Unique routing challenges facing round-the-world touring cyclists in 2023

This article is for anyone planning a round-the-world cycle trip, anyone with a friend currently cycling around the world whose routing decisions they don’t fully understand, or anyone interested in long-distance overland slow-travel, geopolitics and the environment. It’s also a summary of our research and decision-making to date. Since it is written from the point of view of a UK citizen, some of the finer details may not be 100% accurate to you, but with any luck the broader points will still be interesting and useful. It discusses, and in some cases answers, such questions as:

• Can you cycle through Afghanistan in 2023?
• Is it better for the environment to travel by plane or cruise ship?
• Can you apply for a Chinese visa in Central Asia without an LOI?
• Why do Brits and Americans not cycle through Iran, while Irish and French cyclists do?
• How are overland round-the-world cyclists getting around Azerbaijan’s border closure?

Specifically, here’s what this article contains:

1. Cycling from Western Europe to Turkey
2. What is the best route to cycle through Turkey?
3. Is it best to cycle the ‘northern route’ through Central Asia, or the ‘southern route’ through Iran and Pakistan?
4. Cycling the ‘northern route’ into northwest China via ‘the ‘Stans’ and the legendary Pamir Highway
5. Azerbaijan’s land border has been closed to foreigners since 2020
6. Cyclists’ solutions to Azerbaijan’s land border closure
7. Travelling overland from Georgia to Russia in order to reach Kazakhstan without flying over Azerbaijan
8. Applying for a Chinese tourist visa in Istanbul, Tbilisi, Tehran, Dushanbe, Kathmandu, Karachi, Yerevan
9. How unsafe is it to cycle as a tourist in Afghanistan in 2023?
10. Ferry connections between China, South Korea and Japan
11. Are cruise ships a feasible means of transport for touring cyclists hoping to avoid flying?
12. Why taking a cruise is not the eco-friendly panpharmacon you dreamt it might be
13. The takeaway: You can get around the whole world by bicycle, bus, train and boat

Cycling from Western Europe to Turkey

Thankfully the first part of a round-the-world bicycle trip, even in 2023, is easy. Even if your country is reeling from an unwieldy divorce from the mainland, traversing Europe by bicycle involves refreshingly few brain-twisters. You get on your bike and ride to Turkey. 90 days is enough time to get through the EU/Schengen, and decisions are made by and large according to fancy: which pass to take over the Alps; whether to take the Balkan route or travel down the length of Italy and cross to Albania; to Danube or not to Danube; to stick to Eurovelo routes or plow your own furrow, and so on.

Such dilemmas are luxuries. Challenges are surmountable in the moment, and/or with a small amount of cash. For example, the worst Sicilian drivers can be avoided by taking smaller, inland roads (and they can all be avoided by skipping the isle altogether). If a particular mountain pass is closed due to bad weather or simply too tough, you can reroute. If you arrive at a border crossing to find it’s actually a military transit zone, you can usually backtrack and go around. Albanian ATM fees are a pain at €6–8, but if you plan ahead you can halve them, or avoid them altogether. And the notorious, four-lane D100 into Istanbul can be circumnavigated, or endured, one way or another. Once you get past Turkey, however, necessity takes over.

Anyone cycling ‘around the world’ from Europe sort of has to go east. The alternative is to fly somewhere and cycle back, but for many, flying defies the point of travelling by bicycle. Setting off eastwards also means beginning on familiar ground, and getting further from home as you go. Start easy and get harder. Most go through Turkey or cross the Black Sea from Varna, Bulgaria to Poti, Georgia. (There is also a route from Chernomorsk, Ukraine to Batumi, Georgia, which I took in reverse in 2018. But in 2023, this route is inadvisable.) Frosty diplomatic relations between West European nations and the Russian Federation make cycling through Turkey and Georgia favourable. And the Russo-Ukrainian War, which began in 2014, only adds to this.

What is the best route to cycle through Turkey?

Which route a given cyclist takes through Turkey depends on what they want to get out of it.

