1. Intro
2. Week 38 to 47
3. Winter wonderland in Northern Greece
4. Trial and error of the Galičica National Park
5. Doing lakes and learning about North Macedonia
6. Zigzag touring in Bulgaria
7. Volume 2: The Black Sea Pearl

I’ve reached the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. That means I am close to the end of my first travel volume. All cool projects need to have a catchy code name - at least in my world. So I named this first volume ‘The Balkan Breeze’. My idea was to get a fair share of coastal stretches in the Balkan countries. Mission complete, I would say. This also means that I am soon to begin a new travel volume.

Last blog ended in Meteora, Greece, on travel week 38. It was still very much winter when I headed through Northern Greece and onwards to the border of North Macedonia. I managed to keep pedaling onwards through some national parks and around some amazing lakes in North Macedonia with some trial and error on my route selection. After visiting Skopje, I headed east and crossed into Bulgaria. Turkey had to wait a bit because I wanted to do some zigzag touring across the country and the Central Balkan National Park to reach the Black Sea Coast. It is now travel week 47 and I will have my last dose of coastal stretch before crossing the border into Turkey.

My stay in Meteora was only supposed to last one week. I was well done exploring the area and the monasteries. Little did I know before entering this region that winter reigned supreme here and four seasons were present more predominantly than in my home country of Denmark. Some mornings I gazed out the hostel window with a surprised look. It was snowing heavily and a white blanket had shrouded the roads and mountains. I could buckle up and hop the bike, but I was in no rush. Beides, no way would I enjoy myself in this weather. It would be pure mileage grinding. So I waited instead. Waited for a weather window of at least some days with no snow, hail or rain. A week passed and I got my window. It was not only a narrow, short spanned window of good weather, it was nothing but blue skies as long as the forecast reached. Sure it was cold as a Siberian day at dawn, but I was not going to pass out on this opportunity. I literally put on what I had of winter gear, leaving only the down jacket in my pannier. I wanted to be able to escalate on my warm clothing when camping and sitting still.

On the 10th of March 2022, I left Meteora and headed straight north to the Greek border city of Florina. Along the way were some mountain tops I had to pass. On one of these mountain tops close to the city of Felli, I camped for the night and had below minus 15 degrees. This was actually the first time ever, I managed to be chilled inside my very warm sleeping bag. The condensation inside the tent ended up as ice crystals and when I moved around in my sleep, shaking the tent ever so slightly, what appeared as snow fell on my face. First I thought the tent ceiling had ripped but when my deep sleep drowsiness ended, and my eyes fully opened, I realized I was creating my own snow inside the tent. My Nalgene water bottle joined me for the night inside my sleeping bag so it would not freeze up. The rest of my water bottles were rock solid. As ice water expands, they would not fit in my bottle cages and I had to strap them various places on my front and rear racks. My bike’s brake levers had frozen stuck so I could only bike up hills and on flat stretches. On downhills, I was on my feet walking my bike as I would not dare ride it without brakes. This should have put a serious dent in my mood, but the winter wonderland that was surrounding me was so magical it counteracted any hints of negativity. This scenery continued for several days. The further north I biked, the closer I got to the border to North Macedonia, the wilder the nature. Endless forests went up and down the mountain sides as far as I could see. Ever so often, signs along the road informed about bears and wolves in the area. Several places had animal corridors where these wild animals could cross the road. Despite it still being winter where bears should be deep in hibernation, I was still on the lookout. It was not out of fear I looked left and right, forward and backwards. It was more out of curiosity. I have never seen a bear in the wild before and I actually wanted to see one. Nevertheless, I managed to reach the border town of Florina with no bears in sight. What I did experience though was a small ski sport center before my descent to Florina. Never had I imagined that I would join an afterski party. But so I did on my last day in Greece. I dragged my bike some hundred meters from the road over snow and ice, got a soda from the bar and bounced to the loud rhythms of the DJ spinning records out onto this winter wonderland I never imagined could exist in this country. And so it was that I cruised into Florina and headed for the border of North Macedonia.

