In This Blog:

1) Summary
2) The Details, our route day by day: Inle Lake to Bagan
3) FAQs for bicycle touring Myanmar
4) Our journey through photos

1) Summary

Myanmar bicycle touring – To go or not to go. Go! Myanmar was the highlight of this Germany to Thailand tour for me. Wonderfully friendly people and rural scenes out of another era.

Just be prepared for very rough roads, long days (80-100km), distances measured in miles, people and signs usually underestimating distances, the occasional forced move by local police to a neighboring town with an official foreigner hotel, unreliable maps (even Google), carrying most of your money in perfect condition US$ bills (20s and 50s best), and being with many middle aged European/American tourists in the popular touristy areas during peak seasons, now booming since 2012’s political reforms. Travel before 2012 was possible, but many chose to not go so their money would not support the Myanmar military government. Bicycle touring allows you a much better opportunity to distribute your tourist dollars to family-run businesses off the tourist track.

Two of us from FBR 2 (Steve and I) met up with fellow Minneapolis bike traveler, Patrick, (biked New Zealand fall 2012) to bicycle in Myanmar in February 2013. We found that there was little information out there besides a blog or two from a year before. This is my contribution to the Myanmar bicycle touring literature.

First, I will say that everything is changing very fast there now, especially regarding ATMs: As of fall 2012 only Mastercard was accepted at a very few ATMs. As of January 2013, Visa is now accepted. In February 2013 when we were there, a very few touristy towns had ATMs, but they were never open or on when we wanted them. The ATM at the airport was the only one we used successfully. So, you still need to bring in most of your money for your whole Myanmar leg in US$ cash, which has been the tradition in Myanmar for decades. It is safe.

Our ROUTE – Two Weeks, 5 biking days:

Inle Lake to Bagan, via Kalaw, Heho, Pindaya, Ywengan, Myittha (NOTE: no foreigner hotel in Myittha, stay in Kyaukse town 20km to the north), and Myingyan.

We asked Jasper and Uta, two WarmShowers.org members (the couch surfing site of bicycle touring) who live in Yangon, for recommended routes. Jasper recommended busing north and Uta suggested instead biking northwest from Yangon to hit mountains and ocean coast. In the end we followed Jasper’s suggestion to head north, which involved two bus rides and a mix of the two most popular tourist sites (Inle Lake and Bagan) as well as the road less traveled between the two in the beautiful and mountainous Shan State (where Inle Lake is located), which was fantastic. I would recommend spending more time biking there if you have it. He said biking north from Yangon would waste a lot of time (and it’s all flat in the valley corridor between Yangon and Mandalay). I would also suggest this route if you only have 2 weeks like we did. To avoid the buses, you might consider flying to Mandalay, though the three of us enjoyed wandering around Yangon’s busy downtown back streets (arranged in a grid) just watching all the activity (we did not go to Mandalay).

An Excerpt from Jasper’s e-mail:

I would recommend to take a bus to Kalaw, Shan State. That is pretty
elevated, cool and very nice. Cycle around the Shan hills, visit Inle lake
(touristy but still nice I guess) and from Inle cycle to Heho, Pinthaya (take
the small road north from Heho, don’t take the road from Aung Ban). From
Pinthaya you could go north a bit and down from the plateau in the lowlands
towards Mandalay. From there to Bagan, which is a must see. Then take a bus
back to Yangon from Bagan.

This route has pretty good accommodation option. Other areas are more
difficult especially if you only do 60 km day. Often you have to do 100-150
from one option to the next. Camping you can do but pitch your tent out of
sight and only after dark. You will not be arrested but police might want you
to move if they see you, meaning bikes in truck or something. A hassle anyway. If you want to avoid that hassle, ask for accommodation at a monastery, that is normally no problem.

However, if you really want to stay away from tourists in Inle Lake and Bagan, you may want to consider Uta’s route.

2) The Details, our route day by day: Inle Lake to Bagan

I missed biking through Myanmar on the first Fueled By Rice journey in 2008. We were hoping to bike across Myanmar from Thailand to India – the logical thing to do when looking at a world map and figuring out how to get from Bangkok to India – but country borders and the policies that govern them are often not so simple. A funny thing, borders: an imaginary line drawn to separate “us” and “them.”

So this time, I really wanted to make it to Burma. It still has that allure of the mystic and the road less traveled. But, there was always uncertainty when I told people along our route earlier in this journey: “We hope to bicycle through Burma,” we told people. It seemed difficult to get good, if any information. After finally talking to a Burmese tour agent in Bangkok in January 2013, we were convinced it would OK to go. And it was!

Route Details: Inle Lake to Bagan, via Kalaw, Heho, Pindaya, Ywengan, Myittha (NOTE: no foreigner hotel in Myittha, stay in Kyaukse town), and Myingyan. All but Myitta and Myingyan are in the mountains. We much preferred biking in the cooler Shan State mountains than the flat, hot, and dry Mandalay valley.

Flights from Bangkok to Yangon were the cheapest we found even though we were coming from India, US$250 at peak season in February (Chinese New Year), and as low as US$100 roundtrip. We flew Air Asia which has a brilliant straightforward and cheap pre-booking “sports equipment” by kg additional charge, only US$40 for the bike fee.

Night Bus Yangon to Kalaw (dropped off in Kalaw at 4am – got a room for 6 hours)
Yangon’s long distance “highway bus station” is far out of the city center, to the north around 25km, just a few km northeast of the Yangon airport, but certainly bikeable. The bus station itself is very confusing and we had to ask around to find our bus among many buses with many private companies. We took off our front wheels, handlebars, lowered our seats, and with the help of 5 Burmese, shoved them in the lower storage area. Our bikes made it just fine.

Yangon Highway Bus Station – a confusing mess

Yangon Bus Station – Stuffing our Bikes in the luggage compartment – They arrived safely.

Biking Day 1 – Kalaw – Inle Lake (Nyaungshe Town) 60km, relatively easy and smooth road (could bus all the way to Inle Lake on the same bus if you wanted)

When we arrived at the ticket gate to Inle Lake/Nyaungshe Town at 5pm, everyone said all the hotels were booked and we didn’t have a reservation. We biked around and asked at several places, and found at least three that had space for us and they were willing to bargain with us. We also asked at the Monastery, which would have been our preference, but the monk we spoke to told us that if we could not find a hotel, we could come back. Respecting his wishes in a very touristy town, we went out and chose the cheapest of the three we had found, which that night was the Gypsy Guest House for US$23.00 total for all three of us, not bad.

