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Matt and I embarked on this trip for several reasons. We both wanted to take a year out of work, and decided this would be a fascinating and magnified way of seeing many unusual parts of the world like Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan etc, whilst testing ourselves physically and mentally in a huge way. You can meet a lot more people cycling from town to town than flying from city to city and you get significantly more submerged in local culture as you constantly communicate for directions, food, board and so on. And of course we both wanted to put our time to good use and raise money for Amnesty International, and this seemed like a worthwhile challenge to us.

As Hemingway said, "It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them."