Sustainable travel
Once, after having watched a video of three boys from the southern French city of Montpellier (https://solidream.net) travelling around the world on their bikes, I was inspired to take such a challenge. Like a true dreamer, I soon started planning my own voyage around the globe! Unfortunately, as it happens often to dreamers, the first major challenge of finding a partner who would help and accompany me, turned out to be really difficult (alone? No, it did not even occur to me to travel on my own, never!). In the end, I succeeded to talk my husband into undertaking a Velo trip in Italy that lasted for one month. It was a great success and a perfect preparation for the trip around the world... I thought... My dear husband spent numerous evenings and long hours preparing a route plan (hah, we had no GPS and a very simple mobile phone without Internet!). Result: we cycled more than 1000 km in 4 weeks, from Bolzano (Bozen), through Trient, Verona, Vicenza, Treviso, Triest, Rovinj, Istria and finally finished in Ljubljana, where we took a train back to Zurich.
The first trip was full of adventures, emotions, interesting encounters, philosophical conversations, muscules pain, etc., etc., etc. And the second trip was... full of emotions and impressions too! No trip by car or motorbike can be compared with the one by bike: in a certain way this mode of travelling makes you dependent on others (try it without GPS or Internet!) and forces you to communicate more with locals, who not only help you find a street you are looking for but also tell stories about the cities or villages they live in, as well as their unique life stories.
I encourage you to take your bike and plan at least a two days trip to the next little picturesque village or to a lake, where you can finally put up the tent you bought years ago. If you think it would be too difficult to cycle 50-100 km, then rent an electro bike to make your trip more enjoyable. I personally do not believe that sustainable travel can be truly beneficial for the environment (it is clear that no travel at all will be the best option), though nobody would argue that cars, motorbikes, ships, and plains pollute a lot, and even trains are not completely sustainable.
Find my photo albums with pictures and detailed description of the short and long cycling tours, which I hope will get you inspired to plan your own "environmentally-friendly" little adventure.