By and large, the Black Sea route is touristy, trafficky, expensive, dull(er) and easy. You’ll find regular swimming spots, but you’ll have to share them. Taking the ferry from Piraeus (Athens) to Turkey’s Mediterranean coast (whether via Chios, Rhodes or elsewhere) and loosely following the Lycean Way will afford some spectacular views, but the D400 that connects Katça, Fethiye, Kaş and Antalya is a fairly busy road. Avoiding it while still hugging the coast means lots of ups and downs.

The third option is to cut inland, for example from Izmir through Denizli (for the travertines of Pamukkale), Konya, Cappadocia (for Göreme and Pigeon Valley), Sivas and Erzerum. There are two reliable border crossing points between Turkey and Georgia, on the Black Sea coast (at Sarp–Sarpi) and in the mountains, between Posof and Vale — this one’s prettier, and more interesting, but harder to reach. The third is further east, not far from Armenia, and may not be open all year, or to all who wish to pass through it.

Those who cut inland or follow Turkey’s Mediterranean coast have the option of continuing southeast into Turkey’s Kurdish-majority regions. There may be as many as 20 million Kurds living in Turkey, and having cycled through North Kurdistan in 2018 myself, I can say it’s an incredibly interesting part of the Anatolian peninsula. Note, however, that many governments advise against all but essential travel in parts of southeastern Turkey. When I was there, the UK government considered it a red zone.

But: I loved it, and had many fascinating conversations, either in German or via Google Translate, with Kurdish men.

Is it best to cycle the ‘northern route’ through Central Asia, or the ‘southern route’ through Iran and Pakistan?

Choosing which path to take through Turkey depends to an extent on which way out of Turkey you want to take. This is the first major fork in the road for round-the-world cyclists.

Mainland Europeans (plus Irish citizens), Australians and New Zealanders can travel independently in Iran, either by obtaining a visa beforehand or, in some cases, on arrival. For citizens of the US, Canada and the UK, however, independent/solo travel is not allowed. The official line is that citizens of these countries require a government-licensed guide with them at all times. In practice, it may not be as strict as all that. But the fact remains.

So if you’re wondering why all the Instagram videos you’re seeing of touring cyclists travelling in Iran don’t feature any Brits or Americans, that’s the reason. It’s not feasible. Iran closed its foreign missions in the US, UK and Canada some time ago, and for its part, the UK reduced its diplomatic relations with Iran to the ‘lowest possible level’ following the 2011 attack on the British Embassy in Iran by Iranian protesters (protesting sanctions the British government had imposed on Iran… over concerns regarding its nuclear program… it’s a long story.).

Of the three countries with which Iran shares its eastern border, Pakistan offers the least resistance to touring cyclists. The other two are Turkmenistan (which we’ll come to later) and Afghanistan, which needs little introduction (but which we’ll also come to later). Anyone who cycles from Pakistan into India and wants to cycle out again has a few obstacles to consider, namely, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. As far as I know, it’s pretty rare for anyone to cycle through any of these, and rarer still for anyone to cycle out the other side, i.e., into Tibet or Myanmar.

Routes are either mountainous or complicated in terms of visas. Bangladesh does, however, have the longest beach in the world, so there’s that.

Cycling the ‘northern route’ into northwest China via ‘the ‘Stans’ and the legendary Pamir Highway

While the so-called ‘southern route’ takes touring cyclists through Iran (making it effectively closed to citizens of the US, UK and Canada) and into Pakistan and India, the ‘northern route’ avoids these countries altogether, and includes a couple of weeks on the famous Pamir Highway.

The Pamir Highway (Soviet road number M41) is famous for being the second highest international highway in the world. Its highest point is the Ak-Baital Pass, at 4,655m (15,270ft). The first highest altitude international highway is the nearby Karakoram Highway, also called the China-Pakistan Friendship Highway, which has a maximum elevation of 4,714m (15,466ft). Both are really high, and the Pamir Highway is something of a bucket list item for many touring cyclists.

