Three travelers cycle around the world for a full year with almost no prior experience. Sam, Elliott and Clayton tell crazy stories from many countries during their wild, life-changing bikepacking adventure.
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SAM
https://www.instagram.com/sambikepackingtheworld/
ELLIOTT
https://www.instagram.com/elliott_simcox/
CLAYTON
https://www.instagram.com/claytoonius/
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0:00 global cycling with zero experience
02:34 sam’s story
05:13 global routes
07:55 clayton’s messy accident
08:36 crazy stories from the road
12:08 advice for getting started bikepacking
14:52 gypsies with guns
16:57 robbed in Switzerland, assaulted in Montenegro
18:44 camping with wild animals
20:13 safety, hospitality, generosity
22:07 busted bike & monkeys in India
24:03 mental challenges, hard days
26:05 most memorable moment, Annapurna Circuit
28:13 Diwali festival
30:47 culture shock!
33:48 tailwind in Vietnam
We’re in uh Paneang, Malaysia, and these three amigos are uh riding their bikes all around the world for almost a full year now. This is Clayton. He’s from BC, Canada. And Sam and Elliot, they’re from different places in the UK. Mhm. And we’re going to talk about some of their journey, why they decided to uh hit the road for so long. I mean, imagine living on a bike every single day, camping, often times staying in hostels like where we met here in in Paneang, but every single day, get up, ride, next town, next spot. I think it’s so interesting how you decided to leave, you know, the motivations for leaving, but having almost zero prior cycling experience. So, Clayton did a 3-month trip through Europe, right? Yeah. 6 years ago, I did. 6 years ago. You out of out of the three of y’all, that’s the only like cycling experience really. So Sam and Elliot, tell me about getting your bikes, not riding at all, and then just hitting the road for an entire year. I think we saw like a YouTube video of someone doing something similar, and then your whole YouTube then becomes like bike packing videos. I I pretty much saw these videos, felt inspired, and uh over time sort of got myself into a position where I was like, I might as well try that. I feel like trying that and bought a bike 2 months before and uh yeah, just left. Just left on there. No practice. No practice. I was pretty much the exact same. I always wanted to travel. I was going to fly to Southeast Asia to begin with and then to Australia, but then I was looking at ways on YouTube of how to like travel there instead of just flying like alternative like forms of transport. Um, so then yeah, I was YouTubing it and I was camper vanning, motorbike tours, all that. And then it come up bike packing and instantly I was hooked. I was like obsessed with videos on YouTube and then I thought, you know what, this is the way I’m going to do it. So I literally no idea about bikes, don’t really interest me. I just seen a bike from Halas. Bought a bike, bought all the stuff, left my bike in the house, used it once before, like a 20 km ride, you said. No, it was about it was around 30 miles for us. So, what’s that? 45, 50 km, I don’t know. Yeah. So, half a day, almost a full day. Yeah, pretty much. Absolutely killed me. Put my bike aside and then when it come to it, just packed all my stuff and and left and yeah, here we are. Anybody who’s a cyclist knows how how wild that is to have a single day of practice before you ride your bike around the entire world for a year. Uhhuh. That’s it. Sam, can you tell me a little bit about some of the uh motivations for you to decide to take the trip to begin with? So, I um attempted suicide uh in June 2021. and um yeah, it was kind of just looking for a purpose in life. And then um kind of hit me in my face when my mom got diagnosed with cancer. Um cuz then it was like, right, I need to stop messing about with with all this partying drugs. Well, it wasn’t really partying. And it was mainly just sitting at home playing World of Warcraft doing drugs 24/7 um by myself in my room. And um yeah, tell me about you. You racked up how much time of gameplay you said? Um I have I have over a year’s worth of game time in a 3ear period. So like a third of so over a third of my life. I thought you said that was just on your main character. That’s I I think so. I haven’t gone through all of my characters, so it’s probably more. It’s probably more. So, like over a third of my life through the last like 3 years before I left this tour, I was playing World Modern Warcraft. I was like 105 kg before before I left as well. Really overweight. I’m