We stayed a day (two nights) in Inle Lake and finally chose to do the day-long touristy lake tour by boat of the villages (US$45), which ultimately is the reason everyone goes there. It was beautiful and worth it.

Day 1: Biking east from Kalau to Inle Lake (Nyaungshe town) – 60km

Day 1: Biking east from Kalau to Inle Lake (Nyaungshe town) – 60km

We used our mosquito nets at all hotels just to be sure. Our cheap room at Inle Lake.

Biking Day 2 – Inle Lake – Heho – Pindaya 80km (take small road north from Heho instead of larger road from AungBan for better scenery – ask for it in Heho)

A long day on a small road, but so great to off the beaten path, winding up and down hills through a handful of villages, amazing to see wheat harvesting by hand and plenty of two-wheeled ox carts. The road surface was good for 1/3 the time, and very bad, dirt/rock the other. We had about 10km added in the last 1/4 of the day due to a road construction detour. We were getting worried around 4pm when people told us different times and distances to Pindaya, all longer than we thought. But we made it in around 6pm just after sunset and found a nice hotel for US$10/person with hot water showers, which was very welcomed. The air was quite cool in the elevation at night, making camping impossible without a decent sleeping bag (which we left in Bangkok thinking it’d be too hot to make it worthwhile).

 Day two biking the small road from Heho to Pinyada

 Day 2  - Heho – Pindaya – Harvesting wheat in a village

Biking the last 15km into Pindaya on our construction detour

Our room in Pindaya – very nice, hot water which felt good in the evening cold of the mountains – best value

Biking Day 3 – Pindaya – Ywengan 80km, 7.5 hrs, rough road; contrary to my map, had to go 20km south first before we could go northwest to Ywengan on the 411 road.

Got a late start (12:30pm) after seeing the famous Buddist statue cave in Pindaya. Arrived after dark. Ywengan is a small town. We found a simple guesthouse (Khansan Guesthouse) for US$10 for all three of us, two rooms, cold water bath outside. More Beautiful hilly countryside.

One of the few well-signed intersections in Myanmar - 20km south of Pindaya before we could go northwest to Ywengan on the 411 road (my paper map bought in Yangon did not have this 20km south bit.) Note: distances on sign in miles, standard in Myanmar.

Day 3 – Pindaya – Ywengan 411 road

Biking Day 4 – Yewengan – Myittha 85km biked mostly down mountains (45km) on a very rough road; then 50 mile pick-up truck ride west to Myingyan (US$70 total).

NOTE: Myittha does not have a foreigner hotel, but Kyaukse, 20km north, does.

Very beautiful mountain climb then a HUGE decent into the Mandalay valley on a terrible road surface, so we had to go slow despite the huge drop in elevation. There is a flat 10-15km before the “T” intersection with north-south Highway 1.

Yewengan to Myittha

Yewengan to Myittha

Yewengan to Myittha – Lunch stop mid-decent

Yewengan to Myittha – Lunch stop cooks in the kitchen

Yewengan to Myittha

Yewengan to Myittha – The 15km flat heading west to the “T” intersection with the main north-south Hwy 1.

The Police kicked us out of Myittha town at 7pm after a very nice gas station family offered to host us (“if the government gave permission” which they did not). The family was extremely welcoming and generous, giving us seats, water, and snacks while we waited for the police. We definitely could have camped if we hadn’t stopped to ask about a hotel at the gas station, at which point, we were being taken care of by that family that followed the rules and couldn’t respectfully leave. Since it was after dark, the police suggested we hire a pickup truck to go 20km north to Kyaukse, but since that was the opposite direction we wanted to go and Steve wasn’t feeling very good, we opted to pay more and buy more time in Bagan and went the 50 miles west to Myingyan for US$70, a two hour journey. Upon our asking, the police escorted us to a restaurant where we ate with the gas station would-be-host. They found the pick-up truck, and we bargained the price. Even though the ride was on National Highway 2, it seemed more like a back road, and was similarly rough.

Myittha – We arrived after dark again on this day, to a town large enough to have a hotel allowed to host foreigners, so we thought. On the edge of town, we stopped at this gas station to ask if there was a guesthouse we could stay at and they said no, but then promptly invited us to stay at their house, but first, “we must ask the government.” The police said no. But they warmly welcomed us and gave us water and snacks while we were waiting for the police.

Myittha – we were forced to hire a pickup truck to drive us to a town with a foreigner hotel by the local policy (a common experience for bicycle travelers in Myanmar). Although Kyaukse town could have taken us, only 16 miles away, since it was in the opposite direction (east) of where we were headed, we opted to be driven 50 miles west to Myingyan to have more time in Bagan. The cost for this ride was US$70 for the three of us.

My biggest observation and realization on this bike tour came to me today:

Deforestation is the most critical environmental issue facing us as a global society. I’ve been reading Collapse by Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel author) who also emphasizes how deforestation has often led to a slew of environmental and agricultural catastrophes leading to societal collapses in human history, not to mention all the other species that live in forests. Then, on today’s ride, mass clear-cut deforestation was very clear as we descended down into the Mandalay valley. Mountains as far as we could see had all been clear-cut at the same time a few years earlier, now comprising only scraggly and sickly-looking trees. Every once in a while we would pass a large jungle tree right along the road that had been spared. I witnessed similar mass jungle destruction in northern Cambodia on our first FBR journey in 2008 that was so recently cut and sold to China that the remnants were still smoldering and smoking along the brand new Chinese-built road running from southern Laos to Pehnom Pehn.
I am now convinced that Forests are our most important and precious resource that must be aggressively preserved and replanted to avoid environmental disaster, climate change, drought, erosion, agricultural failure, species extinction, and human extinction. SAVE THE FORESTS!!!

As we descended into the Mandalay valley, clear cut deforestation became brutally apparent. This is the normal forest before we hit the clear cut area.

The clear cut forest attempting to recover with scraggly trees from deforestation

Erosion resulting from deforestation

Northern Cambodia on the main north-south Hwy, Feb 2008 (Fueled By Rice 1st Tour) – Clear Cut Jungle sold to China the local residents told us – China built the new road from southern Laos heading south into Cambodia

More traffic in the flatlands

Biking Day 5 – Myingyan – Bagan 50-60km, flat, but included the worst/roughest road stretch of the trip – National Highway 2 under construction just outside of Myingyan for 15 km or so.

