Software Business in the Middle East

This is a translation from Swedish in free style. The original posts can be found here and here.

While I was writing this post, I got an e-mail from one of the travellers, Tim, telling they had changed their plans for the trip route – now they plan riding through Syria, Israel, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. From UAE they would take a ferry or boat and go to either Iran or India. When they come to Dubai, it will be very interesting – I’ll get a chance to meet guys face to face. What is not clear for me now is how they get visa to Saudi Arabia – tourists are not very welcome in the country. But we’ll see how the trip will go, I think guys will find out the way.

The trip was planned to start on October 1st, but preparations took slightly more time than it was planned. Finally, the bikes were equipped and bags were packed and nothing else stopped guys from starting the ride.

From the city Alingsas (Alingsås) the travellers went towards Boras (Borås). The map of the passed distance in Sweden might be found here.

Day One. Alingsas – Sexdrega. 70 km.

The first day of the trip was sunny. The travellers got used to the bicycles – I guess riding for entire day is not something you do very often. They also found they’d forgotten the burning liquid for their portable kitchen (RK: I guess they mean here mini-cooker).

The road was not easy because it went up and down all the time. As planned, the guys arrived to Sexdrega by evening time and made a camp.

Day Two. Sexdrega – Anderstorp. 70 km.

The route went through countless number of cosy villages. There were a lot of memories from the Middle Ages around – the riding on bikes has its advantage that you can see more things around the places you go through.

The lunch went in a company of small pigs close to the city Gislved (RK: The city also has a tyre factory – some time back in Sweden I used to drive having the famous Nord Frost 3 on my car).

The night was spend under the open sky sleeping on the floating wooden landing stage taken to the coast for the winter time. Everything started just fine until 2 am when all three started to turn around swearing – the brand new down sleeping bags were designed for -25 C, and it was too hot to sleep in them.

Day Three. Anderstorp - Sicklinge. 100 km.

Early morning the guys started to move forward on the local road 27 coming to the place called Forsxeda. One good guy Valentino lives there, who sponsored travellers with the phone credit of 200 Swedish Krone (about $30). The live around got the new fresh breath when people knew the final goal of this bicycle trip – China. Somebody called to the local newspapers that was very fast and arranged the interview with all three guys – Nino, Erik and Tim.

After the interview they went further by the old route E4 that has a lot of historical places around.

Day Four. Sicklinge – Sirkon (Sirkön). 60 km.

Started to ride at 8 am. This day the guys went through Ljungby county – this county is ruthful known as the place where storm Gudrun came from (RK: in English this storm is also known as storm Erwin which hit both Sweden and Denmark on January 8, 2005 having sustained wind speed of 126 km/h and wind gusts of 165 km/h).

Day Five. Sirkon – Karlskrona. 100 km.

That was the final day of the trip through Sweden. Guys would take a ferry to go to Gdynia, Poland the next day.

As the guys wrote on their own blog, during this trip over Sweden they changed their opinion about their own country. One thing is when you drive a car and another – when you go by bicycle riding through the fields, forests, and villages and passing by the beautiful Swedish lakes. But the most interesting part of the trip is coming – there are pretty many miles left to Peking.