now like 73, but I have a really bad hypochondriac thing, but for other people, so I really worry about other people’s health. So I thought I was worried about my mom dying and when she didn’t it was kind of like oh cuz the plan was if my mom went I was going. So when my mom So when my mom didn’t go it was like oh like I’ve got to sort of like figure out a plan now for my life like to what to do now. Um so she got better and in a way that that saved you too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, for sure. Cuz Yeah. I I couldn’t I couldn’t do it without my mom. I couldn’t do it without my mom. I’m going to need to have kids before my mom goes, otherwise I’m going to drink this. Um, but um yeah, and then um I had a conversation with my friend cuz I was getting like suicidal again. And um he was like, “Oh, you like those YouTube videos of people bike packing around the world. Why don’t you give you have savings, why don’t you give that a shot? And then uh yeah, bought a bike and left. So tell me tell me about the the routes that you guys each individually took before you ended up meeting and then deciding to ride together. I landed in Paris and then I thought uh Paris was or like France was flat but uh it was not. So like I was going up the coast and it’s all these seaside towns. So it’s very high-grade hills and like declines and declines and I I went up to Norway and then Sweden kind of cut down through Germany. Uh the first day I took off was Berlin. Yeah. I went down to Prague. Just kind of hit the capital cities and zigzag down to uh Istanbul. Then I took two weeks off uh kind of see the southern Mediterranean coast and then recontinued off your bike. Off my bike. Okay. Yeah. My mom flew out actually in so I uh visited her and some friends were actually in Canada visiting there as well and then uh went to Georgia and then it was snowing on me in the mountains in Turkey which I did not know that they were there either. And uh so I decided it was getting too late so I couldn’t go through Kazakhstan anymore. So I flew uh to India, did southern India, flew from Chennai, India to Bangkok and then did Lao uh Vietnam down along the coast to Cambodia like down to Ho Chi Min City then Cambodia east east coast of Thailand back down to uh where we are now. Sam and Elliot, you guys left UK but not together. You didn’t know each other at this point? No, we uh we live in different parts of the country. I’m right there safe and he’s in Kent near London. So, um, he left a little bit before me. I see him on social media. Um, so I was like, “No way.” What about the chances? We both doing the exact same thing a few months apart. So, I give him a message and we got speaking there. And then, uh, yeah, Sam was loving life. You were having a few stops here and there, you just slowing things down a little bit. And then I left a couple of months later and I was pretty direct through Europe. I didn’t really hang around in in many places. And then we ended up bumping into each other in Istanbul, Turkey. Um, yeah. So, you were describing that to me the other day, how how Istanbul and Georgia and that region is kind of like a convergence point for cyclists that have gone all the way through Europe and that are heading east. Yeah. And vice versa, like different directions, you know, going back in towards Europe and heading heading to towards Asia. Like you do meet a lot of a lot of cyclists. So, that’s where we met. Clayton as well in the airport in Georgia. So, y’all met in in Istanbul. Yeah, you meet in Georgia airport and then I met them again in Hanoi and then again in Okay, so you’ve been like together for a bit riding together then apart and then together and apart. Okay. Yeah. Well, uh Clayton um you were telling me about your your perfect start when you left France France after eating all that cheese. Oh yeah. So I bung myself up with some baguettes and cheese and uh ended up myself on the first day after I ate a schwarma. First day on the bike. First day on the bike. Yeah. Amazing. blew up both my pant legs. It was the biggest I’ve ever taken in my life. Jump in the river. Yeah, I jumped in the river. I had to go to a car wash that was like a couple miles up the road and hose off my bike and uh yeah, that was the start of the advent. Oh man, it’s not bad. I’ve never heard that story before. That’s wild. Yeah. Has there been uh some other moments like that? unexpected uh roadblocks or uh adventures we can call them. India uh India was full of them. I I had I had one in Switzerland. Um I was going up the Alps and um as I was coming up the road this side, climbing up. Um