We had not been many days on our bikes in China before some police officers stopped us enroute to Jining. To our surprise we were caught in an unopen area, which required an alien travel permit. How could we know....

Could we bring our bikes into China? That was the big question when we arrived the border between Mongolia and China. It was four nervous guys who woke up in the morning preparing for the challenging border crossing and chinese buraucracy.

The biking in Gobi continues in strong tailwinds. But we encounter some problems as well. Our fuel bottles get stolen by some childrens in a village. We also take a wrong road in the desert with scarce water supplies, leaving some of us very thirsty for a whole day.

Eric Mortensen has written a report about our journey in the Gobi-desert. You can read it on his blog Full Rulle (Norwegian language only).

20th of April 2005: We are in the middle of a devastating sandstorm approx 20 kilometres south of Saynshand in Mongolia.
-This is very bad; we have to find a shelter, one of us shouts.

We were supposed to bike on gravel and sand in the entire Gobi desert. So we were rather surprised to see a paved road there. We kept on wondering when the brand new road was going to end.

"You are a very lucky man! Very lucky! Super-lucky!"
We are sitting in the car together with Kim, who is the owner and manager of UB Guesthouse in Ulan Bator, the capitol of Mongolia. Kim is a talkative South Korean who has been living in Mongolia for ten years. Just moments ago we were in a desperate state of searching around at the airport, and we had a great deal of luck to find one of our bags that was left behind (e.g. forgotten) when our plane arrived Ulan Bator earlier this morning.

Problems at Moscow Airport, a forgotten bag at Ulan Bator Airport, cold weather, anti-China demonstrations and one day of snow. This was some of the things that happened when we kicked off the bike-expedition in Mongolia.

In March/April 2005 I will travel to Asia together with 3 other guys from Norway. We are planning to go bi-cycling from Ulan Bator to Kathmandu, a journey of 6000km through stunning landscape in Mongolia, China, Tibet and Nepal. The bike trip will take 4-5 months, and we will spend most of the nights in our tents, except from the more populated areas of China, where we can stay in guesthouses along the road and eat delicious Chinese food.

The cycling route from Ulan Bator to Kathmandu

I climbed this classic traverse solo in the end of July-2004. The weather was perfect, but the conditions were rather difficult because of all the treacherous snow and ice on top of the ridge. The traverse is normally climbed in two days, but I completed it in one long day. After 8 summits and 19 hours on the move, I was terrible exhausted when I finally reached Turtagrø Hotel late in the evening, but very pleased......