Cycling around the world

Leave everything and change life, to discover the world by bicycle, the most environmentally friendly and slow way. Are you thinking about it? If you look for inspiration, the recent encyclopedic article by Icebike.org, a web site specialized in two wheels tourism, suits you. The cycle-traveler bible has in fact collected with an infographic table over 120 feats of this kind, done by cyclists from all around the world (two of the "world bike packers" in the list are Italian).

The reasons are many: dismissal, the end of a love story, but also the awareness that it is worth investing time for ourselves and to exploration. Alone, as a couple, but also with children. The duration of the journey of the 120 bike packers is, for example, from 3-5 months to the never-ending 67 months and 85 thousand kilometers traveled by Irish Julian Bloomer around the world. But the record remains that of the Austrian Heinz Stücke, who has done 609 thousand kilometers: he left home in 1962, he is still travelling. Or the Australian Tilmann Waldthaler, traveling since 1977.

It’s okay to ‘stack up’ kilometers, but there are two other very important references to apply for a Bike packing World Tour: the budget (Bloomer has spent more than 22 thousand dollars, for example) and a personal website that nearly all cyclists have to tell their adventure, once they finished it or loading step by step during the trip.

The infographic table is accompanied by very concrete statistics. The most used bike, for example, is the Surly Long Haul Trucker, someone use the unicycle too, but none the tandem. Regarding the budget, you can see that people live on average with 10-15 dollars per day, which annually make almost $ 4,000. And where they sleep? Using tent, first, but also being hosted, in exchange for small jobs and volunteer work.

Italians on the list are the couples Veronica-Leonardo and Daniele Carletti-Simona Pergola. The first are professional bike traveler, founder of Life in Travel website. However, Daniele and Simona left from Rome in July 2014 to go up to Malaysia - going through many difficulties in China .

Who wants to learn more about their more than 20 thousand kilometers, can find all the details on www.becycling.net and can follow them through the Facebook page " Dai sette colli ai sette passi” (from the seven hills to the seven steps).