Cycling The Globe

When I met Sylvain, the crazy French guy walking along Stuart Highway four days ago, we were about 60 km from Katherine. I cycled into town the same afternoon. Now, after 4 days, Sylvain finally arrived at Coco’s backpackers as well. I don’t think I would have the patience to cover only 15-20 km per day. For me the daily cycling distances of around 100 km provides the perfect travel speed. Not too fast and not too slow.

What makes Sylvain’s odyssey interesting is, among many other things, his daily budget of around 0$. Most days he would wild camp, but tonight as he was about to pay the 11$ for the camp site, he found a small plastic back full of somewhat dirty coins – coins he had all collected from the ground! Sylvain is a big fan of Australian money because the two dollar coin is very small and light compared the 50 cent coin which is huge. This means that people apparently loose a lot of two dollar coins. I should keep an eye open as well 🙂

Later in the night we exchanged stories from the road. Sylvain included stories like being shot at by the Turkish military in the deep mountains of Kurdistan and catching malaria in the jungle of Cambodia. Suddenly my own ride felt more like a walk in the park.

Tomorrow I will hit the outback again. From here it is 1200 km to Alice Springs. In between there is really nothing apart from a few settlements, roadhouses and camp sites.