Riding Into the Unknown A 3-Year Journey

Jerry Kopack [00:00:02]:
Welcome to Bike Life, a podcast from the Warmshowers Foundation. Here we celebrate our global community of touring cyclists and hosts who make life on the road unforgettable. Through stories, insights and shared experiences, we explore the connections that fuel every journey. Whether you're pedaling across countries or welcoming travelers into your home, you're part of a movement rooted in generosity and adventure. Discover more and join the community@warmshowers.org now let's hit the road together. Hey, everyone, this is Jerry Kopeck, the host of Bike Life, coming to you from the Rocky Mountains of Breckenridge, Colorado. Today I'm chatting with Australian cyclist Simon Brain, who just wrapped up a three year round the World Tour with his fiance. And they rode through 35 countries, camped in wild and unexpected places, and found community through Warmshowers along the way.

Jerry Kopack [00:01:01]:
Now home and already dreaming of their next tour, Simon shares stories from the road and what it's like to dive headfirst into a global cycling adventure. Simon, my man. Welcome to Bike Life.

Simon Brain [00:01:12]:
Hi, Jerry. Thanks for having me.

Jerry Kopack [00:01:14]:
So, all right, let's just get right to it. Three years, 35 countries, one big tour. Whose idea was this?

Simon Brain [00:01:22]:
It was a bit of a combination of both of our tours. It was born out of COVID and started off as a small plan. We thought, wouldn't it be great to maybe cycle across one country and then one country turned into maybe one continent and then, yeah, about two years later when we're still stuck in Covid, we'd saved a bunch of money. And I think it was Laura that initially said, look, we may never get the chance to do this again. Why don't we just go right around the world, spend all our savings and. And do it properly?

Jerry Kopack [00:01:54]:
Now, were you guys on the road when this happened? When you said, let's just keep going because of COVID or was something you planned initially?

Simon Brain [00:02:02]:
Planned initially? Yeah, we left sort of as soon as the lockdowns were over in 2022. Yeah. And so up until that point, yeah, it was almost three years of just staying at home and running our business and saving and planning.

Jerry Kopack [00:02:16]:
Cool.

Simon Brain [00:02:16]:
And then, yeah, when we left, we knew we wanted to be away for about three years.

Jerry Kopack [00:02:21]:
Okay, now, did you guys have any bike to an experience? Are you professional cyclists?

Simon Brain [00:02:27]:
No, none at all. So when we bought the bikes during COVID we'd actually weren't cyclists or anything like that. And we just found out that bike touring was a thing and it sounded like it was gonna really fit what we wanted to do because we've always Loved travel and doing interesting things. So we just bought the bikes. We did a couple like multi day trips around our local area on the east coast of Australia and then, yeah, dove in head first when we, when we started the trip.

Jerry Kopack [00:02:57]:
Nice, I love that. Just curiosity and need for exploration.

Simon Brain [00:03:03]:
Yeah, yeah.

Jerry Kopack [00:03:04]:
So tell me about your route because it's a big one. Like how did you guys decide that we're going to go around the world? Because going around the world can mean a whole lot of places. But how did you decide where you wanted to go?

Simon Brain [00:03:15]:
Yeah, we, we sort of just hit all the places that we've, we've loved traveling before and places that we, we watched a lot of people on YouTube and listened to podcasts like this one and found out great places for bike touring. And we started over in Europe because after Covid we wanted to visit Laura's family who live in the uk. So we came over here European summer and started here, which, you know, London to Istanbul is a really popular route and that was the perfect place to start. And then from there it was just sort of a lot of research done during the time when we were planning places like Oman and Mongolia popped up and they were just, you know, places too good to miss. So we changed our route to angle towards places like that. Also places like Mexico, we've traveled before and really loved it. So there was sort of a bunch of places we really wanted to get to and everywhere else in between. We just made it up as we went along.

Jerry Kopack [00:04:15]:
Nice. So what were some of those must see places that were on your, on your list?