and it’s very important to note that I’d run out of water at this point. So, I was hoping to get over the mountain so that I could go to a supermarket and then get get some water, get some food because I was starving. Ran out of food, run out of water. Um, so I was going up this mountain and as I’m going up, the cyclist is coming down and the motorcyclist has crashed into the back of this cyclist going down the hill at very fast speed. So, the guy’s like face planted, his sunglasses has gone through his eye and he’s like unconscious for a bit. So I’m here calling uh 999 uh to call in an ambulance for him. A helicopter flies in and then of course I have to I was the only witness so I had to wait for like a police interrogation. So then I was there for like 2 or 3 hours this whole time not had any water, not had any food and um and then I had to in the dark after what I’d just seen. Bear in mind I’d only been cycling for like a month by this point. I just seen a motorcyclist crash into the back of this cyclist down the Alps and his face will get mushed up on the floor. Did that give you some doubts and like freak you out thinking like this is this is a potential hazard? Yeah. Yeah. I was on my I was on the I was on the phone to like um my girlfriend at the time uh going like, “Oh my god.” Like they’re literally like in tears because I was like I’m actually scared now. Every single time a vehicle comes from behind me. I’m scared they’re just going to run through the back of me. Yeah. It’s quite quite scary stuff to be fair. In Nepal, you’ll remember these. We were up in the mountains in the pool and uh we I was just cruising along like luckily this guy seen me coming. I didn’t I didn’t even realize it and he was in the middle of the road like stop. I don’t know what’s going on. And as I stopped, I’ve looked up and there was the rock falls and there was rocks like just flying down the mountain, hitting the road. I didn’t even notice it. Luckily, the guy stopped me outside. I just went straight into it and that we we were there for like about 10 15 minutes. Um and then the other one was the elephants in Nepal. That was that was awesome. We were literally just cycling down this road in the Was it the army? The police? No, that was Thailand. Oh, yeah, it was Thailand. Oh, yeah. Thai Thailand. Sorry. What was the other one in the tiger? Yeah, you saw a tiger. No, we were looking for it, but yeah, we were cycling through this national park and these police uh the army stopped us and was just like, uh-uh, there’s a 300 kg tiger roaming about around here. You can’t cycle through this place whatsoever. So, they got us in the back of the trucks and and took us through the nature reserve. We’ve seen elephants, we’ve seen crocodiles, seen some deers. The cheapest ever. Yeah, it was incredible. But yeah, the the one in Thailand, we were we were at a game where we’re cycling down the road and the police stopped us. They kind of pulled in and was just like, “No, there’s two elephants going crazy up there and uh you need to get in the trucks.” And when we did, yeah, we just seen these two elephants like rubbing up the side of this lorry trying to grab stuff out. There was all crap all over the road and we got to see two two wild elephants running about the place. That was recently in Thailand. That was pretty cool. So tell me about um getting leaving UK, leaving Europe at the beginning. How long until you felt really comfortable on the bikes with zero prior cycling experience and just jumping into it head first? If anyone’s watching this thinking, “Oh, I’ve never ridden a bike. I can’t ride my bike around the world, you know, but but you get used to it pretty quickly, right?” Yeah. So So I think I think it’s just a case of you kind of break yourself into it. Like it’s like if you can make it past that like 2 week slash like maybe there’s there’s a two week period I say where it’s like you’re tired, you’re unfit, it’s a really hard time and you’re smelly and you’re especially in Europe where you can’t afford a hostel or or or a hotel every not cuz you’re not showering as well. um and you’re not eating properly and so it’s the first two weeks are really hard and then there’s like a period at like the two month period if you’re on a really long tour I find that you really start getting homesick there I call it the 2 month period but once you’re through that I think you you kind of you’re kind of broken you’re kind of broken into the routine of just getting up and cycle every day and you yeah you’ve just got to be really comfortable with smelling being dirty not knowing knowing where you’re