On a sunny day in mid March 2022, I crossed into North Macedonia and reached Bitola for a one day pit stop. I wanted to reach Ohrid by going over the mountain of Galičica National Park. My aim was to reach a peak where I had views of the two grand lakes Prespa and Ohrid. I asked around in Bitola for any intel on the road situation in Galičica. Did they plow the roads or were they closed all together? No one knew anything. I called around and ended up at the national park’s own website. Here as well, no info on road conditions. Only approach left was to give it a try myself. Once I reached the foot of the mountain on the Lake Prespa side, it all looked promising. Snow had melted and water was running down along the road from higher above. Also, there were no signs telling that the road was closed. So I thought I was home safe. I started biking up the mountain. At first the roads were cleared of snow. Then slowly, as the altitude meters increased, patches of snow appeared on the road. Since I spotted wheel tracks I was still confident about crossing over. I continued onwards for a couple of hours but then, nearly at the top, wheel tracks stopped and a thick layer of snow was covering the whole road. Damnit! Apparently, cars go up this far and then people continue on snowmobiles - I could see the snowmobile tracks in the snow. This also meant that the snow was hard packed and I decided to give it a go pushing the bike across. It was a slow process and after an hour of doing this I realized I was moving nowhere. The bike had started to sink in the snow and I was lifting it up and forward only doing a few meters every minute. I lay down in the snow and contemplated my strategy. I hate giving up. The mere idea of giving up makes a knot in my stomach. But sometimes you gotta let reason triumph. As a young kiddo in the Norwegian mountains, I learned from my grandfather that there is no shame in turning around and that you have to turn around while there is still time. As I didn’t know how the conditions of the road were on the other side, I decided to quit my ordeals and detour on the main road to Ohrid.

North Macedonia has some impressive lakes. Very old, very deep and very beautiful. It was well worth it to park the bike and explore the area around Lake Ohrid. There has been a rich religious culture here and they say once there were 365 churches in the area - one for each day of the year. Now only a handful of churches are left. The Cyrillic script was taught at these churches by the disciples of Saints Cyril and Methodius. If you ask macedonians, they would claim Ohrid to be the cradle of the the cyrtillic alphabet.

After my experience on the Galičica National Park road, I realized I might have begun touring this country a bit too early. My idea of cruising into spring time was misjudged and badly timed. Hence, I grabbed a book, leaned back and stayed put for a while. Every day I looked out over the mountains that surround Lake Ohrid and watched the reclining snow line. A week passed, temperatures had risen significantly and I took a gamble on leaving for Mavrovo Lake. The road here goes through National Park Mavrovo. A snaky path along a river on the valley floor. Here and there I saw small villages scattered around on the hillsides. I am certain I spotted minarets and mosques in each and every one of the villages. Religion must be important for these small communities. I guess they also serve the practical function of being a place to meet and thus work as a social glue for the people in the area. My curiosity was on the rise. I wanted to experience the people and their religious practice in one of these villages. So I started to ask around, and close to the village of Janche I met a guy who said I was welcome to join a sermon up the road at a monastery. Apparently mosques and chapels existed side by side here in what seemed like peace and harmony. I had to contemplate the offer a bit since I am no religious person. The last thing I wanted was to turn the sermon into a tourist attraction. But I was reassured it would be no issue at all. As I approached the monastery, I passed several young men on foot headed the same way as me. I entered the chapel and placed myself in the back out of the way of the regulars. What struck me was that only young men participated. No women at all. I never got to learn why. During the sermon, different monks would leave and enter the chapel and the monks present would chant in beautiful voices. At several occasions the young men in the chapel would rise to their feet and do the sign of the cross with their hand. At other times they would fall to their knees and lean forward with their forehead until it nearly touched the floor. It looked very much like the muslims performing their prayers. That confused me a bit, I have never seen christians do this. It was also a bit awkward as I didn’t join in on the kneeling or doing the sign of the cross with my hand. However, I sat through the sermon and gave a thankful nod to the young men there as I left the chapel and hopped on my bike. It was a very special experience I carried with me as I reached Mavrovo Lake. The lake was partly frozen and covered with snow. So far I had seen no greens on the trees so everything looked barren and a bit like a winter desert. This place must look magical during summer. And as I descended out of National Park Mavrovo to Tetovo, I made a mental note on coming back to this place in summer time.

