly and lovely welcome in Tirana hostel!! Thank you great team Piki hostel for the great time spent together!! We had the pleasure to meet again the French couple in Albania 🥰 so nice to meet so many great people!!

It was an incredible experience to cycle in Albania!! As soon as we passed the boarder we were warmly welcomed 🤗 and immediately someone shared with us some fruits that he had with him 🙏🙏! Only 630 meters in the country and it will be like this for 630 kilometers more !!
We are in middle of November 2021 and we feel the temperatures starting to go down, what to do and where to go?
About the road: our plan is always no plan and we always tell ourselves “we grow with the flow” 😊. We had the choice to go down along the coast or to go in the middle and to see the beautiful mountains. We will end up to go to the capital and then to North Macedonia for 2 days, before going back to Albania and crossing the beautiful mountains from the south and to finish we will take some rest near to the sea before starting our new adventure in Greece.
About the weather: we wanted to avoid the extreme cold by going further south.
Finally, we didn’t shortcut the road and we have experienced the beauty of Albania and the history from this country.

In Montenegro, we took the challenge to go back to the mountains and to cross Albania with the southwest border. It was painful for our legs but we had such an amazing view on Skadar Lake National Park and some funny meetings on the road.
We have crossed many small and lovely villages where we have also seen some interesting architecture or monuments from the past.
More we got closer to Albania more we could also see the Muslim culture being more present. Both of us never have been in Albania, so we didn’t know that it will be with a bigger Muslim culture and religion.
At all borders, before we cross it we could see and feel that we will be soon in another country and soon welcome by another beautiful culture.