Our tour will start on April 21, 2009 and will take us through Germany, following the Rhine, Main, Tauber and Altmuehl Rivers, until we reach the Danube River. We will follow the Danube all the way to Bulgaria, where we will continue our journey to Istanbul. We estimate that this part of the trip will take 3 months.
After staying in Istanbul for a couple of weeks, we will take a boat to the Ukraine, then continue by train through Russia and Kazakhstan toward Uzbekistan. There we'll hop back on our bikes and ride on the old silk road through Uzbekistan, Kirgizstan and China.
From China we'll cross the Himalaya into Nepal, and then maybe continue into India. At this point we'll probably be due in the Philippines to get ready for our wedding, so we'll look for an expedient route. After the wedding, we will tour around SE Asia (places tbd), eventually making our way up to China to hop onto the Trans-Siberian railway and make our way back to Germany. We have to be back in Aachen by May 19, 2010 because Mario has to work on the 20th.