North Macedonia is not a big country. You can tour this country in a matter of days. I made a short detour to Vratnitsa - only to have a bit more mountain view to my west. A big plain plateau had opened up after I left the national park and I was not ready to say goodbye to the mountain landscape which I had grown accustomed to since leaving Meteora. On my overnight stay in Vratnitsa I met Bob. He took one quick look at my bike and said he used to do touring once. “Oh yeah” I said, inquiring for a bit more elaboration. Bob goes on to tell me he did 10 year of straight touring having done more than 200k in total. I was in the presence of a touring legend. That night passed fast as I listened to his stories and shared my own very modest ones. Who knows, perhaps Bob will take up touring again and join me in the future.

I reached Skopje the following day. You get to learn a lot about North Macedonian history if you just look a bit around the city. The presence of the Ottoman empire is evident from their Old Bazar. Walking through one of their main pedestrian streets you pass the site where Mother Theresa was once baptized. She was born in Skopje and spent her youth here before moving on to India. Standing in the main square you see a giant statue of Alexander the Great. This is also one of the sources of a tense relation to their neighboring country Greece. North Macedonia is mainly inhabited by macedonians. They like to think of their country as Macedonia. But Greece is not happy since they also have a region called Macedonia and in their opinion they called dibs on the name. North Macedonia is a very new country. Being ruled by the Ottoman Empire for centuries and being part of Yugoslavia thereafter, they don’t have a history that creates a national identity which is the case for so many other countries. I understand then why they look to history for something that can define them as a country. Alexander the Great was macedonian but born in current day Greece. It is a disputed and much argued topic which country he belongs to. North Macedonia even had to change their old flag since it had the Vergina Sun symbol on it which represented Alexander the Great and his father. With that history lesson in hand I headed east towards Bulgaria.

Reaching Bulgaria happened much along old abandoned roads in a valley landscape. North Macedonia had a new road built all the way to Kriva Palanka which meant the old very narrow roads after Kumanovo were left unused and in a deteriorating condition. Nevertheless, they made perfect bike roads for me to ride on. I didn’t have to worry about cars and could enjoy the scenery the last couple of days before reaching the border and crossing into Bulgaria on the 4th of April 2022.

I didn’t have much plans for touring Bulgaria. All I knew was that I had family visiting me in Istanbul late May. This left me with a lot of touring days for Bulgaria and I set out to zigzag my way through the central part of the country and take my time to explore the cities and places on my way. I passed the Seven Rila Lakes, the old town of Plovdiv, the Buzludzha Monument, the old royal city of Veliko Tarnovo, the authentic village of Zheravna and the Sea Garden in Varna off the Black Sea before cruising along the coast down to Turkey. This made me realize something crucial. This thing I am doing, exploring the world by bike, it is not about destinations. It is about detours. True, I want to head east. True, I want and need to make progress. But I am doing all of this without any end destination. I want to explore as I ride onwards. That means that my route will not always be a straight line east on the map. And that means I don’t know with certainty which countries will be on my path east. Reaching the Black Sea is sort of the eastern frontier of Europe in my mind. I can only ride that much further east before the continent of Europe ends and a new continent begins.

Beginning my travels last summer 2021, I only had concrete plans for Europe. I knew I wanted to visit the Balkan countries and I knew I wanted to ride along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Now I find myself on the Black Sea coast and I am about to finish off my first travel volume. This also means I will start a new volume soon. Even though I like detours, I am pretty sure what countries lie ahead of me for the rest of the year. I kind of knew this back when the new year started. Going east from here only gives me a limited amount of countries I can pass. Ahead of me lies Turkey, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. That sounds realistic. I feel confident enough about reaching Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, that I will announce these countries as a new travel volume. So without further ado, I present to you ‘Volume 2: The Black Sea Pearl’.

In Baku, I will look myself in the eyes and ask if I want to continue. If I am having fun, I’ll go on. If I don’t have fun, I’ll do something else. I have a dream of far away countries. I can go into Iran and either take a path north or south of the Himalayas. That is a whole different story and brand new series of travel volumes. I often get asked what my final destination is and when my travels will end. The answer is always the same: “I don’t know”. And I always put on a big smile while answering. Because I love the idea of not having a final destination. Having a final destination means that I already know the final section, the final chapter, the final volume, the end of my travels. For me that is like reading a book or watching a movie knowing how it will end. It spoils a lot of the excitement and takes away any surprising elements. I want to write my travel stories without knowing the end. It allows me to take any detours I want, to do plot twists, to add surprising elements, to do whatever I feel is fun and makes me happy in the moment. That is how I like to travel.

• blog north-macedonia bulgaria biketouring

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