Today, September 2nd, we're trying to have a nice time in Beograd (Serbia). We've enterded the city this morning and we hope to be outside tonight. It's beautiful but full of people, noise and cars so, to us, it's a bit boring.
It's now around one month we've left our country, and for the moment our trip is wonderful. We meet a lot of different people, see fantastic landscapes, eat rice, etc.
Italy was very nice but a bit boring at the end, long, straight and full-of-cars roads, but then we arrived in Slovenia and that was very different. Everybody was speaking english, even french sometimes, and the mountains and forests were so beautiful! We also met some Frenchmen, so we could share some feelings...
From Slovenia to Serbia, we got used to meeting more and more the local population. Almost each night, we were putting our tent in somebody's garden, and even sometimes we were invited at their home and given beds!
We also are riding faster than we thought. It's amazing, but we may arrive in India sooner than in February...

September 12th : we're now waiting in Sofia for some letter that should be arriving soon at the post office. We spend this time sleeping, resting and relaxing in Elodie's flat, she's a Frenchgirl we met here. We also visit the city and the bars, meeting a lot of different people frome different countries.
Tchandra had his 21st birthday on the 9th, we celebrated it in different restaurants in Sofia.
We'll be going from there on Saturday to continue our trip and enter in Turkey.

September 21st : so we left Sofia the 13th, and it started to rain. We spent some days in Bulgaria, sleeping in different places. We met Krasi, a young bike-reparator who gave our bicycles all the stuff to go on safety.
Then, we crossed the Greek border and two hours later, under a big storm, we entered in Turkiye. We took a room in the Saray hostel of Edirne, where we met two women who were also travelling by bicycle, from Holland to Lhassa! Incredible, like us they crossed Europe and were goıng to reach Iran, like us they planed to spend some time there before coming back, and like us they dıd not know yet how to come back! The only difference: they were 47! Wow! Then we left Edirne and we started riding on turkish roads: very nice landscapes, and very kind people: in the same day we were offered tea three times and watermelon. After a short viewing of the Black Sea, we finally arrived at Istanbul.

October 3rd : we left Istanbul after five nice days in this big city in Marie and Ali´s flat. We took a boat (a vapor) to reach Yalova, on the Asian side of Turkey. Then, we started again to ride, Iznik and its lake, Göynük, Nallıhan... We had some very nice moments with Turkish people : we were invited to sleep in a prayer room by a group of apple-managers (fruits), and later to eat a delicious meal in a family (from tuesday to thursday it was Bayram, the end-of-Ramadhan-party). The same day at night, we were meeting a lot of young people with whom we played cards all the night, and we slept in a common room. We were offered a wonderful breakfast the day after.
By now we are waiting in Beypazarı, 90 km before Ankara, because of the holidays : everthing is closed until monday, so there is no use to be in Ankara soon. We will be there on sunday.
We had a lot of rainy and cold days, we used our gloves and bonnets for the firts time. Nowadays, sun is back : we can enjoy the amazing lanscapes that are given to us in Turkish mountains.

October 13th : today is the 8th day for us in Ankara; we are still waiting for our Iran visas. Pakistan embassy said "no visa by road" so we are now thinking about reaching India by boat from an Iran port (that's not easy to find something, we will maybe have to go to Dubai). There is some other problems: Iran visa is only for 30 days, so we'll have to be really fast - take sometimes train, because we also want to make our Indian visas in Teheran.
So, we'll see how things are doing. We use the time of waiting in Ankara to repair our bikes, to buy some clothes for winter, to meet some Turkish people, drink rakı, eat pide, watch TV5Monde, play poker and backgamon...

November 13th: At last! After about 40 days waiting in the Capital of Turkey, we finally received the authorization code to get our visas. During the whole month spent there since the last post, we lived in four different flats: one week in Ali and Erdal's, two mechanic students we met through Hospitalityclub. They made us discover lot of turkish traditional things, and meet lot of friends, especially in their university. The week after we slept in Sercan and Onur's, same building, but they had a lot of school work so we spent a lot of time watching tv. Then Gülay, Zeynep and Buket invited us in their flat, same district, for some days that early became two more weeks, full of occupations: football, museums, dance, meetings, music, etc. We were so happy in there, but unfortunately we couldn't stay anymore so we moved to Frédéric's, a Frenchman met during a bicycle tour. We found some french tv channels in this maths teacher's flat, and it was nice to speak French! After early six weeks in Ankara, it will be quite hard to go, but we're so happy to take our bikes again and to reach Cappadocia, East of Turkey and soon Iran...

November 27th: So we left Ankara. We quickly took back our habits, riding, cooking, camping and meeting people. But, due to the cold weather and the earlier sunset, we had to follow a new rythm. The night comes at 4 p.m. so we have to wake up so early and so frozen! Hopefully, Turkish people are very helpful, and we are often given tea, fruits, some warm place to sleep... We got used to stop in a petrol station a night, because it's safe, hot and friendly. Because of winter coming, we stopped riding in shorts and we're now wearing pants, gloves, scarfs, warm pull-overs...

We ride to the south to reach Aksaray, then Nevşehir, gate of Cappadocia. We discovered an amazing landscape and very interesting and beautiful places, underground cities, churchs in caves, it was so nice. Once a family invited us to eat and sleep at their home,  and we shared a very interesting moment.

Then we came back to the north, Kayseri, Sivas: colder and colder! Once we were invited to sleep in a police station, but they finally sent us to a hostel, for free. Last night, we slept in our tent under -10*C, and when we woke up everything was frozen! We had to climb until 2200 m today, it was snowing, but the sun appeared soon and we are now in Erzincan, in an internet café, preparing ourselves to climb again to Erzurum, to see winter coming and worse weather, colder, snowier...

We don't really know what will happen to us, but we're sure that if any problem occurs (illness, too much snow...) we will be able to take a truck (by hitch haking) to go faster. So, inch'Allah!

April 3rd (!): Ouh la la! We've not posted anything for a very long time! Well, after some short but nice days at the eastern part of Turkey, we crossed the border of Iran at the begining of December. It was a great cultural change, food, language, landscape were so different, and after three months in Turkey we were sad to leave but happy to meet this new country. However, due to some problems in our three-people team relationship, we decided to separate in Tabriz. Pablo took a train to Tehran while Julien and Tchandra kept riding in the same direction.

In Tehran, the whole team gathered again at Keyva's, our new friend from Hospitality Club, who made us discover the city, its inhabitants and its mountains. Because of the Indian visa, we stayed one months at his place, with his sister Zohre and his mother Niku, it was really a nice time. Unfortunately, our visa was going to end and we couldn't extend it, so we decided to fly with the bicycles directly to India. At the begining of 2009, we left the cold and snowy capital of Iran to reach a warm and sunny Mumbai (Bombay).

There we stayed some days to visit the city of Shantaram, we were hosted by an old friend of Tchandra's father, Vivek Patil. Finally, because the group's relational problems hadn't been solved yet, we decided to ride separately around 700 km to Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh). During this time, Pablo could pay a visit to his father, who was staying in Gandhi's ashram in Sevagram.

In Bhopal the three of us gathered and we met Ekta Parishad, a social and nonviolent organization which with we decided to work for some months. They mainly struggle for the rights of poor people, out-of-casts, low-class and women, about access to land, forest and water. In February, we took part of a huge foot march in Bihar, to protest against the Government's inaction after a enormous flood that occured in August 2008 (See the report).

Finally we stayed in Bihar (this State of Nothern India) to contribute to the rehabilitation work after the flood. We'll stay there until the end of April.