Deep into the East

May 26, 2018 Travel Bikepacking

Sometime last year, Dan alerted me to something I had been completely unaware of: Bikepacking, or traveling long distances by bike while carrying minimal baggage. I ended up purchasing a bike, started accumulating the equipment, and finally took my first journey in May, a multi-day trip that was supposed to take me all the way from Berlin to Leipzig.

I ended up modifying the route a bit, opting for Dessau rather than Leipzig where I had been a few times. But the destination never quite mattered: This trip had been all about the journey itself, pedaling more than 100 kilometers a day, through bits of Eastern Germany I had never seen let alone spent so much time in.

The bike has long been my favorite mode of transportation, and using it for more than a trip across the city was in many ways eye-opening: Exhausting and calming at the same time, affording plenty of time to reflect, take in the environment, and stop every once in a while to take some pictures.

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