From my journal:

“Right now I’m waiting on the side of a very rough, under construction patch of National Hwy 2 just out of Myingyan city on the way west to Bagan. Patrick just tacoed his front wheel by turning too quickly out of a dirt rut to avoid an on-coming motorcycle. The dirt track is next to the road since the under-construction rocky road surface is so terrible. Its funny to me that after all the incredibly rough back roads we’ve ridden 80-90km/day in the last four days, it’s this smooth but rutted dirt track that broke one of our wheels. Steve is not here because his knee hurt this morning, so he took a bus to Bagan (Nyeng-U town, the backpacker town of Bangan), where Patrick and I will meet Steve around 4pm..
A nice woman on a motorbike stopped by Patrick and I to see if we needed help. She suggested Patrick ride in on the back of a nearby young man’s motorbike back to town to get a new wheel. So here I am waiting in a shady highway ditch, though thankfully the road has little traffic, mostly motorbikes.

Myingyan to Bagan on Hwy 2 (final biking day) – Patrick tacoed his front wheel in a rutted side path next to the worst road yet, large rock awaiting resurfacing. Luckily, his hip was only bruised.

Patrick’s tacoed front wheel on the roughest stretch of road we found – Hwy 2, east of Bagan

Myingyan to Bagan on Hwy 2 (final biking day) – The toughest road in Myanmar – Patrick tacoed his front wheel. As if that wasn’t enough, both Patrick and Peter got multiple flat tires in a 2km stretch before we hopped a truck to get past the road work.

Roads: It seems all the road resurfacing crews will never be able to get most of Myanmar’s roads well surfaced at the same time. The mixed gender crews, often teenagers and 20 somethings, break larger stone into smaller stone by hand using sledge hammers and the women are placing the base layer of larger stones by hand. They then apply heated black oil to a smaller layer of stones using hand-carried buckets. Also, the road repair crews seem to be completely randomly placed along the roads, and only are repairing short distances, with bad/destroyed surfaced often both before and after where the crew is working. So, the quality of every road we rode varied greatly every several km, reflecting a long pattern of patchy road repair.”

Road Repair Crew

Two hours later, Patrick returned on the back of a motorbike with his same front wheel repaired! After asking around, they found a bike repair man in a back alley who simply hammered his wheel back into shape. Ha! Wheel repaired though, we didn’t go 2km and Patrick had a flat tire. 300 meters further and I had a flat. Another 500 meters, Patrick had another flat. Ridiculous! There were thorns in the side dirt path, and the road surface was too rough to ride. By now it was nearly 4pm, so we flagged down a truck and got a lift for 25km or so to the driver’s cousin’s roadside restaurant, where we ate a very late lunch. It also got us past the road construction. The rest of our ride was smooth, but we didn’t arrive until 2 hours after dark at 8pm. Luckily, Steve had left a note with the road gate guards as we entered the Bagan area that told us at which guesthouse to find him.

Myingyan to Bagan on Hwy 2 (final biking day) – The toughest road in Myanmar, large rock awaiting resurfacing.

Myingyan to Bagan on Hwy 2 (final biking day) – Hopping the truck.

In Bagan, we met up with my good Burmese friend, Soe Soe, whom I met at the University of Minnesota in 2010 during my masters study there. He was in the excellent Humphrey Fellows program that brings movers and shakers from around the world to study at US universities. A character with a lot of enthusiasm and never ending interesting stories, he was an absolutely fantastic and generous host while we were in Bagan, including treating us to an amazing dinner and show at the Nanda Restaurant, where we otherwise would never have gone due to our cheap budget. Thanks for the hospitality and keep up the good work!

Soesoe and I, a good friend from the University of Minnesota Humphrey School of Public Affairs

With Soesoe, Steve, Patrick, and I plus two other fellow travelers we met.

After three day’s in Bagan, mostly resting, we caught a night bus back to Yangon.

3) FAQs for bicycle touring Myanmar

1) Is it hard to get a visa?

A: No, it’s easy and took just 2-3 work days in at the Myanmar Embassy in Bangkok, it’s a 28 day visa. We needed to have a flight and hotel reservation in Yangon for our visa application. The hotel deal on the website was a few US$ cheaper than in person AND we could pay for the hotel with a credit card online, but NOT in person, but we COULD use their free computers in the lobby to book AND pay online for additional days. We used http://www.agoda.com and stayed at the cheapest one on the site in Yangon, Hotel 63, US$57 for a room for three including a decent all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet. Hotels that foreigners are allowed to stay in are generally more expensive than elsewhere in SE Asia.
Visa on arrival is even possible if arranged through an agent ahead of time, though we didn’t want the uncertainty. We saw the visa on arrival desk at the airport though with some people lined up. I suggest getting the visa ahead of time to be sure.

2) Can we bike enter Myanmar by land borders or do we have to fly in?

A: Despite the political opening in 2012, land border entrants only get 24 hrs and must exit at the same port of entry. However, Indians, Chinese, and those from other bordering countries, seem to not have this restriction. So, those from all other countries must fly in to stay over 24hrs.

Flying from Bangkok to Yangon was the cheapest way in we found even though we were coming from India, US$250 at peak season, as low as US$100 roundtrip. We flew Air Asia which also has a brilliant straightforward and cheap pre-booking “sports equipment” by kg additional charge, only US$40 for bike fee.

3) Are we allowed to bicycle around the countryside or will we be restricted to busses and special tourist areas and their inevitable higher prices?

A: Yes, flying in with bicycles was not a problem (only US$40 pre-paid for bike fee on Air Asia from Bangkok) and biking around much of the country is OK. Although we could bicycle outside the main tourist areas, foreigners are required to stay at hotels registered to host foreigners. This means that inevitably at least once, bicycle travelers will probably wind up in a town without such a foreigner hotel and be forced by police (friendly police thankfully) to hire a pickup truck to drive to the closest town that has a foreigner hotel. It happened to us once and the nearest hotel was 16 miles away (Myittha town does not have a foreigner hotel, but Kyaukse, 20km north, does).

4) Will we be stopped at checkpoints and turned back?　

A: We read on other blogs that this can happen if the road is entering a foreigner-restricted area. But it didn’t happen to us on our route between Inle Lake and Bagan.

5) Can we camp?