Pre-covid-19, the northern route through Central Asia was in many ways headache-free. Visa-wise, for those with powerful passports, entry into Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgzstan is pretty easy. When I cycled to Baku in 2018, I met quite a few cyclists who were continuing eastwards, across the Caspian Sea, by ferry from Alat (south of the capital) to Aktau, in Kazakhstan. They then made their way to Dushanbe, which many see as the beginning of the Pamir Highway, and onwards to Osh and beyond.

Quick note: similar cargo ferries also ran, or run, from Azerbaijan to Turkmenistan (south of Kazakhstan). But Turkmenistan requries a transit visa to enter, and these visas can be very elusive, taking 4–6 weeks to come through. And to make matters worse, transit visas for Turkmenistan (tourist visas being out of the question, apparently) give, or gave, cyclists an arbitrary, and small, number of days to get out of the country — 4, 5 or 6. Bare in mind those are desert kilometres, with unpredictable winds. So Azerbaijan–Kazakhstan was, is, the preferred route for most.

Azerbaijan’s land border has been closed to foreigners since 2020

Thanks to the sharp edges of Eurasian and Central Asian geopolitics, getting to the Pamir Highway in 2023 presents one or two unique challenges.

In 2018, for me as a UK citizen, getting into Azerbaijan required purchasing an evisa in advance and printing it out at a Xerox shop a day or two before arriving at the border. When crossing, my German friend and I were asked if we planned to go to Nagorno-Karabakh. We answered very clearly ‘No’, as doing otherwise would have led them to deny us entry — and, incidentally, been untrue.

Armenia and Azerbaijan, the latter supported initially by the Soviet Union, and more recently by Turkey, have been fighting over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh since 1988. But the conflict’s roots go back to the breakup of the Russian Empire in 1918. Most of the people who live there are ethnically Armenian; internationally, it’s recognised as part of Azerbaijan. The conflict flared up in late 2020. There was a ceasefire. Then, in December 2022, Azerbaijan blockaded the region (also called the Republic of Artsakh).

Concurrently, in 2020, Azerbaijan closed all its land borders (with Russia, Georgia and Iran) to prevent the spread of covid-19. It’s kept them shut ever since, and nobody knows exactly why. Officially, it’s a health policy, as it was when they first implemented it. On 23 June, 2023, it was reported that Azerbaijan had extended its ‘special quarantine regime’ until, at the earliest, 2 October, 2023, in order to ‘prevent the spread of COVID-19 infection and its possible consequences’.

A lot of people suspect it has to do with the war in Ukraine. But this explanation only makes so much sense, since Azerbaijan hasn’t closed its air borders, so anyone can still fly in. Meanwhile, at time of writing (13 August, 2023), there are reportedly 12 people currently infected with covid-19 in Azerbaijan. So is it or isn’t it a health policy?

Cyclists’ solutions to Azerbaijan’s land border closure

One option is to fly from Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital, to Baku. The flight takes barely an hour, and costs relatively little if booked a week ahead. But for touring cyclists, this means going through the motions of disassembling and packaging a bicycle, probably finding a large carry case for 4 pannier bags, and putting everything back together again on the other side.

The silver lining is that Azerbaijan Airlines’ Free Baggage Allowance includes bicycles; the cloud is that you’ll still have to pay for extra weight… probably. After landing in Baku, cyclists can then cycle south to Alat, go through the potential rigmarole of tracking down the ferry to Kazakhstan, and carry on as normal. This route sticks to the classic northern route, but loyalists can take it even further. I know of one cyclist who cycled from Tbilisi to the border and back, flew to Baku, cycled to Azerbaijan’s border with Georgia, and then carried on to Alat.

Another option is to forget Azerbaijan altogether. In the WhatsApp groups I’m in, there are cyclists who have flown from Tbilisi to Aktau (the next stop after Baku), to Samarkand or Tashkent (in Uzbekistan), and to Dushanbe (in Tajikistan), to the beginning of the Pamir Highway. Because, runs the logic, if you’re going to have to fly anyway, you might as well milk it.