Simon Brain [00:04:21]:
Well, yeah, like I said, definitely Oman and Mongolia. For us, we love traveling to places that are really different, have really different cultures to what we're used to. That's sort of our main passion is. Yeah, seeing places that are a real adventure, doing something that's a bit different. And especially with bike touring within those places, you end up just in places that no other tourists ever will. So yeah, those places. And India was a really great part of the trip for us as well, which actually surprised us. We were a bit hesitant to ride through India.

Simon Brain [00:04:54]:
We'd heard good and bad stories, but it turned out to be one of our favourites for sure. Yeah, we really enjoyed our time there.

Jerry Kopack [00:05:01]:
Tell me about India. Where, what part were you in? The north and the south, down the.

Simon Brain [00:05:06]:
I suppose you'd call it the west coast. Like down the coast of from Mumbai right to the southern tip down there.

Jerry Kopack [00:05:12]:
Gotcha.

Simon Brain [00:05:12]:
And yeah, we really loved it. We traveled a little bit of India before. Just places like Delhi and further north. And we're a bit daunted by the hectic cities, but once we got there, we were just. We just had the time of our lives. Yeah, we really loved the people and the food and just. There's always something happening and there's a surprise around every corner and. Yeah, it was amazing.

Simon Brain [00:05:37]:
We had a great time.

Jerry Kopack [00:05:38]:
The food, the smells.

Simon Brain [00:05:40]:
Yeah.

Jerry Kopack [00:05:41]:
What is it called?

Simon Brain [00:05:41]:
Just a sensory overload.

Jerry Kopack [00:05:43]:
Yeah. And they have the. The veg Thali, which is kind of like. In Nepal, they call it Dalbat, where they. You pay whatever, 90 cents or a dollar, and they just keep bringing you food until you tell them to stop.

Simon Brain [00:05:56]:
Yeah.

Jerry Kopack [00:05:56]:
Which is great for cyclists, right?

Simon Brain [00:05:58]:
Definitely. Or the biryanis. And they just keep coming and piling up. More on your plate and more on your plate. Yeah, we couldn't get enough of it. I don't think we had a bad meal in India.

Jerry Kopack [00:06:08]:
That was probably my favorite place to travel as well. For that reason and other reasons as well. Yeah. I spent some time in the north up in Ladakh Lay. And near the Kashmir region, near the Pakistan border. And. Yeah, just some of the friendliest, kindest people. But.

Jerry Kopack [00:06:24]:
But obviously, the driving takes some getting used to. Right. Like, it's. My partner describes it as a video game where you're just. Things are coming at you from all places. And then the horns. Right. I mean, they're just.

Jerry Kopack [00:06:35]:
They're relentless.

Simon Brain [00:06:36]:
Yeah. It's sort of. I mean, a lot of people just describe it as organized chaos.

Jerry Kopack [00:06:41]:
Yes.

Simon Brain [00:06:42]:
It really is, because you're on the road and there's people going every direction coming at you. There's no sort of one side of the road to be on. And anything can be on the road, whether it's people with carts or the motorbikes or cows or whatever. Whatever else. But everyone's sort of looking out for each other, and there's no. There's no angry ever on the roads. Like, yeah, you can't really do the wrong thing. No one goes, hey, what are you doing? You're in my way.

Simon Brain [00:07:06]:
It's just like, oh, yeah, there's a million people out here and we're all just dealing with it. And, yeah, you just get smiles and honks and people waving at you constantly. And it.

Jerry Kopack [00:07:15]:
And it just kind of works, right?

Simon Brain [00:07:17]:
Yeah, yeah, it just works. And it all. Yeah. We didn't really ever feel in danger because, like I said, there's no. There's never any animosity. There's no anger. Like people. In some Western countries, people don't like Cyclists.

Simon Brain [00:07:29]:
But there, everyone just love loves you and is just happy to see you.

Jerry Kopack [00:07:33]:
So, ah, man, it was really cool hearing those stories. Just takes me back to some of my trips there and just puts the biggest smile on my face.

Simon Brain [00:07:42]:
Yeah, we'd love to go up in the north. Actually. I'd love to cycle up through the Himalayas now, so. Oh, man, we will another time.