A: Other bicycle travelers said we could so long as we set up after dark away from villages. We didn’t camp because we didn’t bring our sleeping bags from Thailand, thinking it’d be too hot. But we found that Shan State (near Inle Lake) has cold nights because of its mountainous and elevated terrain. There were plenty of great camping spots in Shan State though. You would need to buy food for dinner in market towns where you slept the night before. Also, camping would have saved us from a few long and late days of biking 80-90kms, though would have messed up our schedule of hitting towns with foreigner hotels a bit.

6) Could we be arrested for camping?

A: Bicycle travelers told us no. If the police found us, they would probably just escort us to a hotel or make us rent a truck to take us to a foreigner hotel.

7) What’s this talk of foreigner hotels and having to bring in all one’s money in US$?

A: Despite very very new ATMs as of fall 2012, we only successfully used the one at the airport (which does take Int’l Visa and Mastercards). Although a few other towns on the tourist track have ATMs, they often are turned off and if ever turned on, are only on during certain business hours.

So, most people still bring in most/all of their money in perfect crisp and clean US$. Most will not accept folded/non-perfect bills, so keep them in your money belt. Hotels accept payment in US$ and can also exchange for Chet, which restaurants and merchants accept. We used mostly 20s and some 50s and brought US$600/person for our two weeks, which was ample. This has been standard practice for foreign tourists in Myanmar for decades, and it IS safe to do so, but use a money belt and put a spare stash somewhere else in your bags.

Hotels are often more expensive than the rest of SE Asia (average US$15/person), but food is cheap like other SE Asian countries.

4) Our journey through photos

Biking into Yangon from the airport – a pretty comfortable 20km ride on non-highway roads surprisingly nice compared to what we expected.

Our first and one of our favorite meals in Myanamr, on the north side of the People’s Park on our ride in from the airport. Included slow roasted veal, something I’ve never seen outside of the US. It was one of our cheapest meals, the rice and soup was free, we just paid for our meat choice and a vegatable side. Total was just over 3,000 Chit (US$1 = 800 Chit)

Tucked away in the far southeast corner of Yangon, Hotel 63 is a great value with an amazing breakfast buffet, though is located on a rough road with parked trucks from the nearby port.

Hotel 63 room for three (fancy for FBR, total US$60/nights)

Biking around Yangon – reminiscent of third-tier Chinese cities, but with less people and chaos

Yangon downtown grid

Replacing a sealed cassete bearing on my rear wheel – NOTE: the other side that is still good was made in WEST Germany (6002 size). The one that failed was a Chinese bearing I replaced 10,000km before on the first trip in Bangkok. I received this bicycle as a gift from a priest friend in Minneapolis. It was custom built in 1985.

Yangon – These friendly mechanics not only helped me take out the old bearing, but one of them went to get a new 6001 bearing for me. Thanks!

Myanmar’s famous Inle Lake

No Illusions. Touristville: Myanmar’s famous Inle Lake

But, Inle is beautiful

One of the most beautiful scenes we came across shortly after making it into the Mandalay valley

But just to the side of it were human scars of quarrying

National Hwy 2 heading towards Bagan – a shared bridge for train and cars! Never seen this before.

With our late lunch host and his kids after we were dropped off by the truck on Hwy 2. He offered to host us, despite the risks, but Patrick and I had promised to meet Steve in Bagan. Thanks for the offer!

Riding into the sunset towards Bagan on Hwy 2

Bagan with the boys – Steve, Patrick, and myself, Peter

It turns out, Durukan has gone ahead pursuing one of his dreams of being a musician and produced one of his first music videos last year. Not bad at all. Check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fnh-KjXvfLQ -

See his other videos linked through his Youtube profile.

Keep on following your heart, Durukan! Thanks for the hospitality!

With Durukan and Lindsey in Edirne, Turkey Nov 29, 2012

It was still mostly dark when I stepped outside into the new snow. My outer shell slid and crackled in the cold, and my nostrils freshened. This was no Thailand… and that was fine with me. Kallie and I were looking forward to some winter, since on our six-month bike trip we managed to avoid the snow and cold with our route and our timing.

We had started at the end of August up in Germany, where the days were partly sunny and 70’s—perfect for biking. We included myself and Kallie and two other couples. Our route took us south into Switzerland’s mountains, through Geneva into the rolling hills of southern France, along her coastal cliffs into Italy, and across the slow-rising elevations of northern Greece to Istanbul. A few nights along the way we woke up with frost on the tent, but when the sun rose we had warm and sunny fall days in which to enjoy the outdoors. This is how we spent the months from August to December. Since then we’d been in tropical heat, cycling under India’s coconut and banana trees, and enjoying some time on Thai beaches.

Now, back in west Michigan, it feels like a novelty to see the snow mounding over the parked cars outside. I walk down the street, each step a whining crunch, each step a mark of my passing. The whiteness in the early dawn makes the terrain indistinct, and before I know it I’m climbing a hill of snow. One, two, three, fou—suddenly my foot drops sharply three feet and I stagger to land back on the plowed road. The quick shock turns into amusement, and a little wisdom for the road ahead. It will be funny for someone else to follow my tracks in the daylight, and imagine the person walking blindly off a small cliff of snow pushed up by the plow. I will watch for these cliffs and step a little more cautiously.

A little way up the road I stop to listen and look around. The woods are heavy and silent, pine boughs weighed with a blanket of snow. When I turn, my jacket scrapes loudly and startles me—as though the noise came from something else nearby. I listen. There is a ringing that is growing in my ears, a high steady alarm that seems deafening until I breathe, or shift my weight and make “real” noise. Silence is loud too. I wonder what damage makes my ears ring like this. Is it road noise? Loud honks and engines in India? Perhaps the occasional blast of truck horn in Greece or Turkey that took a couple decibels off my capacity to hear what people speak in low tones.

I remember times on the tandem when I was filled with rage at the indiscriminant loudness of drivers who thought they must announce themselves above the din and roar of the Indian city by laying on the horn just a few feet from our heads. Kallie and I took to wearing earplugs for awhile, at least on the traffic side, and that helped considerably. I could turn over my other shoulder to speak to her, and she could speak toward my open ear. This way we only had to repeat ourselves once or twice.

How much noise do we live with without realizing it’s even there? Sometimes it requires standing in the silence of the woods to give us perspective.

I haven’t seen any drivers yet, and that’s fine by me. I enjoy the solitude of morning. No, I crave the solitude of morning, and find myself overly protective of it. If someone else appears I gauge whether I’ve arrived on the scene first, and offer a polite greeting, nervous until I am again alone. This time is my time with the world, and I want to let go of human-awareness. I want to be alone with this recreation.

