LONDON to OXFORD 🇬🇧 Our first ever biking trip! 🚲

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We rode two bicycles from Watford near London out to Oxford.

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We’re about to do something so crazy. [Music] [Music] [Music] This is so cool. There’s actually people living inside these boats. Wow. So Priyank lent us two of his bicycles. They’re actually right here. And we set off this morning from just on the outskirts of London and rode up all the way now to Oxford Shshire. So back home in India, we have often heard about Oxford because of the university and also as kids, we have always used Oxford dictionary. Yeah, that is true. And we were really curious to see if we could cycle out this far. We have never done this before. I think the only other time we have done this was in Laos where we picked up two bicycles and and then rode for maybe like 10 kilometers and that’s it. And it was like perfect weather that time. It was sunny and it was nice. [Music] That’s so cool. Look at that. The water there is at that level. The water here is a bit lower and on this side it’s even further lower. So this is all called the lock system and kind of similar to the one in the Panama Canal and they have all these biking paths right next to it. People also come jogging here. Energy park about 10 miles now. Cycling alongside this camel is definitely very fun. But then after some time your bum starts to hurt more because the path is not like smooth. It’s like [Music] [Applause] an uphill. [Applause] [Music] It started to drizzle. Oh, and the the face feels so cold. My lips are going numb and especially the fingers while riding it goes cold. This there’s literally no place where you can just stand and take shelter from the rain. [Music] M is really tired. [Music] [Applause] [Music] The weather is getting worse. The visibility also is witnessing humidity. The rain is not stopping. In fact, we are facing head like it’s raining right on our faces while cycling. The weather forecast says it’s going to rain for another 2 hours. We are very worried that we might not be able to reach our destination also still another 30 m on [Music] the problem is if we stop here and take a break soon it will be sunset time it starts to get dark by 4:30 in the evening now is struggling with his cycle mine at least it’s battery operated so when it’s up I just turn on the battery mode and then it goes zoom super fast. Now it has to manually cycle a lot. [Music] The battery is down by two lines. [Music] But now I still can’t believe that we have almost made it till Oxford. We have another I think 10 miles left. Yeah, all distances in the UK are measured in miles for some reason. We always thought that everybody other than the US had moved on to kilometers. But it turns out in Europe, UK is still uh using miles and miles for us everything we have to multiply on average into 1.5. But it’s like 1 mile is 1.6 km and the distances are huge. When you see it on the map, it looks good and then you realize you have to multiply it by 1.6 and then you start riding. But anyway, one of the bicycles that we have is actually electric. That’s the one Shish is on. And the one which Namit is riding is uh it’s a G cycle, but he has to cycle a lot because it’s not does not have any battery. It’s actually very nice. We’ve never done this before in any of the other countries that we’ve traveled in. We’re really interested to see how far we can actually make it. And we’ve been through a lot of rain today. That is why our hair looks so messy and we are in rain jackets. It’s really crazy. The rain just doesn’t stop. And I know a lot of people have already told us this isn’t the best time to be in the UK, but for us being able to see autumn weather is quite rare. So, we really enjoyed being here at this time. Also, getting visas is a lot of work. This was the only time it actually happened for us. Anyway, now that we’re here, uh, our plan for the UK, we we haven’t really talked about it in the previous vlogs, but our plan to explore the UK involves seeing it as much as we possibly can over the next few weeks while at the same time being as costefficient as possible. While planning a route, we saw the prices of trains, which is way too expensive for us. Then we saw prices of even buses, rental cars, and even considered the idea of cycling all over Ukraine. So with the current weather, it looks like uh we might consider doing something maybe with the rental car, not with the bicycle. So the first stop on this plan while we still have the bicycles is to get to Oxford. Thing about cycling in this weather that it is that it keeps you warm as you cycle. But now we have been standing for a few minutes now and it’s already getting cold. You don’t sweat so much in this weather. So it’s actually very very comfortable. It’s like cycling in air conditioning. That’s true. While we’re on the subject of Oxford, uh staying in hotel rooms in the UK, we’ve seen we’ve tried our best to find the cheapest way to find hotels. None of it is working. Every even the cheapest room is about 6,000 to 7,000 Indian rupees per night. That too if it is on a weekend like a Sunday night. Yeah. Where nobody really goes to hotel on that night, right? But then couch surfing has been a bit of a challenge so far. However, we found a new app called warm showers. Warm showers is very similar to couch surfing and we’ve decided to test it out today in Oxford. So, we are going to a family who’s waiting for us. So, we only have 10 more miles. So, I guess we’ll get going because there’s only about an hour and a half to sunset. Yeah. [Music] Ah, we finally made it to our host house. And this is the spot we’re parking our cycles and it’s pitch dark. It’s around 7:00, I think. Yeah, 7:00 p.m. We finally made it. 52 mi. That’s about 75 or 80 km. I don’t even know. It was crazy. But we finally made it to Oxford. So nice. [Music] So I finally made it. Our first biking trip. Wow. It was a lot. It was a lot. But uh this is the home of our new friend Lucy. We actually met her through warm shower. So we are here in Oxford. A new kind of couch surfing. And the room looks so beautiful. They even have a globe. Wow. And the world map and that. Oh, I’m so happy. I’m so glad we got to do this. Yes. All thanks to Priyank and Kupa. It’s like we made one of my dreams come true. Yeah. By helping us with the bicycle. We would have never even tried if it wasn’t for them giving us those bikes. Priyank in fact helped us like what gears we will need, what kind of clothes we have to wear for bicycling. We had no clue. It’s not on the video, but I cycled with Priyank from Watford to London and back in one day was 45 mi or about 60 something km. It was crazy. While he cycled, I was just sitting at home just checking where he is, where he is, is he alive, is he able to make it, did he get cramps? It was basically a trial run to see if we could come further out. So anyways, now we’re here in Oxford. It’s almost dinner time. The sun set more than an hour ago. It’s almost 7:00 p.m. Yeah, 7:00 p.m. Yeah, we cycle for 11 hours today. That was too much. And now we have to go down and meet our host family. So, we’ll catch you again in the next vlog. This was a short one, but hopefully you understand all of the emotions that we’re going through. We really couldn’t film as much as we wanted to because it was so cold because of it was raining the whole time. It rained for like 4 hours out of the 7 hours of daylight. Anyway, now it’s time for a shower. We are on a cycle safari. Subscribe. [Music]