Jerry Kopack [00:07:49]:
We will put that on your next list and we'll. We'll share some. Some intel because I got some ideas.

Simon Brain [00:07:54]:
And roots for you, for sure. Cheers.

Jerry Kopack [00:07:57]:
So the first few weeks in the road, when you guys are figuring things out, what. What was that like?

Simon Brain [00:08:04]:
It was pretty tough, mainly with the camping, because that was one of the big things for us is we. We love, like, camping and living in the outdoors and so wild camping was something that was a bit new to us. We didn't know how it would go. And because we sort of started off, we got the ferry over to France and then we were into the Netherlands and Belgium and stuff. They're probably some of the areas that are the most difficult to wild camp in. And we weren't finding it very easy and it was getting a bit frustrating. And we were like, oh, I don't know how all these other people are just wild camping everywhere and were finding it a bit difficult. But we got the hang of it pretty quickly, especially as we moved further east through Europe.

Simon Brain [00:08:45]:
And once you sort of hit, you know, Hungary and stuff, you're finding it, you can camp wherever you want and people are a bit more accepting of it. So, yeah, we got the hang of it pretty quickly, but was a bit daunting at first.

Jerry Kopack [00:08:58]:
Was there ever a time early on, we thought to yourselves, like, maybe this wasn't such a good idea, or were you guys always all in?

Simon Brain [00:09:07]:
I think we're always all in, to be honest. Yeah, we. We sort of set that first London to Istanbul, as that's the big first, like, benchmark to hit. And if we hate it, by the time we get to Istanbul, we're gonna say, okay, we rode across Europe and we'll pull the pin. And that was our adventure. But I don't think there was any point that we actually, either of us thought, no, we don't want to be doing this. Yeah, we were really, really happy with the whole time. And it was all just part of the adventure.

Simon Brain [00:09:34]:
Even the bad days. Yeah.

Jerry Kopack [00:09:36]:
I mean, to put it in perspective, like, even riding from London, Istanbul is still an incredible trip that people would dream about.

Simon Brain [00:09:44]:
Yeah, that was, for us, that was 100 days across Europe and so, yeah, when we finished that and we thought, oh, my God, we're actually going to do this for over a thousand days. That was. Yeah, it was just exciting for us. It was like, oh, we get to do this for the whole three years. Yeah. Just pumped on it. Yeah.

Jerry Kopack [00:10:04]:
Do you, do you remember when it went from being a trip to just being this is our life?

Simon Brain [00:10:11]:
Yeah, probably, like it wasn't a single point, but probably by the time. Maybe by the time we're in India. So after, after there, we went down through the UAE and Turkey. Uae, Oman and stuff like that, and then onto India and probably by the time we were there, which was, I suppose, maybe five months, six months in something like that. Yeah. By then it was sort of just our normal daily life and. Yeah, so it didn't. I don't know if that's a long time for it to take or not, but, yeah, probably five or six months in.

Simon Brain [00:10:45]:
And then by the time we were a year, two years, almost three years in, you couldn't imagine doing anything else. And the thought of doing something else was daunting.

Jerry Kopack [00:10:54]:
Yeah. Yeah. I want to come back to. To that and the feeling of re entry, because that's. That's definitely a thing. But we'll touch on that in a second. So travel together for three years, you probably, you know, you get to know someone pretty well. Did you learn, did you learn anything new about her, you know, without sharing too many secrets? Did you guys travel well together?

Simon Brain [00:11:18]:
Yeah, we've. We've been. We'd been together for 10 years already.

Jerry Kopack [00:11:21]:
Okay.

Simon Brain [00:11:22]:
So. And we've run a business together. We've lived in different countries together, so we've always been very, very close in our relationship. So maybe didn't learn too much new, but definitely reinforced some of the things I knew about Laura, which is just how tough she is, how just an amazing person to be around, you know.

Jerry Kopack [00:11:43]:
Because you have to be tough on a trip like this, right?