But there is a third option, which doesn’t involve flying. It does, however, involve getting another visa.

Travelling overland from Georgia to Russia in order to reach Kazakhstan without flying over Azerbaijan

Georgia’s border with Russia is traversable at Zemo Larsi, or Verkhnij Lars, between Kazbegi and Vladikavkaz. According to Caravanistan, it’s been open for international travellers post-pandemic and post-Ukraine War. In theory, touring cyclists can put their bikes on a marshrutka or shared taxi at Tbilisi’s Didube bus terminal and be at the border in a few hours. Or, potentially, cycle to the border themselves. But it might be easier to get a transit visa if you can show that there are transport connections all the way through the country.

Note that it has to be a vehicle with Russian (or Armenian) plates. Georgia-Russia relations have been strained for a long time, and collapsed in August 2008 after the Russo-Georgian War. The two nations have maintained zero formal diplomatic relations since.

You can’t walk across the border zone, but you may be able to cycle across it. If not, there’s the option of hitching a ride all the way to Vladikavkaz. Of course, for most touring cyclists, entering Russia requires a visa, and tourist visas for Russia (and China) are notoriously difficult to get outside of one’s home country. But transit visas are relatively straightforward to get hold of.

Because of the diplomatic rift mentioned above, Russia doesn’t have an embassy in Georgia. It closed on 29 August, 2008 when Georgia ordered all Russian diplomats to leave the country. The Russian Federation is therefore represented via the Embassy of Switzerland. Who else could it be? So travelling overland, whether by bus or bicycle (or train, via Abkhazia — which needs a post of its own) from Georgia to Russia, requires a visit to the Russian Federation Interests Section of the Swiss Embassy.

Applying for a Chinese tourist visa in Istanbul, Tbilisi, Tehran, Dushanbe, Kathmandu, Karachi, Yerevan

Kazakhstan borders Russia and China to the east — the distance between Kazakhstan’s easternmost tip and Mongolia’s westernmost is about 50km. Touring cyclists taking the ‘northern route’ therefore have to work out what to do when they drop down from the Pamir Highway and roll into to Almaty.

Those who have started their trip in their (European) homecountry may have been able to obtain their Chinese tourist visas before setting off, but it’s a push. From the date you pick up your Chinese tourist visa, you typically have 3 months to enter China. As a result, many find themselves wanting to apply on the road.

The complication here is that it’s much easier to get a tourist visa for China (or any country requiring one) in the applicant’s home country. You can do it in a third country, but you might need a Letter Of Invitation (LOI), or to provide more supporting documents than you otherwise would.

Based on the accounts of touring cyclists in 2023, it’s possible to apply for and receive visas to enter China as a tourist in: Tbilisi, Georgia as a nonresident and without a letter of invitation; Tehran, Iran but there is a long queue for appointments (like, a month long), since Iranians don’t have many options for where to spend their holidays; Istanbul only if you’re Turkish, since the city has a visa service centre rather than an embassy proper; Yerevan, Armenia, without too much difficulty; Kathmandu, Nepal, but it might take a long time, and the officials there might not like seeing Turkish stamps in your passport; and/or Dushanbe, Tajikistan only if you can prove you have a right to remain in Tajikistan for six months (i.e., a residency permit), or if you have an LOI.

Tour companies provide LOIs, as do employers; work and study visas require them, while tourist visas tend not to. But like I said, applying for a tourist visa is harder outside your home country. It needs more stuff. You might need to book hotels and/or train and bus connections (or even flights, in some cases), print relevant timetables and/or write a declaration vis-à-vis your desire to travel, or even enter and exit the country, by bicycle.

How unsafe is it to cycle as a tourist in Afghanistan in 2023?

This isn’t really a question I’m qualified to answer. But I can say that there are touring cyclists considering it, and it’s certainly an interesting one.

