islamabad

after 3 days of couchsurfing together and with the visa applications done, we finally decided to split up for good. dimitri decided to go back down to karachi, anna and elias stayed in rawalpindi seperately, and me and mathieu set up our tents on the outskirts of islamabad.

since there is no real culture around cycling in pakistan, bikes are mostly looked at as childrens toys, so there aren't even any real bike shops in pindi. i thought i'd try my luck online and after a lot of searching, actually found a couple of promising second hand candidates. the first two i had a look at in real life were in no condition to make it to china, but the third one looked promising. 47 thousand rupees later, i was the proud owner of a new mountain bike.

the next couple of days we spent hopping from guesthouse to guesthouse and from camp spot to camp spot while preparing my bike and repairing mathieu's. i ended up buying a lot more equipment: cycling shorts, luggage rack, bottle holder, repair kit, helmet, and a cycling shirt i just thought looked cool.

just when we thought we were ready to go, elias decided to rent a bike and come along as well. also, getting a bus to the start point of our tour, gilgit, was much harder than we thought, but after two days of trial and error, we finally found one that would take us and our bikes to the mountains.もっと詳しく