Simon Brain [00:11:46]:
Oh, completely. The resilience that you have to show, like the, like, I go back to the wild, camping and stuff everywhere. Some of the places we slept, you know, like, whether you're sleeping in a fire station or behind a church or a cemetery or just by the side of the road sometimes, like. And she just took it all in her stride and never complained about it was probably braver than I was in a lot of situations. We actually had one really sketchy situation where we were held at gunpoint. What I was. Yeah, I was actually quite scared and Laura was behind me and I wasn't allowed to turn around because the guy had a gun to my head and was telling me not to move. And I said, are you okay back there? And she just goes, yep, I'm fine.

Simon Brain [00:12:28]:
I was like, oh, I'm good. You're chilled out. Because I'm kind of crapping my pants up here. But, yeah, she's just so. Just brave and just will take anything on. Is really. Is really what was reinforced.

Jerry Kopack [00:12:42]:
Wow, that's incredible. And did that experience deter you? Did it say, hey, maybe we should do things differently. Maybe we should pack it up and go home, like, this is getting too serious?

Simon Brain [00:12:53]:
No, it was a learning experience. It actually turned out we were. We were camped really close to a border, the tri border of Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey. And we were camped there. And in the middle of the night, this small jeep pulls up. Guys jump out with flashlights and machine guns. And all happened very quickly. Had us on the ground with machines to us.

Simon Brain [00:13:16]:
Yeah. Full of machine guns. And it turned out that they were the military patrolling the area, and they thought that we were trying to smuggle people through that area. It's a big people smuggling area. So. But that, you know, we didn't find that out for the first five to 10 minutes. And then it all came to and they were like, okay, they just got back in their tank and rolled on out of there and left us. So we thought.

Simon Brain [00:13:40]:
We realized after that, okay, we just gotta be a bit more careful when sleeping near international borders and especially places like that where it's a known corridor of people smuggling and stuff.

Jerry Kopack [00:13:51]:
Wow. I didn't. So you weren't. You weren't. You weren't robbed, obviously. These guys were just doing their job.

Simon Brain [00:14:01]:
Yeah, they just went through all of our tent, pulled everything apart, and started searching the area around us.

Jerry Kopack [00:14:08]:
Yeah.

Simon Brain [00:14:09]:
And that was when we were like, you know, what do you guys want? We. They were clearly looking for other people. They thought we were hiding other people. And that's when we sort of went, oh, okay, they're probably not going to shoot us. They just think we're up to something, we're hiding something. And then they found our bikes and they were sort of scratching their heads, and they didn't speak any English or anything, and they were just yelling at us in what turned out to be Greek. We didn't really know. And we were sort of saying, we're bike tourers, we're just tourists.

Simon Brain [00:14:38]:
We're camping and trying to say, you know, buzzwords that they might recognize. But they weren't interested until they'd finished Their jobs. Yeah.

Jerry Kopack [00:14:47]:
Is this a story that you and Laura can look back on now and kind of laugh about or just like how that was quite experience.

Simon Brain [00:14:54]:
Yeah, I was pretty shaken up for a bit afterwards. It was hard to talk about. But yeah, now we can look back and laugh. And yeah, it actually turned out we left that camp spot afterwards and we rode about 5km into a local little village. And there was one light on in a building and it was a bar that was open. This was the middle of the night. We went into the bath with Greek farmers and they invited us in. We told them what happened and for the rest of the night we didn't pay for a drink and we parted with all these Greek farmers until the morning.

Simon Brain [00:15:26]:
And so it was a pretty funny night all in all.

Jerry Kopack [00:15:29]:
Okay, that turned out to be a great story.

Simon Brain [00:15:32]:
Yeah. And then we slept in the bar. The bar own was like, you're safe with us now you sleep here in the bar, you know, have whatever you want. Yeah. So what was fun?

Jerry Kopack [00:15:43]:
So you mentioned the difficulty of like wild camping in parts of Western Europe. And I've heard that. I know parts of the United States can be challenging with, with wild camping as well. But you've also in places like Mongolia and Oman, which I know are a lot easier to wild camp, like Mongolia is huge. You can pretty much sleep and ride your bike anywhere.