going to sleep and just being confident in where you find a place to stay. Especially camping through Europe like you were saying like there’s so many places cuz you you don’t know these like these places where you’re at. So you’ve really got to kind of be a bit switched on of where where you’re going to sleep for the night cuz you know there’s time like you’ve had times where you’ve been moved on in the middle of the night and stuff, haven’t you? So you’ve just got to be aware of that. But just have confidence going into it like like you like we said we we had no idea about bike packing or anything like that. But you just get stuck in, keep telling yourself that you know you can do it, everything’s good and you you do you find a rhythm for it and it’s a routine and then literally it literally just comes to part of your life then it’s like when we f when I first started that was the only kind of part where I was like oh do I camp here do I camp camp there you know but now it’s I will literally throw up a tent anywhere now it’s there’s a there’s a trick for the camping too if you like this old man taught me it was like my first tour but uh he had gone around the world like three times is I guess his old old geyser and uh he said like if you look for a camping spot the last half hour of cycling you like before dusk you’ll always find it and it’s true like if you start keeping your eye open for like a side of a river or like just an opening like a a nice place to camp you it always pops up a clearing in the bush yeah you got like in a half hour you got 10 km to be looking for campsite and you could also look at Google maps and kind of find a lake or something like that but yeah it usually always works oh yeah so in uh Romania at the border, everybody’s like, “Uh, watch out for these, uh, watch out for the gypsies.” And it was a big joke. And I I was always told throughout Europe, like, “Watch out for gypsies cuz they’re like the boogeyman of Europe.” And I was going into Romania. And the first the first night I crossed the border and I I made it to uh I was just off the side of the highway and there was a bush in a field. So, I I went behind the bush and set up my camp and nobody saw me. I thought, but it’s like uh it’s a small communities. Everybody’s connected there. So, I think somebody saw me driving by on the highway and was like, “Hey, this uh guy camping on your yard.” So, this guy wait came at me at midnight and just rode up his truck and I I kind of heard the engine and I was like, “A gypsies.” And and then like he just flashed turned on his high beams and like laid on the horn. I was like, “A shit.” I’m just in my underwear. I was thinking about grabbing the knife that I usually have and I was like, “No, I’ll just get out.” And uh yeah, it was a farmer and he had a shotgun and he’s like, “No, gypsy. No, no, no gypsy. No gypsy.” He’s like, “Oh, Sorry. So he put his gun away. He was apologizing. Yeah, he was he was super apologetic cuz he thought it was a gypsy. So he was just going to blow me away. But so I thought everybody was gypsies there, but it turns out there’s the Romanians and the Roma people and then there’s the gypsies. And the gypsies are actually all rich usually there, but they’re like just gangsters. Yeah. You said they had like uh some gold fences in the middle of Yeah. Yeah. They’ll have like the big off mansion in the middle of the town and everybody else is like Yeah. farmer houses and stuff and then there’ll be this massive like threetory like Louis Vuitton gold fences surrounding it and like those are the gypsies cuz they’re like they’re into the drug dealing and stuff like that. And I was like I thought I always thought my in my what I stereotype gypsies was like a caravan that like like roll town to town stealing people’s children and souls. But I was I was way off me everybody. That must have been scary waking up seeing a shotgun in your Yeah. Yeah. While he was in the truck like I was like oh I was just like, you’ve had a few. I’ve had a couple. Yeah. I had uh I got robbed. And if you if you think of my my route through Europe, it’s probably the country that you’d like least expect it to be as well. So, I got robbed in Switzerland. Yeah. I got robbed in Switzerland and then I got assaulted in Montenegro by an old man. Um because because I uh so it it got to midnight and it was one of the only times that I was really struggling to find somewhere to sleep. So I saw this beach. I saw all the sun lounges and I was like, “Oh, I’m just going to It’s 12:00. It’s midnight. Surely nobody’s watching these sun lounges.” And plus, there were these