Three Kiwis, three motorbikes, one mission: to ride around the Black Sea!
Once we settled on an eight-week bike trip in Europe we started looking at what options we had with a starting point of Germany or Austria. We talked about hitting every country in Europe, but although sounding cool didn’t have the adventure aspect we were after. Our eyes kept taking us back to Eastern Europe, somewhere Amand and Steve hadn’t spent much time travelling.
Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, sits on the Absheron Peninsula jutting out into the Caspian Sea. If you look closely enough it looks just like a place you should go to and then come back from, and if you’re doing that then you definitely should go around the Black Sea while you’re at it. So this became the goal…
Google Maps told us it’s just under 7,500kms and 92 hours of driving taking the most direct route, which obviously we won’t be doing! There’s also things to consider like the Ukraine-Russia conflict zone, the relationships between Azerbaijan and Armenia, and between Turkey and Syria and a multitude of awesome places to consider along the way.
So we mapped out a route that took us through Germany, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkey, Greece, Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia.
Part of the beauty of this trip is that we are not going to stick to a set route, we want to take it as it comes and be fluid with plans. The only things we have on the agenda for sure is circumnavigating the Black Sea, the Transfăgărășan Highway in Romania (the world’s best road according to Top Gear), and Mt Elbrus in Southern Russia (the highest mountain in Europe), where if we have enough time we’re hoping to get as high as possible up the mountain.
We kept a blog which is packed with adventures, challenges, laughs and tough times.
There might even be some useful information for other budding adventure motorcycle enthusiasts.
Join us for the highs and lows of moto-adventure travel.
Update July 2019 – so we’ve now completed the trip and been able to create a map of our exact journey. How does it compare to the direct Google route above?