Simon Brain [00:16:02]:
You literally can. And that's one of the reasons why we love it so much, was that you could just not only riding your bike and you just pick a direction, you head that way for a few days. Whenever you find a beautiful river or a lake or a really nice view from a mountain, you just go, okay, this is where I'm sleeping tonight. I just get the best campsite for every single night, wherever I want. And the same in Oman. It was, it's. It's just accepted that that's what people do. And the only time people will ever approach you is to maybe offer you some food, drink or something and just check on you, check you're okay.

Simon Brain [00:16:37]:
And. Yeah, so places like that where it's completely accepted were just amazing to be in.

Jerry Kopack [00:16:43]:
Gosh, I love that. So Mongolia's been on my list for a while. I had the opportunity to go there years ago and it, it just didn't turn out. Had. Had you been to Mongolia before this trip?

Simon Brain [00:16:52]:
No, never. So it was something new and somewhere would definitely want to go back. Yeah, I think as far as adventure cycling, it was the peak for sure.

Jerry Kopack [00:17:03]:
So with any trip of this length, one year, two year in Your case, three years, there's inevitably something that happens where you think to yourself, like, wow, how are we going to get out of this one? Like, did you have any issues like that besides being held at gunpoint? But, like, any other issues, you're like, wow, this is really a pickle.

Simon Brain [00:17:22]:
Not really. We keep saying we had a pretty dream run. We didn't really have any illnesses or accidents or any major mechanicals or anything. Everything was always fixable. And we're able to either nurse ourselves or our bikes to the local town to. To get fixed up. But no, not really, to be honest. It's sort of some.

Simon Brain [00:17:43]:
Yeah. Which is pretty surprising with such a big trip.

Jerry Kopack [00:17:46]:
Yeah, you should. You should buy a lottery ticket, man. That's. That's incredible. That's incredible luck.

Simon Brain [00:17:51]:
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. We're very grateful for that. So many. So many.

Jerry Kopack [00:17:57]:
Great.

Simon Brain [00:17:58]:
Sorry, I was just. So many, like, amazing experiences. We often get asked that one question is, what were all the things that went wrong?

Jerry Kopack [00:18:06]:
Yeah, sure.

Simon Brain [00:18:07]:
So few things went wrong for us. And the list of things that went right for us is just endless.

Jerry Kopack [00:18:12]:
God, I love that. That's great. You said no real illnesses, right? I mean, food poisoning had to come in at some point. Like, do you remember where your first food poisoning was?

Simon Brain [00:18:23]:
I had it one day in India, but very minor. Like, probably 12 hours worth.

Jerry Kopack [00:18:29]:
Okay.

Simon Brain [00:18:29]:
And that was it for me for three years. For three years. Yeah. I'd say I would have definitely gotten more sick if I was at home, you know?

Jerry Kopack [00:18:37]:
Yeah, sure.

Simon Brain [00:18:38]:
Laura got sick as well one day in India, and then she was sick a couple days in Mexico.

Jerry Kopack [00:18:44]:
Okay.

Simon Brain [00:18:45]:
But other than that, yeah, we were fine.

Jerry Kopack [00:18:48]:
Wow. Yeah. I always say I've traveled with my partner through northern India, and I love the food, the culture, but I just feel like it's. It's inevitable at some point something, India is going to bite you. And we always joke about this now, like, nothing brings a couple closer than shared food poisoning. So at the same time.

Simon Brain [00:19:05]:
So, yeah, we thought. We sort of allocated extra time to our India trip because we thought, oh, there's just going to be weeks where we're wiped out and not able to move. Yeah. But, yeah, we were. We were really fine the whole way through, which was. I don't know whether we've got a high resilience from it from living in Asia previously or something like that, or it was just luck. But yeah. Yeah, we were okay.

Jerry Kopack [00:19:26]:
Did you guys have an end date that you needed to be home by?

Simon Brain [00:19:30]:
No date that we needed to be home by just an end of budget. So we, yeah, we sort of budgeted enough for about three years and we were there. We were out there for just over three years. Just under three years, rather.

