2023-10-28 19:00:01
The urge to explore and pure muscle power drive Edwin Schmidt from Burgenland tirelessly on a long adventure tour. What he can tell the “Krone” about his exciting bike trip.
Purely out of enthusiasm for sporting challenges and curiosity about foreign cultures, Edwin Schmidt set out on his bike in Strebersdorf, a district of Lutzmannsburg, five years and almost seven months ago. After covering 92,500 kilometers, the urge to explore has by no means subsided. Heat and mudAfter Asia, Australia, New Zealand, the USA, Central and South America and a short detour to Europe, the sporty mechanical designer continues to pedal hard in Africa. Extreme heat, deep mud and almost impenetrable jungle demanded a lot from the 57-year-old. Weather God plays by his own rules “Correct timing is one of the essential components,” is an important finding of the extreme tour. The saying “Weather can make or break your trip” has caught on. This is especially true when you are exposed to the weather like you are on a bicycle. “Being out and about in the right climate zone at the right time is essential if you don’t want your business to become an ordeal,” Schmidt knows all too well from his own experience . The globetrotter often has to think back to how he was in trouble at the start of his 2018 tour in Tajikistan due to an early cold snap and had to cross the mighty Pamir high mountains in wintry conditions. Minus 15 degrees in the desert. “The timing there wasn’t optimal. The same applies to the late crossing of the 4,000 meter high Uyuni salt desert in Bolivia at minus 15 degrees Celsius or, most recently, to the rainy season in West and Central Africa, which made many roads completely impassable,” remembers the globetrotter. On the way from Gabon In the Congo he covered sections of the route littered with huge mud holes from the heavy rainfall. “The slope was now dry. But if I had tackled this stage a little earlier, it would hardly have been possible to get through,” says Schmidt. Before the border closes in the country, chance is a constant companion. While you can plan your passage through climate zones to a certain extent, there are also things that you have no control over. Good luck and bad luck are close together. Gabon is one such example. Schmidt was still in the Central African country in June, cycling from the capital Libreville towards the Congo. Two months later, a military coup took place, the borders were closed and the internet was paralyzed. “It could have been unpleasant if I had still been in the country at that time,” says Schmidt. A ray of hope: friendly people line his path almost everywhere. The unusual photo shoot took place before the Miss Angola election in the capital Luanda: “Everyone was courteous and in a good mood.” The journey continues… A special kind of bureaucratic challenge for the Burgenlander is his passport. Each page is full of stamps and visa stickers. Only the border crossing from Angola to Namibia was still possible. Despite all the hurdles, the prospects of getting a new passport in Windhoek, the capital, are good – and off we go to South Africa!
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