Читать книгу Round And Through the World by Bicycle: The Summary 2014—2016, 53772 km by bicycles. From Russia - Егор Ковальчук - Страница 4

– I put a lot of sense into the name of my expedition. While the preposition “round” has more to do with sports and geography, “through the world” contains the idea of traveling as Wayfaring, Searching, and Communication, where People, Human Beings are considered of most importance.

During more than 2 years of traveling, I didn’t ride in Africa, South America, Australia, and Antarctica, because my plans didn’t include such a global challenge.

The international rules on round-the-world bike travels have various requirements: a traveler must visit all continents, or must go through antipodal points, or the route length must be greater than the equator (40,000 km), or the route must lie in all hemispheres, etc. On the other hand, these rules contradict the itineraries of the first around the world bike travels, which occurred a century ago. All in all, this is very relative. What was important to me, in terms of sport, is the length of the itinerary and a fulfillment of a circle along the geographical latitude.

They say it is the Circle that should be done first and then supplemented during the rest of the lifetime. In the light of this, the indispensable condition to visit all continents seems a mere formality. I didn’t want to lay claim to originality; I just rode my own itinerary, which had its own identity and style. I have plenty of time before me to do the rest of the continents.

Of course, the idea to round the globe came up to me during my first bike travel, but USA and Europe visa questions were an obstacle to attaining this until the last moment. It wasn’t before I got these visas en route that I felt a little bit more relieved and confident that I was making headway in fulfillment of the Circle.

Implementation of the project “Rainbow For a Friend: Postcards of Peace and Kindness”. On the threshold of the next step of my journey, I offered children and adults to draw postcards on the subject of “PEACE” (peace between countries, between peoples, friendship and kindness) with greetings and wishes for children and adults in other countries. Acting as a mailman on the bicycle, I was to deliver the postcards to children in distant cities and towns. The postcards served as a link between people and demonstrated that we are not separated on the basis of national characteristics, languages, colors of skin or beliefs; quite the contrary, we are all united by kindness, love and peace in our hearts. The postcards were delivered to schools and orphanages; children, in return, made their own postcards and letters to be sent to perfect strangers from the other side of the globe!