Jerry Kopack [00:19:47]:
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Simon Brain [00:20:26]:
A bunch, yeah. We had. There was one in, in Italy when we were trying to find a place to wild camp and we're like, you know, the usual thing in a forest sort of looking around and a guy cycled up to us and he said, you guys are trying to find find a wild camp, aren't you? And we said, oh yeah, we are. And he goes, well, I'm a Warmshowers host. Why don't you just follow me back to my house? Yes. And that turned out great. And we went and stayed with him for a couple days in Mal, actually. So that was really nice.

Simon Brain [00:20:54]:
And, and then a bunch of really great ones over in the States. We were blown away by the Warmshowers community in the States. Yeah, yeah, it was really, really nice. Especially the people that weren't even cyclists or weren't in the outdoor community, like just farmers and stuff who were just really friendly people who just wanted to meet people and just inviting us into their homes and spending time with them that way. Yeah, I was really surprised and happy with those ones especially.

Jerry Kopack [00:21:23]:
I love that. Was there any particular fun or funny or quirky experience you had with the Warmshowers host that sticks with you?

Simon Brain [00:21:31]:
I mean, there was one in Illinois where we turned up in this guy a bunch of times. People are like, oh, I'm not home, but I'll leave the keys under a rock. Just let yourself in. And that happened multiple times. And this one in Illinois guy was like, yeah, just let yourself in someone. We're at a party right now, but someone will come and pick you up. And suddenly this guy pulls up in a Tesla and picks us up and he's like, I'm the, I'm the chauffeur for the day. Takes us to this party on a beach and we're out in this guy's speedboat and zooming around and drinking margaritas, and we're just like, yeah, just one of those times you look at each other and you go, how did we end up here? Like, because you never know whose house you're going to end up at.

Simon Brain [00:22:12]:
It could be absolutely nothing. And. But, yeah, just a bunch of hospitality through the U.S. like, down in Louisiana, Florida, someone had a big pond with a gator in it, and they were like, come out and see our gator in the pond. And. Yeah, just. Just sort of endless ones. Yeah, it was.

Simon Brain [00:22:29]:
We've used Warmshowers in the US probably more than anywhere else.

Jerry Kopack [00:22:33]:
Okay.

Simon Brain [00:22:33]:
And, yeah, really, really enjoyed it.

Jerry Kopack [00:22:35]:
Was that your first. Was that your first alligator experience?

Simon Brain [00:22:40]:
We saw a couple. We saw one in North Carolina. We saw about three on our way down the Atlantic coast. And then we saw some through Florida and all the way into Texas as well. Yeah.

Jerry Kopack [00:22:54]:
Oh, it's crazy. So offline, you told me that I was. Good, because I was going to ask you, are you guys still together? How did that trip affect your relationship? And it sounds like it was a great trip for you guys. And you said you just recently got married, right?

Simon Brain [00:23:08]:
Yeah, we did. So just two weeks ago, we went and eloped in Copenhagen, which was. Which was great. Absolutely amazing. But, yeah, the trip just brought us. Brought us closer. Thank you. Yeah.

Simon Brain [00:23:19]:
Yeah. So I'm definitely, like I was saying, you know, if you can travel around the world with someone on a bike and come still be together at the end of it, I think it's a good test of a relationship.

Jerry Kopack [00:23:29]:
No doubt.

Simon Brain [00:23:31]:
Yeah. So, yeah, really good.

Jerry Kopack [00:23:34]:
I mean, obviously you've been together for 10 years, travel together for three more. So do you guys have the same morning routine, the same evening routines? You guys both need coffee in the morning. You start this day the same way A little bit.

Simon Brain [00:23:47]:
I'm much more of a coffee fan than Laura is. We're not really. Exactly. Sometimes I'll sleep in, sometimes Laura will. We're both generally morning people, but we also. On a day off, we'll lay in bed and. And have coffee and stuff. But, yeah, we're pretty independent with our routines.

Simon Brain [00:24:05]:
When we were back at home and in work, we worked together. So it was, yeah, both of us up at the crack of dawn and few coffees and into the car.

Jerry Kopack [00:24:14]:
Did you guys.

Simon Brain [00:24:15]:
We're pretty.

