After my first travel through Eurasia, I had the possibility to work as a substitute teacher. I decided to use this extra income for a winter trip – cycling all the way to the frozen Lake Baikal in Siberia in Winter. The plan was rather simple: Leaving Switzerland on 1st November 2017, entering Russia in December 2017, arriving at Lake Baikal in February 2018 and crossing the frozen lake in March 2018. When I wanted to apply for a one year (business) visa for Russia, I found out that I may not stay in the Russian Federation on a multi-entry standard business visa for more than 90 days in any 180-day period. What a bummer!

Luckily I could keep on working as a teacher in November 2018. So I continued earning money and decided to go to Siberia one year later, entering from Asia instead of Europe in order to be able to cycle a bit in Siberia and cross Lake Baikal within 90 days. At that time, I met Grete. But when I met her, I already had made plans for my Eurasia 2.0 travel and I intended to leave before the end of her working season. Nevertheless, we decided to travel together in Summer. I left Switzerland at the beginning of March 2018 and cycled all the way to Ukraine. My plan was to cross Crimea. Even though I went to the Ukrainian embassy in Switzerland twice to make sure that I am allowed to travel from Ukraine to Russia via Crimea, I was stopped by Ukrainian authorities on my way to Crimea.

In April 2018, I was cycling in the North Caucasus and met extremely lovely people, especially in Chechnya and Dagestan. At the beginning of May, I arrived in the Iranian capital of Tehran, from where Grete and I wanted to cycle together to and in Central Asia. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a visa for Turkmenistan, therefore Grete had to cross the desert alone and I had to make a very long detour to get to Uzbekistan to be reunited with her again. After being forced to turn back on a relatively remote mountain road in Kyrgyzstan, we cycled on the Pamir Highway to Tajikistan, where we visited the Bartang Valley on our way to Khorugh. From Khorugh, we went to the far northeast of Afghanistan to bike and hike. Back in Khorugh, we bought a lot of provisions again and cycled through the Zorkul Nature Reserve. At the Chinese border, I had to say goodbye to Grete, because she had to go back to Switzerland to work another season. In China, I wanted to explore parts of the wilderness on the Tibetan Plateau, but unfortunately, I had to learn that I was not allowed to travel in this particular area. After this failed project, I went back to Kyrgyzstan in November 2018.

I wanted to apply for a Russian business visa in Kyrgyzstan. I organized all the documents I needed to apply for a visa, but then I had to find out, that foreigners like me aren’t allowed to apply for a Russian visa in Kyrgyzstan. I cycled to Kazakhstan, where I can stay visa-free for one month, sent my passport from Almaty back home to a Swiss visa service, which was supposed to organize my visa and send it back to Kazakhstan. Unfortunately, the Russians didn’t issue the visa on time, thus when I was supposed to leave Kazakhstan after one month, my passport was still at the Russian embassy in Switzerland. As I couldn’t leave Kazakhstan without a passport, I was illegal in the country. When I finally got my passport back, I had to go to court in Kazakhstan and pay a fine.

In January 2018, I cycled from Kazakhstan to Siberia, where the temperatures plunged below minus 40 degrees. When I reached the town of Krasnoyarsk, I hitchhiked 1’000 kilometres to Irkutsk. There, I bought food for one month, went to Kultuk and then circumnavigated the frozen Lake Baikal in 29 days in February and March 2019. Back in Irkutsk, I took a train to Moscow and another one to Kyiv. From the Ukrainian capital, I cycled back home to Switzerland.

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