Someone in a WhatsApp group I’m in said they’d talked with someone who recently crossed from Iran to Afghanistan and then onwards into Tajikistan. They apparently described it as a ‘4th world country’ with frequent Taliban checkpoints; advised learning basic Farsi and wearing local clothes so as not to stand out; and warned of landmines. It’s a ‘rough thing’, apparently, and risky. Which is obvious, but hearing it from someone who had actually been there was interesting for me.

Someone else said they had met an Afghan man who said it’s actually ‘pretty safe’ for travelling: you go through the checkpoints, withhold questions about the political situation, and that’s it. The Taliban will protect you, the man apparently said.

A cyclist who was planning on entering Afghanistan by bicycle said they planned to ‘uglify’ their bike, forget camping (to avoid landmines), and learn some Farsi. The regions controlled by the Taliban, they reckoned, should be ‘somewhat safe’ in terms of terrorism and kidnapping. It may be true that the Taliban are more likely to want to protect you (from IS, or whoever else) than harm you.

But please don’t feel encouraged by this to take the plunge. I’m as keen to travel ‘off the beaten track’ as the next person, but there comes a point where the risk outweighs the reward. Now, let’s head off on an easterly detour!

Ferry connections between China, South Korea and Japan

Again, we’ve covid to thank for potential hitches in this plan, but as far as we can tell it is possible to travel between China, South Korea and Japan by boat. Ferries leave Qinhuangdao, which is a few hours’ train ride from Beijing, for Incheon, on the Korean coast, twice a week. There are ferry routes connecting Busan, South Korea with Fukuoka, Shimonoseki, Osaka and Tsushima Island, all of which are in Japan. And connecting Osaka and Kobe, Japan with Shanghai, China.

This is from blogger 4 Corners 7 Seas:

1. Busan — Fukuoka (Hakata Port) (3 hours, JR Beetle, 2 or 3 per day; also once per day on Miraejet’s Kobee hydrofoil, 3.5 hours)
2. Busan — Fukuoka (Hakata Port) (6 or 12 hours, Camellia Line, daily)
3. Busan — Shimonoseki (12 hours overnight, Kampu Ferry, daily)
4. Busan — Osaka (18 hours overnight, Panstar Cruise, 3 per week each way)
5. Busan — Tsushima Island (1–3 hours, multiple times daily with JR Beetle, Miraejet Kobee, and Daea Express Ocean Flower)

They warn, however, that the relevant companies ceased operations because of the covid-19 pandemic. While they have been reintroducing services, travel frequency might not yet have reached pre-pandemic levels.

But if they’re running, and if we (or you) can get a double entry tourist visa for China, then planning a round-the-world cycle trip that takes in the Republic of Korea and Japan — without flying — is actually feasible. It may involve some hefty train journeys across China in order to make it out in time to comply with visa limits, but as far as I know trains in China accept bicycles without too much hassle.

Are cruise ships a feasible means of transport for touring cyclists hoping to avoid flying?

Yes and no. Yes, cruises are the only bookable boats ferrying passengers on certain elusive routes, such as SE Asia to Australia or Australia to New Zealand, or even across the Pacific. No, cruise ships are not better for the environment than aeroplanes, as a means of transport. Not objectively, anyway, although there are certain nuances to consider, and advantages with regard to experience.

Many travellers — hitchhikers as well as cyclists — hoping to avoid flying consider hitching rides on cargo vessels. But unfortunately, almost everything I’ve read about this option agrees that what once may have been a semi-viable alternative to flying is, in a post-covid world, basically impossible.

A cargo ship’s cargo is likely worth many millions of US dollars, so there’s no financial incentive to welcoming paying customers — a midsize ship pays half a million dollars to pass through the Suez Canal, so anything you can offer is like water off a duck’s back. And cargo doesn’t present a medical risk, whereas you certainly do: travel insurance doesn’t, or may not, include cover in international waters. Furthermore, there are so many rules and regulations stipulating what you can do and where/when you can do it on a cargo vessel that it’s apparently not worth anybody’s timing effectively training passengers for a few weeks at sea. Torbjørn C Pedersen, aka Once Upon A Saga, put it this way: an office manager wouldn’t let you sleep in their office for a month, so why should a ship’s captain? There’s no incentive, and a lot of conceivable risk.