Jerry Kopack [00:24:16]:
Do you guys each have your sort of little camp jobs? Like, for, for example, my partner, she would get the camp stove going and I would set up the tent. Did you guys have your little job descriptions.

Simon Brain [00:24:27]:
We. We mix and match as well. So sometimes I'll get the dinner going and Laura will set up the tent or vice versa. If. Unless if it's cold, Laura's in the tent and in a sleeping bag and I'm sort of outside in the tent. Or if there's mosquitoes around, I'll be outside the tent doing everything and keeping Laura nice and safe inside there because mosquitoes don't really affect me and neither does the cold. Whereas they like to get Laura. She's.

Jerry Kopack [00:24:54]:
She's sweeter than you, right?

Simon Brain [00:24:56]:
Yeah, exactly.

Jerry Kopack [00:24:58]:
Who. Who does laundry on your rest days?

Simon Brain [00:25:01]:
If we do laundry, we both do our own. Actually. We both try and. Do. We try and just do our stuff in the sink or in a puddle or a river whenever we can. So, yeah, we both just wash our own laundry.

Jerry Kopack [00:25:14]:
Gotcha. Okay.

Simon Brain [00:25:15]:
I'm always curious. Washing machine available? Yeah.

Jerry Kopack [00:25:18]:
Right.

Simon Brain [00:25:18]:
Either of us. Yeah. We don't really consign to one of us doing any one thing. It's very much. If one of us feels like doing it, we do it. If not, the other one will do it. It works pretty well.

Jerry Kopack [00:25:29]:
Did you guys. I mean, did you sort of have planned rest days or would you just kind of ride for seven or eight days and feel like, hey, I'm tired, we should take a break? Or you get to a place you really want to be and you just decide to stay there for a couple of days?

Simon Brain [00:25:42]:
Yeah, it was much more. When we get to a place we really want to be, we would take a rest day there. And then at first when we started the trip, we thought, oh, you know, it'll be one rest day per week or something like that. But it never worked out that way. Especially, I mean, we spent a lot of time in Asia. And so much of the time you're trying to get from a point point A to point B, but that might be a thousand kilometers away, so it might take you two weeks or whatever to get there. And so we would sometimes ride for two weeks, three weeks. Having a day off just because we wanted to.

Simon Brain [00:26:13]:
We'd prefer to spend five days off in the really nice place we were trying to get to, rather than a day off in just the middle of nowhere along the way. And we did the same in the U.S. actually, we had a few places we really wanted to get to and hang out in for a few days. So, yeah, we much more take blocks of time off rather than like a day a week.

Jerry Kopack [00:26:34]:
So what were some of the. I don't Know the more unique countries that you went through. I know you went through Oman and Mongolia. Like what? Give me some other countries that you guys found your way into.

Simon Brain [00:26:45]:
Working better. We went through Morocco which we really, really enjoyed as well. Mexico, like I said was great. We spent a lot of time in Canada and the U.S. just because such a huge place to explore and yeah, we thought we might as well unique wise. I mean Indonesia and we made it over to Lombok. Not that it's a different country but we really enjoyed the island of Lombok road right around there for a while. Yeah, I mean through Eastern Europe, Bulgaria and Romania.

Simon Brain [00:27:17]:
We really loved a lot of Eastern Europe. Serbia was amazing. Yeah.

Jerry Kopack [00:27:22]:
Did you guys make it into like South America or more of Africa because you mentioned Morocco.

Simon Brain [00:27:28]:
No, we just we that we originally wanted to make it down to South America but that was. We were running out of funds towards when we got there because we knew that if we had ridden down to Ushuai, which was the plan. Yeah, once you get there to make it out would have cost us a lot of money. So we ended up with yeah, the flights out of there. You're pretty remote and it's actually pretty expensive down around Patagonia and stuff as well. So no, we just went down as far as Mexico and spent. We rode sort of the length of Mexico and spent a lot of time there instead. And then we.

Simon Brain [00:28:02]:
That was why we managed to fit in Morocco. Otherwise we would have flown from wherever we were to Spain or something like that.

