These great shots from guest cyclists/photographers show what it’s like to travel by bike.
Check out the full-size pictures and the people behind the images below.
Clotaire Mandel is a nurse, traveler and photographer.
Clotaire’s on a bike journey without any final destination. He’s passionate for humans, their cultures and environment and his camera is never far away.
https://www.instagram.com/lepedalistan and https://www.lepedalistan.com
Ben is a multi-award winning filmmaker, adventurer, and photographer based in the UK. He spends his time travelling to some of the world’s remotest corners under human power in search of wild and diverse adventures and experiences. Most notably he recently completed a three-year bike around the world, a journey which has been featured by the BBC, GQ, Red Bull and The Yorkshire Post amongst others. His highly acclaimed films have appeared in more than 30 international film festivals and won numerous awards. www.benpagefilms.com
Heike aka ‘Pushbikegirl’ is from Heidelberg, Germany. She’s pedaled over 50 countries, 75.000 Km. and her current tour started in May 2013. Before 2013, she only left for months at a time, with the one exception of an 8-month solo trip across the desert of Australia.
Heike writes:
I love remote places, the further away from civilization the better. I also love dirt roads and trails, but I don’t stick to them for the sake of it. If a paved road is traffic-free, I enjoy it just as much. Open skies, deserts, mountains and campfires make me happy.
The longer I was on the road the slower I went. Kilometers aren’t important, whereas people, nature and adventures are.
The bike is simply my form of transportation. I don’t use it to break records, but to dig deeper and come closer to the diversity the planet has to offer.
I also avoid routines since variety is the spice of life. Challenges are what keep me going and freedom is my biggest pleasure.
I prefer to only use planes and public transport when needed but have since become more relaxed with that rule.
I also explore more than the ‘greatest cycling’ destinations. I want to see the full range the world has to offer. This means visiting the so-called ‘boring’ places and forming my own opinion about them.
In the spring of 2016, Eric Timmerman and Olivia Cuenca set off to ride their bicycles around the world.
In attempts to stay away from pavement and traffic as much as possible, they searched for jeep tracks, single track, and dirt roads that weave through the mountains leading to places less explored.
I’m Dutch, born in 1972, and love adventure in the form of traveling and diving deeper and deeper into this beautiful place called Earth.
As a little girl, I liked nothing more than building huts, following arrows chalked on the ground, painting, queerly dressing up, playing outside and discovering all that’s surrounding me, often resulting in me being lost and bruised but shining with new observations. Nothing has changed ever since.
On holidays my parents hung a little green army backpack over my tiny shoulders and off we were, on the hills in Austria, finding our way between grazing cows, all the while thinking about the banana in my backpack, until I forgot about it, being dipped in nature and it’s beauties.
I studied art (drawing and painting for advertising design) and fashion design. Those were 6 great years in Antwerp, Belgium. I managed to work 3 years as a photographer before I realized this was not it for me…
My desire to wander into the vast world has never changed. It has always been my dream to travel, to admire, the be in awe by nature, to witness, to find out, not to start a family nor being a mother, neither being confined to one space. Restless? Perhaps. For many years I took public transport until I noticed what I missed out on, and after having been to many countries, I started to save money for a new adventure: riding the world on a bicycle.
I haven’t had one minute of regret, for me, this is the ultimate way of traveling. Slow enough to plunge in the countries atmosphere, fast enough to make a decent amount of kilometers. Definitely not the easiest, but far out the most rewarding!
http://cyclingcindy.com and www.instagram.com/cinderellaservranckx
Originally from Argentina, I am a photographer and architect who travels the world by bicycle, specifically around remote regions. I pursue the cultures and sub-cultures that in one way or another resist the globalization process, either by deliberately trying to preserve their traditional values or by being marginalized by the system.
I’ve traveled in 88 countries (and counting) and each one has left something in me that in one way or another has contributed to shaping the person who I am now. This remains to be an on-going process as I move around the world.
Visit his photography website.
Mike talks about his past journey through South America and the Indian Himalaya:
“It is fair to say my trip has had many twists and turns. It has challenged me physically and mentally and forced me to question some of my own preconceptions and ideas.
