“In January 2015 I left London on my bicycle to see how far east I could pedal … In December 2017 I arrived home having cycled around the world via 42 countries and 30,000 miles.” – Jonathan Kambskard-Bennett
The vast majority of people that ride around the planet do so after months if not years of planning and training. They’ve almost always had a lifelong fascination with cycling and the idea of circumnavigating the globe has been a long-time goal. Not Jonathan Kambskard-Bennett. Here’s how the half-Brit, half-Dane describes his ridiculous, 50,000km, nearly-three-year adventure.
I had no prior experience of cycle touring. Literally nothing. I’d never pedaled further than about 10km before leaving home. The first day of this tour was the first time I’d ever tried to ride my bike with all the bags on.
I didn’t know anything about bicycles or camping and I was pretty useless at reading maps. But that’s what made it fun — everyday was a learning curve.
Some people plan a trip like this for years, but I was pretty much just making it up as I went. I got bored of work and wanted to go on an adventure. I found one pretty easily.
It was my mother who first introduced me to cycling. She’s Danish and encouraged a Scandinavian, bike-friendly approach to travel from an early age. From then my attitude towards cycling was merely functional, an attitude that continued into adulthood. It wasn’t until I was well into my worldwide excursion that I realised my bike isn’t just a cheap form of transport that gets me from A to B. It was actually the first time I was out riding for the sheer love of cycling!
To be honest, most of my journey was pretty ‘go with the flow’, but I certainly faced some obstacles along the way. For example: riding through Pakistan and Afghanistan isn’t very safe and you’ll probably be forced to take a police escort. But, if you want to ride every metre (like me) that’s not an option. Similarly, if you want to ride across Russia you’ll find getting a visa (and freedom generally) pretty tough. There are lots of cases similar to this.
Generally, I only planned out one section of the ride at a time. I’d usually have a good idea about a month ahead of schedule, but I normally only decided on the actual route a week ahead of time.
People ask me today how I ended up cycling the world and I’m still not entirely sure to be honest. I think I started considering it after I’d been on the road for a year (whilst in China). It was around that time that I realised I definitely had it in me to reach Australia. I started wondering, “What next after that?”
Here’s a collection of captioned photos that’ll help share some of the best and worst times during my three-year journey. If you’d like to read more about my experience cycling the world, be sure to check out my website.
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- Flores was one of eight Indonesian islands I cycled across and probably the most beautiful of them all. It was tough work cycling up those steep hills around the volcanoes but fortunately I was never far from a dip in the sea.
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- I took this photo to celebrate conquering my first mountain pass more than 4,000m above sea level in Tajikistan. A couple of days earlier I had turned my back on the Afghanistan border and headed up towards the Pamir Plateau. The altitude sickness made the cycling a struggle on such lumpy roads but it was worth it to ride those surreal landscapes high up in the mountains.
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- Riding the famous Pamir Highway from Tajikistan into Kyrgyzstan was one of the dreams that lead to this entire trip. The mountains in the distance beyond my bicycle are the menacing peaks of the Hindu Kush in Pakistan.
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- The American West was one of my favourite places in the world to cycle and presented me with some extraordinarily varied landscapes. The Burr Trail in Utah, from where I took this picture, was no exception and I had it all to myself.
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- I took this snap in Nevada to celebrate hitting 24,900 miles, which is the circumference of planet Earth. I never planned to cycle all the way around the world but I was enjoying my time on two wheels so much that I just kept pedalling east for three years.
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- Another beautiful campsite in North America. Apart from the stress of bears (I only ever saw one) I loved how much space there was to pitch almost anywhere. I spent four months crossing the continent and never spent a penny on accommodation. Why would you want sleep in a hotel when you can wild camp is spots like this one?
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- I only spent a week in Canada but it was a beautiful ride through the autumn foliage in Nova Scotia.
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- Cycling up onto the Tibetan Plateau in the middle of winter was not the easiest ride. There was a lot of snow, awful cold and a severe lack of oxygen in the higher spots. I wrapped a zillion cable ties around my tyres to try and get some extra grip but that didn’t stop me slipping a few times.
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- The Great Basin Desert in Nevada was my fourth desert crossing of the trip. When I first rode through empty desert in Turkmenistan I was nervous about the remote sections but over time I grew to love the solitude that time alone in the desert presented me with.
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- When I left London on my bicycle the dream was to cycle to Australia. At the time I never really thought I would make it but 20 months later I finally touched down on Australian soil, having taken the first flight of my trip across the 200 miles of water from East Timor to Darwin. It was a moment I will never forget.
