The Silk Route, 2007

I am now aware of a new trip Tour DÁfrique trip planned for 2007 called "The Silk Route". from Istanbul to Beijing. Now that I see how Tour D´Áfrique operates on the Orient Express (Paris Istanbul) I am fairly confident that I´d be happy enough with "The Silk Route". To be sure it is more basic than Cycleventures, and the camping dimension would not appeal to the cream-puff crowd. The current trip is 50% hotels, 50% camping whereas the Silk Route would be almost all camping, and some so-called bush camping at that. "Bush" camping from what I gather is more or less just stopping at the side of the road, so there would be no water other than what we bring with us, ... so that means no showers. . The trip starts in Istanbul and goes through Georgia, Turkistan, and various other "*** stan" countries and into China and the Gobi desert, without going into Mangolia.... and is planned for summer of 2007, say 8000 miles over 3.5 months. Miles, the cook, says that most of the roads in China are paved and really quite good. I was asking Shanny, the tour director, what bike would be good. He felt my current Litespeed would not be appropriate. Shanny works at ´Dukes´ in Toronto, a fairly high end bike shop and said that the Specialized "Stump Jumper" say 2500 CAD would be a good choice. Steel (repairable) would be preferred, but aluminium would be OK. So, .... it´s not a sure thing .... but I think I´ll probably do it .

Oct 24/06 updates re silk route
Costs...... roughly 12K USD
Dates ... early Aug start
daily distance... about 15 K per day more than Orient Express, say 115k pday
Camping,... lots of camping, and bush camping at that