When planning this journey I dreamt of cycling big distances and the daily physical toil of life on the road. Yet the lasting impressions and memories are not the miles ridden but the people I meet, the places I linger and the beauty of nature. The simple joys of travel.
Spending increasing amounts of time behind a camera the photographic element of the journey has become as important to me as any aspect of the journey, a visual means of communicating and sharing the journey with others.”
Follow Mike’s photographic journey.
Glenn spent his first 40 years living what he thought was the American Dream; he now says he’s living life. Traveling by bike and kayak, he finds new ways to explore the world, meet new people and grow as a person. As he travels 50,000+ miles by human power, he hopes to inspire others to reconnect with nature and lead simpler, happier lives.
Glenn’s photography website.
Mark is from New Zealand and he’s a freelance photographer plus graphic designer. He shoots images of travel, adventure, lifestyle, landscape, and his work can be seen on his website.
Mark writes the following about his recent Asia tour with Hana Black:
“We started our trip in China and rode overland through Sichuan, Yunnan, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia. There we flew to Banda Aceh and rode the full length of Sumatra (3000km). The full trip was 13,000km in 9 months. We defined our trip by seeking mountains rather than the flats and avoided major roads as much as possible. Sometimes this meant very indirect routes as we like to explore rural areas.”
Amaya was born in Missoula, Montana. In 2006, she and her husband, Eric Schambion, began pedaling towards Africa. After reaching Capetown, they just kept on going.
Since February 2014 they have pedaled more than 145,000km through 96 countries while taking some beautiful photographs of their journey. They share these images, along with stories from the road, on their World Biking website.
Eric and Amaya gave up their regular lives in 2006 to become bicycle nomads and cycle around the world. Since January 2013 they have cycled more than 120,000km through 93 countries while taking some beautiful photographs of their journey. They share these images, along with stories from the road, on their World Biking website.
Cass writes:
“I’m an avid traveller and cyclist and have been touring regularly for the last 11 years. I’ve ridden from Sydney to London, across Central Asia on a tandem, through Tunisia and Morocco, around SW China and Laos, and through backcountry Cambodia. I love touring and mountain biking: my ideal journeys fuse the two, keeping to quiet dirt roads and trails.
I used to co-run a bike touring business in the Indian Himalayas and work as a bike journalist in the UK. I’m part-funding this trip by writing for bicycle magazines, and have been submitting words and pictures to Cycling Plus, What Mountain Bike, Singletrack, Adventure Cycling, Boneshaker, the CTC and wired.co.uk”
You can follow Cass Gilbert’s current American journey via his website.
Aaron is an award winning writer, photographer, and editor who specializes in adventure travel, conservation, and wilderness.
His work appears in books and a diversity of magazines ranging from Bike, Powder, and Mountain Gazette to Sierra, Audubon, and Adventure Cycling. Aaron’s wide ranging explorations and wanderings, usually involve bikes, skis, backpacks, and remote places with spectacular sunsets.
Aaron’s photography website.
Paul and his wife Anja de Graaf are two cycling and photography enthusiasts who once did a two-year world bike tour and are still leaving Holland every year for a bike trip. They are best known in the bicycle touring community for their website which contains great photos and extensive information on a number of cycling destinations.
As one reviewer said over their website, “What Paul van Roekel and Anja de Graaf did on their bicycles (North, South America, India, Namibia, and Australia) is certainly as impressive as their web pages about these travels. With pictures, so beautiful, you have to see them!”
Kees is a fervent traveler and photographer who has cycled through Europe and Africa.
He writes,
“I studied photojournalism, portrait and documentary photography at the Photo Academy in Amsterdam and since then I work as a freelance photographer. I always work on location and try to approach reality without manipulating it.
So no glamour and studio photography for me and I don’t have to carry suitcases full of lights and tripods. An additional advantage of carrying minimal equipment is that I can travel by bike and train and I don’t have to get a driver’s license. There are already enough cars on the road …”
Kees has also written a number of bicycle touring photo tips in the Dutch language.
Visit Kees Swart’s Photography website.
