Going 950 kilometers from Austria to Croatia Bikepacking feels like something, especially regarding the 7,5+km up.
Was it an absolutely fantastic experience? Sure.
Would I do it again? Absolutely.
Was it something life changing? Nah.
But that’s not something I expected, not why I decided to do this. My motivation came from inside and the idea formed before I even knew that Bikepacking even was a word. As a result of my planning I got and watched a bunch of Instagram videos but those only reinforced myself in wanting to do this.
I was genuinely positively surprised by the entire trip, both in terms of nature and in terms of people.
Nature was absolutely stunning. Endless fields, breathtaking landscapes and really beautiful sunsets. And you kind of live on the street and in the nature so the road becomes your home, together with your shelter. It really is something that’s hard to describe.
I was more surprised by the people that I’ve met along the way. Things happeded that I thought only happen in those travel vlogs online. Getting paid for in a restaurant, being on camping spaces for free, being asked if I wanted an Apple or a Rakija along the way, being asked if I wanted to eat with the families (happened twice), meeting fellow bikepackers that you spend a day with, chatting with the elderly that sit in front of their houses, and the list goes on. The world is an open space and you need to embrace that.
Something that I absolutely need to learn more is not to have stress when there’s no reason to have any. The beauty about this is that you wake up and ride as much as you want/can and then lay back down. In theory. Practically, well, I couldn’t help myself of looking down on my Wahoo on how many kilometers I did already to get to a goal of 90+. And so the stress begun because you can only ride up until 9pm before it gets dark. After the first week I started to form a sort of routing which helped me, but looking back I can’t help but notice how decision fatigue was exhausting. The fact that you have to make so many choices every hour (little or small ones, what route should I take, is this safe, should I turn around, what supermarket, do I have enough water, can I skip this village and make the next one, whom should I ask for directions, can I make it before rain, etc.) takes energy that I didn’t know I needed. That’s the beauty of having a routine in our everyday life.
So that definitely was a challenge and something I need to work on. I haven’t quite defeated that trait yet.
Something else that this kind of showed is that if you want to do something, just do it. People doubted my ability to pull this off, especially because of the long distance but also because of the heat (I rode at 46+ deg celsius, I don’t even want to know how hot it was when I had to take a break). I was like yeah let’s see and voilà, I made it. And I haven’t been seriously training for this, I just started. 100km a day on a bike really isn’t as much as it sounds.
I also had to show quite a bunch of endurance to push this through, I understand and respect that for parents and grandparents letting your barely 18 year old (grand)son go on a solo trip isn’t easy – and me pushing though took some time. But looking back everyone congratulated me, said how proud they were, and that they were glad I did it.
It’s harder if you do it together, there’s reason most Bikepackers go solo. But together it’d be 10x funnier probably, seriously. Especially when it comes to less explored areas, not being solo is crucial.
What’s next? No plan, could be Croatia – Athens, could be something completely different. Let’s see!