like group of teenagers that were like on the next row. So I was like, “Fine. I’ll I’ll go and camp up and sleep on this sun lounger. Looks pretty comfy.” It was all padded as well. So, I laid down and like as I’m like drifting away, I just sort of feel this presence like looming over me. And pretty much, long story short, I tried to profusely apologize to this guy, but um as I was rolling my bike away through the sand, he tried to sucker punch me from behind. I ended up because I was holding this heavy bike in sand trying to keep it up anyway and push it through sand. I ended up seeing he was coming and falling over. His ended up falling over me and we ended up having this weird sort of like scuffle on the beach on the floor with these like teenagers just sitting there absolutely cracking up watching us laughing. There might be a video of it somewhere. But um but yeah, that was a time where where I tried to sleep somewhere that I shouldn’t shouldn’t have been shouldn’t have been sleeping. Bit me in the ass bit. Yeah. Unbelievable. You’ve not really had any. Like I haven’t. Like the the the one time that I felt the most uncomfortable camping was when we were in the mountains in Turkey. We were we pitched our tent. So we were chilling. Bearing in mind Sam sleeps in a bivby. So he’s not even in a tent. He’s just like we say he’s the human sausage roll, don’t we? It’s just like But we’re in the tent and we we thought at first it was wolves. So we were there like just chilling and we heard these noises and I was I was freaking out. I was like we surround because it was wolf territory, weren’t it? Wolf and bear territory. Wolf and bear territory. So we were like oh no there’s wolves surrounding us. They were literally around the corner, weren’t they? And they were going at it. I’ve got the video on my phone as well like the noises. And we were like s get in the tent. He was like w trying to scare the walls away. Um, but yeah, we found out from one of your friends who’s a wildlife expert wildlife like content creator like that it was wild jackal. So it was like a pack of wild jackals. So we were like, “Thank God for that.” But that was the only time where I was just like, “Oh no, we’re going to get attacked.” Wild dogs. It sound like screaming babies, too. That’s Yeah, a little bit. But yeah, it sound like babies crying in the forest at night. Like just the wild packs of dogs. It’s It’s unsettling. These kind of ears. Yeah, I think they’re just trying to mimic a baby crying. So, it’s something weak and then like it allows something that’s going to hunt that and then they ambush them or I don’t know what the reason for it is, but yeah, it’s sounds like babies. A lot of people have this this great fear that traveling around the world is super dangerous and you guys are on your bicycles every day going across entire continents and like you said, you get robbed in Switzerland. Nice. like every kind especially when you’re not in cities and you’re not around tourist hotspots there’s not the snakes don’t go there the snakes go where all the tourists are so like when you’re in the countryides the people just yeah so so accommodating if if you ask somebody they let you sleep on their property like no problem feed you like people people are very like my my experience even countries that you don’t like like India or I didn’t mind India but it’s dirty but people are backwards. But then even in India, they’re so nice though. They’re very curious and like they they see like it’s not like you’re driving a car on motorbike. They see you on a bicycle and they they want to help you because they they see that it’s humanpowered machine. Yeah. Yeah. It’s difficult and they see you as a tourist. It’s like a beacon of like a shining light of tourism cuz you’re or pilgrim especially the Muslims in uh Turkey like uh I was very blown away by their hospitality like um Yeah, it’s kind of in Islam and religion to help pilgrims. So if you’re on a bicycle, it’s just like they they know they they’re like, “Oh shit.” Like one day I got five gift baskets from like people. They don’t have any space to put coffee or bottles of water on my bike anymore. I was just like extra cuz people would just pull over on the side of the road and like grab anything they had in their car and they could give it to you. Oh, take this, take this. And offer offer their house like in the in the down the road. Yeah. I tried to pick up Clayton’s bike and I physically could not lift it myself. There’s a bunch of rocks in it and I collect rocks. Brilliant. Did that help you in the hills in India? No. No, I don’t. Everything’s