It’s not that I dislike people, but I much prefer not finding their footprints in the new snow where I am walking. I like the feeling of exploration, and discovery. If someone has been there before I’m disappointed. Even on our cycle trip I was hesitant to look up information on a city or region, afraid that someone else’s suggestions would be too strong a frame for my own experience of wonder.

On one occasion we biked into the next town on our French map—Chateau Neuf du Pape. To us it was a bit of an annoying city to be as elevated as it was, since we had to cycle uphill to arrive, but we were looking for the next concentration of civilization and this was it. These towns offered food and water, two of our four concerns (the others being bathing and sleeping). As we biked in we remarked on the grape harvest that was happening in this town–there were trailers piled with grapes, grape pickers, and farming machinery everywhere. Occasionally we’d ride over a cluster of grapes that had bounced off the truck. Once in town, we also noticed that there were quite a few tourists about. One interested American approached us to ask about our trip, and in the course of our conversation we found out that we were in one of the premier wine villages in the world. While we were just biking into the next French town, other travelers were making this town their destination and fixing to buy some really good wine.

I enjoy that. I enjoy discovering cool stuff and happening on happening places. Or getting myself isolated in a woods somewhere, where the cool stuff is untouched snow hanging heavy on evergreen boughs, and the happening places are marked by the tracks of deer, fox, rabbits, squirrels, mice, and birds.

The road I was on brought me out to the main highway, and I followed this for a time, but found the walk uninspiring. I soon took a side road I hoped would connect through. Within 5 minutes I was facing a dead end… to cars. When you’re on foot you have more options. It didn’t take me too long to decide to go down the path. And, it didn’t take too long before the path ran out, and I was walking through the woods.

At first it makes you a bit anxious, when you contemplate leaving the path. You don’t know if you will find your way, you don’t know what challenges will present themselves, and you don’t know if you will put yourself or others into a state of worry. You might accidentally wander onto someone else’s property, and find them inhospitable. Or maybe there will be dogs…

But once you make the decision, it seems as thought the path opens before you. Yes, there are deadfalls to maneuver around, slopes to climb or descend, branches to duck–but there always seems to be a way pulling you forward, through the trees, and if you listen to your gut and weigh it with as much logic as you can afford, it will keep you heading in the right direction. At least that’s what I’ve found before, and that’s what I find today.

As I crunch human footprints in the snow, through the woods, I feel the exhileration of discovery, the pending satisfaction of overcoming challenges and finding my way. I cross deer trails and rabbit tracks, hear woodpeckers drumming their rapid beat, and stop to check the morning sun through the trees for my direction. At the top of a steep hill, I discover a dune meadow–a long open space tilting slightly down, surrounded by trees and untouched by tracks. I pause a moment, grateful for this secret place that I share with the wild world on this new day. Soon I come upon a beaten path and experience the relief of finding a way toward civilization again; a way that will bring me back to hot breakfast and waking family members.

Leaving the road and going into the woods is kind of like taking a large scale bicycle tour. The decision to do it is the hardest part. You wonder about the challenges, the balance of risks and rewards, and if it’s even possible. But once you leave the path of convention, put your job on hold (or quit), and go for it, the way opens before you. You discover beautiful people, unexpected provision and grace, and the world feels like it somehow is given also to you. Over the 4000 miles we covered by bike, we had plenty of opportunities to feel worried or uncertain (and occasion to make our parents feel the same!). We had to rely on our sense of direction and timing to choose the roads we would travel. We had to adjust to dead-ends, broken equipment, illnesses and injuries that changed our cycling patterns, and the different hopes and whims of six individuals trying to make a decision together. But mostly we were discovering the world for what it was to us, as we overcame the challenges of weather, landscape, culture, and language to find our own way across the continents.

Coming home is comfortable, and difficult. There are family members, friends, and good food waiting for us–as well as the unspeakable comforts of a hot shower and soft couch. But at the same time there is no way to really explain what you felt and experienced on the trip to those you love who lived at home during these months. Having left the noise of ‘normal’ life for awhile, it’s difficult to explain the re-entering. It’s a sort of solitude that rings with loneliness in its silence. That’s okay, because something about it also nurtures the soul. It’s a good perspective, a bit like listening in the woods on a still Sunday morning.

Soon the beaten path that I discovered comes out onto a neighborhood street, and that connects to another, and then I’m back to what I recognize. Once I’m on the familiar road again, I feel comfortable. I can relax into the last mile of my walk, knowing that I’ve done this before and I know the way.

We finish the day by pulling into a town and looking for lunch and a hotel. Sometimes we see other white people and it’s weird, because it’s been a while. We’re in a strange place here because we’re not Indian, but we don’t fit into the typical “tourist” category either. 

When we tell other foreigners that we’re biking in India, their face converts from a smile to an expression of pure horror. “Biking?! On THESE ROADS?! How has it been?!?!” They seem a little tentative for our response.

“Actually, it’s been pretty good!” I respond. “The great thing about India is that they share the road with everyone: people, bicycles, motorcycles, rickshaws, cars, buses, trucks, cows- you just have to know you place on the food chain! I actually feel safer biking here than I do in America.”

While training for the trip last summer in the US, it was a normal occurrence to receive angry honks or middle fingers. Occasionally someone would stick their head of their window and yell “GET OFF THE ROAD!” or “GET ON THE SIDEWALK! IT’S NOT SAFE!”

In America, or at least Michigan, the mentality is that “roads are for cars.” Bikes should be on a bike path or the sidewalk. Sidewalks are great if you’re seven years old and learning how to ride a bike. Otherwise, it’s pretty dangerous to pedestrians. Bike paths are an ok solution, but I’ve by far had more close calls with cars pulling out of driveways on bike paths than I have riding on the road. 

Over the past 5,000 kilometers we’ve experienced bike paths, bike lanes, bicycle tunnels, small roads, big roads, and some that didn’t seem like roads at all. If you drive by a cyclist biking in the road, please be respectful and slow down, give plenty of space, and you will be rewarded someday for your bicycle karma

It’s no secret that I’m exulted by being near the ocean. Biking along the Mediterranean coast was a highlight of the trip for me. During our first encounter with the Mediterranean Sea in the south of France, I can still remember the feel of my fingers skimming the glistening water in Port Grimaud, France and the water was so clear that I could see the bottom even as I waded into deeper and deeper water. I looked at all the shades of blue, widening my eyes behind my sunglassses as though that would let me take in more. My happiness in that moment was multiplied by the knowledge that the physical world could bring on this kind of pleasure. It made me content to know that I could be moved by nature, independent of human relations. It was a one-way relationship, but beautifully simple.

