From Russia
Egor Kovalchuk
© Egor Kovalchuk, 2023
ISBN 978-5-0059-4831-1
Created with Ridero smart publishing system
Hello, my dear freinds
My name is Egor Kovalchuk i from Russia. My story is a story of thousand people in hundred of countries, dozens of big cities and small towns. This is a story of 53 thousand and 772 kilometers way which I have covered with my bike travelling around the world for two years and two months.
I suppose children’s dreams to be the sincerest. They have nothing in common with self-interest and greed, they are pure and plain. I didn’t dream about travelling when I was a kid. It was the way I lived, my dream was to write a book, so I made some notes about the nature. Now, when I am a grownup, my journeys are a huge archive, which is by the way always open, of information for writing books, and my bike is the best tool I could ever dream about to get the information and to cognize both my psychology and physiology.
The life itself is a big journey, where travelling is a kind of narration, a kind of a very true-to-life book. This is a way to communicate and the most important part of communication is, without doubts, people. The most precious thing for me is communication with people.
I’m really into learning and experiencing something new. They often ask me: “What useful do you do?” I answer that to do anything useful you need to obtain a skill, and every of us is trying to do that. Speaking about me, I am learning how to be a Man.
One day, kindness of people in mountain area of Altai has absolutely changed my world. I had a need to close my understanding of life and people to theirs. I realized I need to learn how to be kind and unprejudiced; how to trust a stranger; to share your last piece of bread and help. These people who live in Altai understand life better than all new technologies! I never forget the gaze of a child who lives in Hight of 3000—4000 m. He looks at the sky and his eyes are boundless and bright like Heaven.
While I was travelling I was implementing my project “The Rainbow – postcards for Peace and Kindness”. I’ve been like a postman on a bike, I delivered postcards with wishes from children and adults to strangers from different countries and cities. Like a response those who got the postcards drew pictures or wrote some good words on other cards and I delivered them to different cities.
The postcards were delivered to schools and orphanages. They played a role of a link between people and showed that there is nothing to part us. Neither nationality nor languages, religions or skin color can separate us; Kindness, Love and Peace are those things that make us united.
The people I met on my more-than-two-years way possessed better features than I did, that’s why I learnt a lot from each of them. For example, I became kinder, less selfish and started smiling more. All these people were teachers for me without real teaching.
There is no bad man. There can be just a barrier that hinders to see a Kind Heart, that sometimes is hidden because of fear or cruelty of the world.
I will always remember all people who I connected with through my journey. Probably, this is a real gift to feel we are all one big family.
The result of my around-the-World bike trip is thousands smiles of kind hearts. This is something you can’t buy like all significant and important things. You can’t buy a choice, but you can make it!
Info
15th June 2014 – 2nd August 2016
53,772 km (33,420 miles)
Starting and finishing point: the city of Tomsk, Russia.
Total countries traveled: 39 (incl. countries with limited recognition)
Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Georgia, Abkhazia, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Greece, Albania, Kosovo, Croatia, Bosnia, Moldova, Transnistria, Belarus, USA, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, China, Mongolia.
The concept of “Round and through the world by bicycle”
– I put a lot of sense into the name of my expedition. While the preposition “round” has more to do with sports and geography, “through the world” contains the idea of traveling as Wayfaring, Searching, and Communication, where People, Human Beings are considered of most importance.
During more than 2 years of traveling, I didn’t ride in Africa, South America, Australia, and Antarctica, because my plans didn’t include such a global challenge.
The international rules on round-the-world bike travels have various requirements: a traveler must visit all continents, or must go through antipodal points, or the route length must be greater than the equator (40,000 km), or the route must lie in all hemispheres, etc. On the other hand, these rules contradict the itineraries of the first around the world bike travels, which occurred a century ago. All in all, this is very relative. What was important to me, in terms of sport, is the length of the itinerary and a fulfillment of a circle along the geographical latitude.
They say it is the Circle that should be done first and then supplemented during the rest of the lifetime. In the light of this, the indispensable condition to visit all continents seems a mere formality. I didn’t want to lay claim to originality; I just rode my own itinerary, which had its own identity and style. I have plenty of time before me to do the rest of the continents.
Of course, the idea to round the globe came up to me during my first bike travel, but USA and Europe visa questions were an obstacle to attaining this until the last moment. It wasn’t before I got these visas en route that I felt a little bit more relieved and confident that I was making headway in fulfillment of the Circle.
Implementation of the project “Rainbow For a Friend: Postcards of Peace and Kindness”. On the threshold of the next step of my journey, I offered children and adults to draw postcards on the subject of “PEACE” (peace between countries, between peoples, friendship and kindness) with greetings and wishes for children and adults in other countries. Acting as a mailman on the bicycle, I was to deliver the postcards to children in distant cities and towns. The postcards served as a link between people and demonstrated that we are not separated on the basis of national characteristics, languages, colors of skin or beliefs; quite the contrary, we are all united by kindness, love and peace in our hearts. The postcards were delivered to schools and orphanages; children, in return, made their own postcards and letters to be sent to perfect strangers from the other side of the globe!
Statistics
– In terms of topography, my itinerary included 118 passes: 105 passes under 3,000 m; 9 passes from 3,000 to 4,000 m; 5 passes over 4,000 m.
Deserts: Muyunkum (Kazakhstan), Kyzylkum (Uzbekistan), Ustyurt Plateau (Kazakhstan), Gobi (Mongolia).
While waiting for visas and the departure date, in Moscow and San Francisco, ran two marathons 42.1 km each.
Carried out speed climbings on Indonesian volcanoes: Agung (3150 m), Kawa Ijen (2380 m), Merapi (2900 m), Merbabu (3150 m), Kerinchi (3800 m).
Experimented with cleansing fasting: 7 days of dry contactless fasting (no food, no water, not even contacting with water).
Maximum milage per day: 280 km. This happened about ten times.
Maximum milage per week: 1900 km in eight April days (countries: Norway, Finland, Sweden).
The windiest country during the journey was US. Head winds were blowing 85% of the 5600 km route and about two months of moving. As sources confirmed later, western winds prevail in the world.
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