pretty dumb. Tell me about when you were drinking what did you say like 15 liters a day and not taking a single piss? Yeah, it was uh like it was the humidity was so hot along the coast from Mumbai down to Goa that uh and the steep the inclines there wasn’t very much breeze or anything like that. Uh yeah, it’s just so hot in the humidity that I was drinking like 14 lers of water every day and I I’d piss at the end of the day and it’ be brown. I was like I just soaked completely soaked. And luckily I I met another guy cuz I was kind of questioning what I was doing there. And uh I met this other guy that was kind of an amateur/professional cyclist. He had done a lot and he he was dying as well. And he kind of found me when my bike just broke and it was like I was at night. I’d run out of when you busted your pedal. Yeah, my pedal like uh somebody crossthreaded it. I like started like he was helping me but he cross threaded the uh the threading and uh one of my pedals and I didn’t realize and just with all the bumps in India like it just slowly got loose and then just snapped out and uh or like filed all the threading away and uh I had uh the pedal just essentially fell out and I was like in the middle of the bush and the monkeys were going nuts and I was like man this sucks. cuz I I like my cell phone wasn’t working and I’d not realize that I just ran out of money cuz you take out like I don’t know how many rupees but you have this massive amount and you’re like oh yeah I’m good forever and then yeah it runs out and then I just everything happened at once. So this is the guy that had to float you some Yeah, he floated me for 3 days as we cycled together and like suffered together. So, one of the guest houses we stayed at, um, the couple was like asked us how many kilometers we were doing. We’re like, “Oh, 85 like which wasn’t a we didn’t think that was a lot, but they were saying like everybody only does 50 max in these areas cuz it’s just like yeah, the hills so so hilly, just non-stop and shitty shitty shitty roads.” And uh yeah, we’re like, “Okay, maybe we are doing not too bad then.” like that. So besides the um the obvious challenges of like hills and heat and we talked about camping, what are some other challenges maybe more like mental mental challenges to like you know motivate yourself to keep going and things like this? The end goal really the end goal for me like I said it telling everyone back home your friends and family that like you’re going to do this you’re going to do this and you know I’m quite driven anyway like I say I’m going to do something I’m going to do it. So I did put a lot of pressure on myself with such a big trip uh with no experience but that that’s it for me waking up every morning sometimes as well like you know you do a really long day um and there’s nothing in between the cities you go into. So you know you you you got to get there really so it’s like you wake up in the morning after like 150 km cycling the day before and got to do it again. I’ve got to do it again knowing like the next break is in the city like 3 or 4 days away but you can’t just chill in my face in the middle of nowhere when there’s nothing going on. So for the the mental one for me is yeah getting just getting up in the mornings after a long day knowing you’ve got to do it all again. Do you think that playing football for your whole life like being an athlete help has helped you? Oh yeah for sure like physically like conditioning my body to do a lot of exercise I found that the trip is has been quite I would say easy. Um, but it’s been it’s been okay. It’s not it’s not affected me massively. It’s been more to be fair, it’s more the end of getting to the end of the trip now. Like on my last leg knowing that I’m almost at Australia, physically I’m fine, but it’s like mentally it’s like I’m not really afraid to chill cuz it’s almost at the end. So getting up in the mornings, um, when we say we’re going to do 100 plus km, it’s like, you know, um, because I’m almost at the end goal. So my body’s like, “No, slow down. It’s time to chill. It’s time to chill.” But you’ve got to keep you got to keep pushing. But you just tell yourself you you’ve set yourself a goal. I’ve chosen to do this, so I can’t really complain. I’m just going to get my head down and and and get on with it and and enjoy the rewards and the and the end goal when I get there. So for me, it was the uh it was the Anaperna circuit. Um we weren’t going to do it to begin with. Um and then it was it was your idea, which is crazy cuz if you know Sam, he doesn’t like hills. he doesn’t like this that you’re a lot