Even as I was being dazzled by the prettiness of the Sea, I couldn’t help but think of the perversity of the fact that my airbrushed fantasy had actually come to life. Often times in life, things are not what you hoped for. But most good travel stories are about discovering the unexpected. The traveler goes abroad with an illusion, the illusion is shattered, but then she learns something new, and after assorted challenges and humiliations, she achieves a satisfying epiphany. As I reflect back on the bike trip from an albeit short distance, I believe that I have cycled through all the above phases except the last, which I am still working on and refining. I’m still trying to absorb and reflect on everything that has happened in the past five months while trying to keep in mind that memories have a funny way of filtering out the negative and crystallizing the positive. I’ve had numerous epiphanies scattered throughout the trip, both internal epiphanies about myself as well as external about society, the world, the meaning of life, etc. One such internal epiphany that I disgrudgingly accepted over the course of the trip was that perhaps I wasn’t quite as flexible as I had thought and hoped to be. When you bicycle travel with a group of individuals, the group dynamics can be even intense than living in a group house. Every decision you make on a daily basis somehow affects the other individuals in your group. Group decision-making becomes akin to sailing a boat through a tropical rainstorm on the Indian Ocean. Sometimes it feels like you have very little control over your own life and you have to learn to balance being flexible and open to decisions that aren’t necessarily in line with your own values and preferences with maintaining open and comfortable communication about your opinions in a nonviolent manner. As an only child faced with this reality, the bike trip was an excellent lesson in being flexible, learning to let go when you don’t get your way, and showing compassion and empathy for others when making decisions. In fact, I could say that the best kind of travel involves a particular state of mind, in which you are not merely open to the occurrence of the unexpected, but to deep involvement in the unexpected, and even open to the possibility of having your life changed forever by a chance encounter. I started the bike trip in Germany with certain hopes and dreams and expectations. Some were fulfilled, some were not, but everything that I experienced was life-changing, even if I’m not fully aware of it at the present moment. That’s what travel is and does to a person. Although everyone has their own reasons for traveling, it’s impossible not to be changed by the things you see on the road, the people you meet, and the experiences that leave an indelible mark on your heart and spirit. You go out into the world a sponge, and everything blows you away- the first public bathing experience in a stream, the first night sleeping in a tent at the foothills of Mt. Olympus, even the first palm tree. Then as you absorb more and more of the nuggets of truth and beauty from the road, you become heavier and more capable of standing steadily on your own two feet without being rocked by the tempestuous winds of life.

Many times as we biked along the coast in Italy and Greece, I found it hard to believe that the beachside towns we passed through were once a bustling haven of adventurous energy from vacationers eager for seaside relaxation or a summer romance. Most of the stores lining the streets were closed down, the tables and chairs were stacked outside the outdoor cafes, and a few stray dogs straggled down the street looking for any scraps of food around. It felt as if a zombie apocalypse had engulfed the town, leaving only a few vestiges of the town’s former life or it was just winter: the off-season. Although these towns often appeared lifeless and depressing at first glance, the more I thought about it, the more I became aware of the value in seeing and experiencing this un-commercialized and un-advertised facet of these towns. And I realized that that is what bicycle touring is all about. We take the small roads that weave through small no-name towns that most tourists miss when they jump from city to city on a bus or train or plane. But really those back country roads and the country-side are often times what make up the majority of a country, geographically at least. A fair share of our most valuable interpersonal experiences involved spontaneous encounters with inhabitants of smaller towns who were not accustomed to having tourists flocking around. In such an environment, you, the tourist, are not merely a walking bag of money. People are genuinely interested in who you are, where you are coming from, what you’re doing in their home, and it is in this setting that the true essence of the kindness of strangers emerges.

Although we often valued and prioritized taking the smaller roads that went through the smaller, non-touristy areas, the first town we arrived in India was called Kovalam in the southern Indian state of Kerala. It’s the kind of place that’s billed as “tourist haven” in India. The beaches are clean and there are trash cans, there’s a boardwalk lined with merchants selling “India” in the form of punjabis, jewelery, and paneer butter masala. We rented a hotel room right on the boardwalk with a balcony overlooking the beach. Although it was not FBR’s typical sought-out destination, tt was a comfortable introduction to India, to say the least. One day as I was sitting on the beach, absorbing the salty air and listening to the push and pull of the waves, a street beach dog wandered into my sphere of awareness, lazily swinging his canine tail before coming to a complete halt at the base of my feet and slouching on the boardwalk with all fours stretched out. He seemed to calmly consider the landscape, completely at ease in his habitat. I wondered how and if people could ever get that comfortable with themselves. Some people talk about “finding themselves” in their travels, but maybe you had to get lost first. When you are continually exposed to more than one culture as is often the case in travel and certainly true for us as we made our way across Western Europe into Eastern Europe and India, sooner or later the anthropological question arises: How much of who I am is defined by the world around me, and how much is something more innate? Is it ten to one? Fifty-fifty? The obvious way to find out is to move from one context to another. That is essentially what we did throughout the bike trip as we biked from Western Europe to Eastern Europe to India. Putting ourselves in new situations acts as a purifying fire, charring away all the dross and leaving some essential self. Travel facilitates the peeling away of layers of yourself to reveal your inner essence.

We started our Indian adventures in a tourist vacuum, and we also ended our time in India in a similar tourist town, Mamallapuram, about 50 km from Chennai. I recall one day Peter and I were walking down the beach in Mamallapuram, enjoying the quiet solitude of just us and the beach, the rolling surf, the footprints we left behind in the sand, a rare occasion amidst the chaos of India. Just as we were reflecting on our experiences in India and the bike trip as a whole, my eye fell upon one of the great beasts herself, prehistoric and guileless, five feet wide under a hard, shiny shell. She had probably lumbered up to the beach to lay her eggs in the sand, programmed to reproduce against all odds. I suddenly felt unalloyed pleasure at the sand, the surf, the sunlight, and the turtle, even beautiful in its lifelessness. Beauty is so uncomplicated to love, I thought. I couldn’t say the same for my feelings towards India, which I would describe as more of a mixture of love and hate at the same time. Throughout our trip in Western and Eastern Europe, I was looking forward to going to India, to finally experiencing something “new and more interesting” culturally. Europe was too comfortable, too familiar, too cushy. India was the opposite: chaotic, hot, and exhausting. In India, I think we all experienced certain levels of culture shock, most of it welcomed, some of it stressful, but all of it embraced. Usually, the slow travel of bicycle touring gives us time to adjust to a new culture. But, when we flew directly from Istanbul to Thiruvananthapuram, we jumped across the world in eight hours. The brain takes time to catch up. Jet lag is over in a few days, but culture shock lasts much longer and comes in waves. There’s the initial shock of suddenly finding yourself setting up your tent in an Indian Temple in a random small town in rural India. Then there’s the long, slow shock of staying in a new place, spending months or years discovering a new difference every day. In a new culture you stand on something more like water than land, and it goes on shifting under your feet. India was a lesson in learning to stand up right in one place, even as the tides are shifting every which way beneath you.