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- Just because people say you can’t cycle somewhere doesn’t necessarily mean it is impossible. It might just not be very fun and it may require a lot of pushing. When there is a will there is usually a way, just as there was on this snowy road in Yunnan, China.
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- I spent a month crossing Iran in the summer of 2015. It was the country I received the most warnings about before I visited but also the place that I felt most welcome. The Iranians were the most hospitable people I met on my journey.
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- When I couldn’t find a place to wild camp I would often roll into a village and ask for a safe spot to pitch my tent for the night. I was often invited into a local home, just as I was with this family in East Timor. It wasn’t ever easy to communicate but body language and a broad smile are universal.
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- In a few spots around the world I received a real headache from the local authorities. In Myanmar the police stalked me for days and eventually escorted me the final 100 miles to the Thai border. There were few (if any) hotels in the regions and so I would often stay in local monasteries to avoid getting into trouble with the police.
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- Camping was often a practical and un-glamourous part of my trip around the world. However, there were many times I stepped out of my tent in the morning and was speechless to be able to start my day somewhere so stunning. The morning I pitched on the top of Mt Ramelau (Timor-Leste’s highest peak at just under 3,000m) was one of the remarkable sun rises that I got to watch from my tent’s ‘front door’.
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- This was my highest ever campsite at around 4,500m above sea level. I usually tried not to camp so high up because the lack of oxygen prevented me from sleeping well. The altitude was not my only concern — the cold bothered me far more. At night it would drop to -20ºC and I found it hard to get started in the morning. A few minutes after I took this picture a wolf walked past my tent, barely 20 metres away. I had never packed up my tent and hit the road so quickly in my life!
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- The tropics were also unpleasant to camp in. This snap in Laos was from another hot and sweaty morning after a humid night in the tent hiding away from the mosquitoes. I was glad to have a water source nearby to fill up my water bottles and have a morning wash.
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- Lake Eyre in Central Australia rarely has any water in it. When I passed by in the summer of 2016 it was as dry as it usually is…
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- There is always a helping hand if you ask for it. Darkness was catching me as I descended from a mountain pass on Sumbawa island, Indonesia. I stopped in a village to ask for a place to sleep and Hussain invited me to stay the night with his family. They rolled out a mat for me, asked me to join them for dinner, and made me feel just as welcome and safe as I had been in so many strangers’ homes around the world.
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- Perhaps the toughest place I cycled was across Australia. At times there were more than 200km without any human life and so I had to carry 25L of water to survive the heat. It was around 45ºC and the heat was punishing. More than 24 hours could pass without seeing a car and the loneliness was both empowering and terrifying.
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- I cycled right by Area 51 in America. The desert is my favourite place for star-gazing and Nevada had some of the clearest skies I have camped under.
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- More friends in East Timor. A few smiles, a couple of photos, and the obligatory high-fives. We have plenty in common around the world…
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- Places of worship are often good places to camp. A thunderstorm caught me out one evening in Sumatra so I asked these chaps if I could pitch by their village mosque. The answer was yes, as it always was.
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- This photo is from Holland in January 2015, right at the start of my trip. I had no idea how far I would cycle but I was hungry for adventure. Little did I know that I would end up pedalling more than 30,000 miles around the world!
Interested in the gear I took with me? Here’s what you need to know:
The Bike
– Dawes Super Galaxy
– Brooks B17 saddle
– Schwalbe Marathon Plus 1”40 tyres
– Carradice Super C panniers (set)
– Decathlon frame bag
– Walmart pump
– Decathlon seat cover (stored under seat)
– Garmin Edge 200
– Gloves, helmet and shoes
The Gear
Initially I threw a lot of stupid stuff into my panniers. When I say ‘stupid’ I mean stuff like jeans (heavy and they take a long time to dry), a smart shirt (that I would only wear once in a blue moon) and a monstrous coat (I should have invested in a lightweight, collapsible down jacket).
Over time my possessions became a lot more streamlined and I learned which items I could get rid of while still feeling comfortable. Here’s what I ended up with:
| Handlebar bag
Lighter |
Stuffsack
Tent (L.L. Bean Microlight UL) Bar bag Toiletries |
Front left pannier
Backpack (Decathlon Arp 10) |
| Front right pannier
Camera (Canon 500D) |
Right rear pannier
Cooking equipment |
Left Rear Pannier
Clothing and shoes |
Click through for even more information on the equipment I carried with me.