better with him now but he doesn’t like any kind of hills this that and the other so as we were going into India into Nepal from India um he mentioned it and I was like okay so it was a bit of a side quest and um yeah for us like as I was saying before I’ve always wanted to like challenge myself mentally and physically and I knew getting this far already then to go and climb this mountain where people usually hike it there you know people do take their bikes up very rarely um so for that it was it a challenge on its own and and being able to we spent 10 days uh hike like pretty much hiking up this mountain. But we cycled for the first few days and then it was carrying our bikes, pushing them, screaming, stressed because of how hard it was. But getting to the top of uh the Anaperna circuit, which was 5,400 m high, higher than Everest base camp with your bikes and everything, that was the the highlight of of of my trip for sure. Yeah. Being at the top of that mountain, minus 22 degrees of a night time, it was freezing, sleeping in like little wooden cabins and and tea houses. It was You had your bikes with you the entire time. Yeah, we it was it was one of the most unreal experiences of my of my life for sure. Being up in the up in the mountain, seeing the snow caps and just Yeah. knowing that we’ve took our bikes up and we’re holding our bikes up in the air at that altitude, you know, no tour guide, no experience, no help. We just absolutely sense it as as a side quest and this is already, you know, over half halfway through our trip. Yeah. You’re not covering much distance doing that. You’re just climbing a mountain. Yeah, that’s it. And and yeah, getting to the top of that, that was probably the most unreal experience for me knowing that accomplish that. And then coming back down the mountain and carrying on cycling every day on the way to Australia, that was definitely the the highlight for me. For sure. Amazing. For sure. And some of the photos and and everything up there was just out of this world. Incredible. That was that was mine. I’ll give another one. Yeah. Um I really enjoyed the what what was a a highlight for me when you asked that question. The first thing that come into my head was when we arrived in India the first night and it so happened to be the main night of Diwali. Yeah. And so which is like their biggest celebration there. It’s their biggest celebration in in India. I think Elliot was looking for a vape. So we were walking around the back streets of New Delhi like these dodgy back streets and there was like the the streets are all lit up with LEDs like the buildings are like decreed but like the streets are are are beautifully decorated at the same time because it’s Dvali with all these vibrant colors and stuff. And then he had like kids in the street like um they had these gunpowder things and these they were like these like six-year-old kids filling filling the bottom of this like metal pipe up with gunpowder, pure gunpowder, tapping it on the floor a few times and then it it had this thing where you pull it out and then you go like that. It’s you kind of pull out this metal bar from the pipe and slam it down and it was like you’ve been flashbanged in Call of Duty. It literally went, but it would it would make a big boom noise and then like it would of course like fire off cuz we both had it, didn’t we? And it literally had your senses our ears were ringing and the flash was just like we were so like out of it and these little six-year-olds doing it all night long away. when when you when you said euphoria I think new arriving in New Delhi for me like I had this I had this like I had I don’t know whether do you remember I had that kind of like energy burst at that time cuz I was just so just like yeah adrenaline was going it was just it was a whole new world as well is this the first time as you were pull into a big city in India like the first big city in India you well well so we so that’s how we met um Clayton was we flew to we flew from Georgia to India again to avoid the so my initial plan was to go through Russia they made it illegal to do with transit uh to do a transit visa with bicycle like a couple of weeks before I got to Georgia so I was like well I can’t do that anymore so instead of flying to Kazakhstan where it would be cold freezing in a desert we were like we’ll fly to India because it’s better ever. Um, I wasn’t going to do India and I wasn’t going to do Nepal and I’m so glad I did because not only has it like changed my perspective on life, they’re also two of my favorite countries. India India one of my favorite but one