I say this now and I said this repeatedly throughout the trip: the last five months have really flown by at lightening speed. Although so much has happened, perhaps more so than during any other five-month chunk of my life, it all happened so quickly, too quickly. As I reflect on my experiences and reminisce about all the good times we had, I can’t help but feel sadness and loss that the trip is over. Even if I could have stopped time, I knew it wouldn’t have the desired effect, because something essential would be missing, some sharpness of focus made possible only by the fact that life is fleeting and that time is continuously ticking. All you have is gratefulness towards the present and making the most of each day, every day. Some may still say that I wasted five months of my life wandering across Europe and India, that I lost five months of my medical education and my duties towards “real life” responsibilities. But I disagree. I know that now I’ll never wonder what it would be like to travel across Europe and India on two wheels, powered only by the strength of my own two legs or what the view is like from a monastery perched on top of a rock mountain in northern Greece. I’ll never doubt myself in a strange land where I don’t understand the language and I’ll never be afraid to try soppy vegetable mush with my hands served on a banana leaf. I won’t be cynical about human nature because strangers have helped us so many times. I can see that my ripped suitcase and bike box, as they tumble onto the carousel, are bursting with life.

Kallie and I are well into our final phase of this 6 month journey, the Honeymoon Phase in Thailand. We’ve spent a slow and relaxing week on the beach here about 3 hours south of Bangkok, near a town called Pran Buri. Our first few days we splurged for a 5-star hotel (check out the pics on Flickr), and after that have found something quite nice by our standards, and reasonably priced as well.

Most days we spend sleeping in, grabbing a coffee and some breakfast, and heading down to our new friend Colin’s kite boarding shack (Airstylers–highly recommended!). He’s given us a couple lessons, when the wind has been favorable. We spend the day reading, relaxing, and waiting for wind typically. Besides that we are free to wander around the beach, go swimming, explore the area on our rented moped, and sample some of the fruits and fares of Thailand. (We’ve found where they keep the Magnum ice cream bars at the local shop, and nearly bought them out…).

Even though we have left our bike in storage at the airport, and are therefore no longer cycling, we still hope to be able to post a few experiences and pictures from this phase of our adventure. We ask the readers’ patience in sorting out who of FBR is where and for what purpose at this point.

Here’s a cheat sheet:

Devin and Tori: back in USA since December
Lindsey: Uganda for Med school studies
Peter and Steve: Myanmar (Burma), still cycling
+ friend Patrick…
Andrew and Kallie: Thai beaches for another week or so

We have read several blogs of cyclists who toured there last year and are heartened to learn that it is possible to bicycle there and that the local authorities are friendly and helpful, not to mention everyone raving about the nice people everywhere. We will likely not have internet (except for the start and end of our trip in the capital, Yangon) until we return to Bangkok on Feb 12th 2013, please do not be worried about this. Prayers for smooth traveling and safety are always welcomed.

For me, this is the last leg of this 6 month tour, and the most exciting. More to come later!

Lifestyle Choice.

Just what do I mean by that? Connecting to my previous blog on happiness, all my travels over the last decade (living abroad and two Eurasian bicycle journeys), and my study and work in international development have focused me on this one all encompassing package of daily decisions we all must make: how much we spend, how much and what we consume, where we live, what we eat, how we move around, how we live. This also connects to the second pillar of Fueled By Rice: “Simplicity.” In the spirits of Henry David Thoreau and Rich Dad Poor Dad author, Robert Kiyosaki, I’d like to explore the nitty gritty euros and cents behind our bicycle journey.

Some may look at our travels and wonder, “How do they afford that kind of 6-12 month trip without working during that period? Who is sponsoring them? What a luxury! I will never be able to take that kind of trip, it must be so expensive.” For example, on our first Fueled By Rice trip in 2008, comments on a LaCrosse Wisconsin USA newspaper article about us included some rather bitter speculating by readers who assumed that our rich parents were funding us – how wrong they were!

I am here to share the truth that nearly anyone in the US and other developed countries could afford this kind of extended travel, and many in developing countries could too for that matter. We all have the power to choose how we spend our money, though constraints vary. The economic term is Opportunity Cost: “the cost of any activity measured in terms of the value of the next best alternative forgone (that is not chosen).” Basically, sacrifice and self-restraint in some areas of expenditure is needed to be able to do what one wants in other areas – one can’t have it all so we must choose. Henry David Thoreau realized at Walden Pond that if we don’t buy stuff, we don’t need to spend our time earning that money. Now, I do appreciate the fact that not everyone wants to travel and see the world, or do not prioritize travel over family – I respect that. Yet, I think many of us do, actually, desire to see the world – to see how others live and to expand our horizons to new possibilities and alternatives for our own lives that we never dreamed possible before. My main point is simply that if you desire to travel for 6-12 months (or longer), it is much more financially possible than you may think. I am convinced that most people without children could choose to save up US$4000/person for 1 year of bicycle travel given 6 months to 2 years of saving, and even those with children given 3-5 years.

There are all kinds of ways to cut spending before traveling to save up, but here I will focus on our expenses while on the road. The whole endeavor before and during this kind of trip is an experiment in simple living and constantly asking one’s self – What do I REALLY need? Usually one finds the answer is “less than I thought.” The biggest expense items while traveling (and not traveling too!) are housing, transport, and food.

Housing 
Since housing is the most expensive single expense, in Europe we simply cut it out completely (or mostly). In Europe, to stay within our 5 Euro/day/person budget we did not stay in hotels, youth hostels, or even official camp grounds – we free camped next to corn fields, rivers/streams, in woods, or in people’s yards after asking them (gardens as the Europeans call them). We also stayed with free hosts in their homes once every 1-2 weeks (with people we spontaneously met or arranged on-line through www.warmshowers.org or www.couchsurfing.org – a fantastic use of the internet). In Asia though, we can afford cheap guesthouses (US$1 – 3/person) most nights, with camping and free hosts on other nights.

