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My dear readers,<br /><br />Today, I am going to my trip from Tunisia to Russia. These who read my story from previous trip: Silk Road may remember that I was motivated on it by a childhood dream about Takla-Makan Desert. On trip before that to Himalayas I was motivated by my mountaineering youth. This coming trip is also not without motivation. I want to go through the most luxurious places in Europe, such as French and Italian Riviera, the backpacker way (bosiatskim sposobom). Why the backpacker way? Because these places are very expensive and also because I do not like to travel the civilized way. I am motivated to this trip by two great Russian Travelers Romanych http://romanycz.travel.ru/ and Yuri Mossokovsky http://mosspower.w-city.net.ua Last one took a bold task to prove that the ordinary Russian citizen can afford to travel to Western Europe on a bike. He proved it, but lost 20 lb. on the way. I am going to prove that the ordinary American Social Seniority recipient can travel through Rivieras too. And I do not mind to lose weight ever.

From Tunisia to Russia (part II)

Alex Mumzhiu
2006-03-22 13:32:47

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was high. Eventually I discovered backbacker way of travel and headed for Central Asia last year, Osame Ben Laded interrapted my plans. I hope I will see it soon.

I hope I will see it this year. In this sense it is interesting to compare the reaction of my readers to my Travel Notes. These who live in the West consider them adventurous, risky, and exciting. These who live in East, mostly Russia, are not so exited, and my selection of countries also seems stranege to them. They have enough of Asian un-civility in their own backyard and prefer to visit civilized countries. I understand them completely. When I started to travel I aslo visited civilized countries first, only then, my habbit to visit bear'scorners prevailed.

Alex Mumzhiu
July 7 2002
3pm

Some people advised me to travel to Central Asian destinations by airplane to avoid long and sweaty bus rides. You can fly almost anywhere these days, but it takes away all the sense of travel through the countries, the continents, the land. Overland travel is a special kind of travel and should not be mixed with airplanes. Founders of Lonely Planet started their business by traveling from London to Singapore overland. I already broke the rule of honest bike traveling by taking buses and trains, so at least I wanted to avoid flying during my trip.

I took a ferry to Kazakhstan, instead of Turkmenistan, because the mad man, who is Turkmenistan's ruler now, made it very difficult to travel through his country. The ferry from Baku to Actau, Kazakhstan on a large sea ship is supposed to take 18 hours and cost $50. It actually take two days. The 40 man crew treated 10 passengers like a prisoners. They locked our passports and luggage for a fee of $1. They also tried to extract some more 1 dollar bills for other services. After arrival, a special team came to check the ship. Only after this, the passengers were allowed to be transferred ...