of my least favorite at the same time but Nepal is probably my favorite country next to like Turkey. So what was it about that? Where do you think that feeling came from you were describing? I think c culture shock. And I think I think it was like culture shock, but I was just so bear in mind that I’d been through at this point, you know, um probably about like 18 countries and um I had a little bit of culture shock in Albania. That was the first country that I had culture shock in and then I had I didn’t really have that big of a culture shock in Turkey. Like it was different, but I wasn’t like wo Yeah. No. I wasn’t like wo this is out of this world. Uh-huh. But India was the first country that I’ve rocked up to and I was just like this isn’t in even in the same dimension as overload every corner. This is like a different planet. I think if you if you ever want to get humbled and you think your life is bad and everything is not working out for you. Go to India. You will have the biggest shock of your life. You have nothing to worry about ever in your life. I don’t matter how hard you think your life is. Go to India. rent a car and go see the villages. Go to the rural areas and you’ll realize how lucky you are to be breathing the air you are in your you know where you live. You got a roof over your head. Yeah. You know you can it’s it’s an eye opener for sure and that’s something that Yeah. that that will stick with me for the rest of my life. India I’ve heard India described as an assault a daily assault on your senses. Oh yeah. Yeah. By the end of the day you are fried. You are literally like what has just gone on? Especially going through when when we did was the pollution was at its highest, the heat, just Yeah. the the the the uncleanliness, the just everything as well as the colors, the noises. Yeah. The But you never get sick from the food, right? Oh, yeah. Wow. I I dropped 15 lbs while I was there. I I can I I had to watch my water intake or else I’d my pants on my bike again, which I said I would not do again. After day one, I was like that, you know, never my pants again. So you your pants in France but not in India? No. Yeah. No, I made it. But I was like really watching the water. So I was just sweating and like it took everything I had in me to do 100 km in those days cuz I was just like it felt like I had cancer pretty much by the end. I was just like so so weak cuz I I couldn’t You can’t eat the curries. It’s not cuz it’s spicy. It’s cuz of the spices cuz they they don’t measure out anything there. It’s not like tablespoon of like masala. They they they pour half a bag into it and it’s just like gritty with spice. So your your our stomachs just can’t handle it and it’s just like after I think it made it three days and I was just uh like I smell curry in my stomach growling at me and like don’t eat it and I’m like I was thinking about that I think it was uh Vietnam when I had that uh like intense tailwind. I was going like massage. No, it was uh yeah, I had this wicked tailwind for like 2 days and I was doing like over 200 km a day and it was like I it felt like I once you get up to that the max speed you it was like yeah I was going like over 40 km an hour just down the coast and it was just like uh yeah such a beautiful coastline. you’re going up these like hills and like seeing all these huge like Buddhist statues and it was just the like pristine beaches. The beaches are phenomenal and uh yeah it’s like a dreamcape almost and like when you’re when you’re doing that many kilometers a day you hit this ecstasy high at the end too. So it’s like depends how hard you push yourself. But uh yeah, that’s that that’s my favorite part of the cycling actually as well is uh yeah, you hit like a runner’s height from cycling and it’s just like your your thoughts are clear. You just your body feels like it’s Yeah. tingling the whole time, you know? It’s great feeling. But you get hours of that. Mhm. Tailwind. Tail tailwind. Oh man. Tailwind’s the best thing. How did you tailwind? Built like a box. The tailwind is Yeah. It’s like a sale, especially on that thing. Clayton, Sam, Elliot, these guys are all posting on their Instagram and Tik Toks and such. I’ll post some links. Check them out. Follow them. Give them a give them a few bucks. Help them get around the world. Uh, see you in the next one. Goodbye. I got to have the uh the three amigos shot. always wearing helmet. Good night, buddy. Bye.
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My feet itching for some pedaling now. Loved the guys and your the good questions! Great job Logan, proud over you son! ♥