Meanwhile, the advent and popularisation of air travel has rendered many ferry routes obsolete. People would rather fly, since it’s far quicker and often cheaper. There are no passenger boats connecting India and Sri Lanka, for example, despite the shortest distance between the two nations — the Palk Strait — being less than 55km. (Dover to Calais is about 42km.) Nor can you get from Indonesia (or anywhere in Southeast Asia) to Australia by ferry — the population centres are too far apart; from Russia to Alaska (geopolitics plays a role here); or from Australia to New Zealand (because, again, they’re further apart than you think).

Gone are the days, if you ever could, of taking a ferry across the Atlantic Ocean, or across the Pacific. So when it occurred to us that cruise ships ply these waters, that in some cases people travel on them from A to B on them, and that we probably wouldn’t have to disassemble the bikes at all to stow them on board, we had to find out if we could, with a clean conscience, book a cruise in order to avoid a flight.

There are cruise ship routes connecting Singapore with Australia’s east coast, and Australia with Japan, and Japan with Alaska, and the Caribbean with Europe. In other words, if the only imperative is to avoid flying at all costs, you can circumnavigate the globe as a cyclist/hitchhiker — and paying customer — without taking any flights, as long as you’ve got a passport that allows you to. However, if your reason for avoiding flying is to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions, or emissions of other chemicals harmful to the environment, then cruising is not a viable alternative to flying. Why?

Cruise Ship Pollution: Why the cities of the sea must be silenced

Why taking a cruise is not the eco-friendly panpharmacon you dreamt it might be

It’s hard to overstate the amount of pollutants cruise ships are responsible for. While there may be exceptions, many still burn fuel oil, which contains 2,000 times as much sulphur dioxide (SOx) as diesel. They often run their engines while moored to avoid paying shore-side taxes, causing them to produce high levels of nitrogen oxide within shouting distance of pedestrianised harbours. Some ships use ‘open loop scrubbers’ to ‘clean’ the cheap, dirty fuel they use, which discharge the pollutant waste (the muck they scrubbed off the fuel) straight into the ocean.

In 2017, Carnival Corporation, the world’s biggest cruise operator, oversaw the emission of more SOx around Europe’s coasts than all of Europe’s cars… multiplied… by ten.

Friends Of The Earth have been producing Cruise Ship Report Cards regularly since 2009. In 2022, they graded 18 cruise lines, and 213 individual ships, on sewage treatment, air pollution reduction and water quality compliance, from A to F. See for yourself, there are a lot more Fs than As. The latest report, says the organisation, takes a ‘continued hard look’ at the cruise industry ‘to see if clean cruising is possible’. In most cases, it concludes, the answer is ‘still a resounding NO!’

Last year, Bryan Comer calculated for the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) that, in terms of carbon dioxide emissions only, a person taking a cruise emits about ‘two times more CO2 than someone who flies and rents a hotel’.

So after much humming and hawing, we decided that we couldn’t take all the cruises we’d dreamt, briefly, of taking. And any final decision on individual routes will depend on the rating Friends Of The Earth have given that particular vessel.

The takeaway: You can get around the whole world by bicycle, bus, train and boat

But only if you have enough money for one or more cruises — the cheaper ones aren’t actually that much more than flight tickets — and time enough to wait for them, since each route tends to run once a year, or possibly twice.

And you might not want to anyway, since travelling on a cruise ship is two or three times worse for the environment than flying, even if you include a hotel stay for the duration of the cruise in your calculations.

Depending on skill-set, it might also be possible to lend a hand on a private yacht in exchange for a ticket. We haven’t actually tried this yet, although preliminary research has yielded potentially promising results. I will write more when we know more!

If you have any questions about any of this, or corrections, please feel free to let me know in the comments. I hope this is of use and/or interest. Thanks for reading.