For us, the opportunity cost of lower comfort (but often better scenery) by camping in Europe instead of staying in hotels is worth the extra days of travel we gain. For example, a cheap hostel or hotel in Europe is usually at least 15-25 Euros/person/night (and I’ve spent as much as 30 Euros a night for just a dorm bed in Amsterdam). Based on our 5 Euro/person/day budget, that equates to 3-5 more days in Europe traveling for every one night we do not stay in a hostel/hotel. This is an incredible exponential savings that in just one week of camping gives us an additional 21-35 days of travel, and over one month gives us an additional 84-140 days of travel (2.8 – 4.6 months!). For us, it is an easy opportunity cost choice. But I realize that for others, greater comfort is worth more than quadrupling travel time. Or another example, some think one US$3.00 Starbucks drink is worth more than 3/5 of a day traveling in Europe (or anywhere) by bicycle, or if bought daily over a year – US$1,095/year and 162 days of travel). But it is a choice. Everyone could save and travel if they really wanted. In Asia though, we can keep the same budget but live at a higher living standard should we choose.

Camping:

Transport

A bicycle replaces all petrol/gasoline consuming transport except for flights to start and end a trip (and mandatory jumps such as over Iran for Americans who must have a government tour guide which was too expensive for us [US$100/day], and over Burma/Myanmar which does not allow by-land border crossings). No train or bus tickets means huge savings. For example, in Europe, a 4-6hr train ride often winds up being around 80-100 Euros. When I studied abroad in Germany, at the end I traveled for 3 weeks around Europe using the popular Eurail pass which cost around US$500. US$500 now equals 371 Euros, which divided by 5 Euros a day = 74 days (2.5 months – over 3x my original 3 week trip) of bicycle travel that I could have done with just my train budget! And of course, a bicycle is much better for the environment, my health, my happiness, and reducing middle-east funded terrorism activities than petrol/gasoline transport – be fueled by rice and pedal not petrol!

Food
That leaves us with food – comprising our entire 5 Euros/person/day budget in Europe. The key is that we rarely (about once per country) ate in restaurants or went to bars in Europe because they are expensive. What about eating local food you ask? Some of our weekly hosts cooked us such meals. In Asia though, we usually eat in restaurants because meals are only US$1-3. So, in Europe we went to grocery stores and open markets like normal local people to buy our raw food, like all of us do at home (only we went daily to minimize weight). We also chose discount grocery stores, of which the German brand Lidl [lee-del] (like Aldi but with a bit more variety) wound up being both our favorite and the most common through out all of Europe. We ate two cold meals (breakfast and lunch) and one hot meal (dinner)a day cooked with our single burner camp stove(s) that can burn any liquid fuel including diesel (unleaded petrol/gasoline is the easiest to come by).

Our typical European meals looked like this:

Breakfast: Muesli and milk, fruit
Lunch: Sandwiches with plenty of European cheeses and sometimes meat, veggie salad or fruit/yogurt salad
Dinner: Pasta, rice, or potato base with lots of cooked veggies alternating spicing schemes, sauces, and soup vs stir fry
Snacks: lots of nuts, fruit, and discount chocolate bars

As Henry David Thoreau included an itemized list of his expenses to show how cheaply he could live, here are two of our daily receipts from Lidl and Intermarche when we were four traveling (after Tori’s injury in France). Keep in mind that anyone who knows me knows that I am a BIG eater, especially when I’m biking 50-70km a day, so we did not skimp on quantity:

European Lunch:

Dinner:

The discount prices at Lidl, especially on items like Muesli (2.60 euros for 1 kilo [2 lbs]) and chocolate bars (30-60 cents/big bar) certainly helped us out. It is all a matter of scoping out the grocery stores and seeing what is cheap yet nutritious and getting creative with those ingredients.  That said, when we are living more permanently in a community with more money to spend, most of us do value paying more for higher quality raw foods from farmers’ markets.  That is a compromise we made on this trip.

At one of the many Lidls we shopped at:

In India, we were eating “meals” for lunch, which is like thali or dahl baht full in northern India, where one gets rice and several sides and one can eat as much as they like. Price: US$0.75-2.50. Amazing. Most of the group did get a bit sick of “meals” after a while, and most of us actually got sick at some point, but I recovered and embraced meals just as heartily as before without negative consequence.

Meals – lunch in India

Meals – coming around to serve up more

Travel and Health insurance may be another concern, but there are many international insurance options out there that are much cheaper (and only for big emergencies) than normal domestic health insurance. I have used World Nomads, which is roughly around US$400/6 months. But for most minor injuries in most countries outside the US, it is usually cheap enough to just pay out of pocket without filing claims.

Final Thoughts:

Extended travel is not as expensive as you think. The hardest part for most people is getting the time, which requires taking the leap of faith away from the security of a job and a brick and mortar home. Certainly selling a home to eliminate mortgage payments is a big hurdle for homeowners.  Renting out one’s home one’s self or through an agency is one solution.  Eitherway, there are many extended travel bicycle couples out there who have done it. You can too!

Many postpone major world travel until they “have money” or are retired. However, while its never too late to start, we’ve talked several times together as a team and have discovered that traveling while young (though continuing to travel throughout one’s life) makes much more sense for several reasons including these five:

1) Easier to get away without responsibilities (i.e. job, mortgage, and children) or the effort of getting out of these responsibilities tying one down.

2) It is easier to keep it cheap because one is more accustomed to simpler living standards (i.e. willing to camp and stay in cheap and potentially dirty guesthouses, taking mass transit like subways and buses instead of renting a car or taking taxis).

3) One is more likely to be physically able when young to get around, hike, bike, or just walk around a city. Renting cars and taking taxis add costs and negative ecological and political consequences mentioned above.

4) There are no guarantees one will live to a certain age in the future. Better to do it (and pursue all of our most important goals and dreams) now if it’s something one wants to do “sometime.” As Dave Matthews sings in Cry Freedom, “The future is no place to place one’s better days.”

5) Although one has less money when young, there is more payback, benefit, and reward over the rest of one’s lifetime including everything learned and one’s changed perspective on life and what’s important. This will impact and potentially change life decisions, career path, lifestyle choices, etc. hopefully for the better.