Jerry Kopack [00:28:09]:
Gotcha. Okay, so three years, you guys come back home, were you ready to be done or were you just like hey, I could keep going.

Simon Brain [00:28:19]:
We could definitely have kept going. Yeah. The only reason we finished was because of the budget and even now we're only going back to work for long enough to save to do another trip.

Jerry Kopack [00:28:30]:
Oh yeah, what's. What's on your hit list?

Simon Brain [00:28:34]:
We're not exactly sure but I mean the short list is the stands. We want to ride through the stands. Maybe Georgia, Armenia if that area is able to get through as well. Georgia Armenia understands. I would like to continue that trip potentially down towards Nepal if we're in that area. But if not there we will go to South America and do top to bottom of South America.

Jerry Kopack [00:28:58]:
Yeah, I love that.

Simon Brain [00:28:59]:
So the two main areas we missed.

Jerry Kopack [00:29:02]:
I've been in Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan, but never Tajikistan or Uzbek. So I've heard great things.

Simon Brain [00:29:10]:
So yeah, it looks like a really cool region. It's sort of Kyrgyzstan especially looks similar ish to Mongolia lifestyle and Stuff.

Jerry Kopack [00:29:18]:
Yeah.

Simon Brain [00:29:18]:
And, yeah, so we're looking forward to that.

Jerry Kopack [00:29:20]:
Just big, wide open country.

Simon Brain [00:29:23]:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And we really enjoy the mountains as well. We actually, like I said, we just got married two weeks ago. We did. Our honeymoon was hiking around Mont Blanc and we really loved being up in the alpine areas. So I think the stands, Kyrgyzstan and stuff is a big draw.

Jerry Kopack [00:29:42]:
Heck yes. What was reentry like when you guys finally got back home?

Simon Brain [00:29:48]:
It's been pretty chilled at the moment because we still haven't gone back to work or anything. So it's. I mean, it was difficult. I definitely had, you know, the downs for a little bit. I was a bit. Bit of depression creeping in and like dreading having to get back into normal life. Perked back up. Especially now we've been making a plan to just, okay, we're going to go home, we're gonna get into work and just work hard, save for maximum of a year.

Simon Brain [00:30:15]:
And it's nice to have a plan to be working towards.

Jerry Kopack [00:30:18]:
Yeah. Do you think this trip has changed you guys in any way? And if so, in what way?

Simon Brain [00:30:24]:
Yeah, probably in realizing that, I mean, we've. We are married, but we don't want to have kids. That sort of cemented that. It's just cemented that we really want to continue living a life of adventure. And I always thought even though we weren't going to have kids and stuff, I would still want to have the house and, you know, a job that I'm going to five days a week. And now we're very much just like, let's just keep living this lifestyle, save as much as we need to and then travel as much as we want to.

Jerry Kopack [00:30:54]:
Yeah. It can be. It can be addictive for sure.

Simon Brain [00:30:57]:
Yeah. Yeah. And so we're pretty happy that we've settled on living this lifestyle now for as long as we can.

Jerry Kopack [00:31:03]:
Excellent. That makes me so excited to hear you guys say that. So I want to wrap this up with just some rapid fire travel questions. Just some things that are super easy, so. Sound cool?

Simon Brain [00:31:17]:
Yeah.

Jerry Kopack [00:31:18]:
All right, so first one easy one. Do your bikes have a name?

Simon Brain [00:31:23]:
Laura's does. Laura's is called Donkey.

Jerry Kopack [00:31:26]:
Donkey?

Simon Brain [00:31:27]:
Yeah.

Jerry Kopack [00:31:28]:
What's the story?

Simon Brain [00:31:30]:
I think it comes from sort of like Shrek.

Jerry Kopack [00:31:32]:
Shrek?

Simon Brain [00:31:33]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Donkey and Shrek. Yeah. I'm not sure. She just started calling it Donkey one day and that stuff and. And mine never really got one that stuck. At first we were calling it Turtle because it was like a dark green color. Okay.

Simon Brain [00:31:49]:
But it never really stuck. No.

Jerry Kopack [00:31:51]:
Okay. I do Think it's important that your bikes have names. So.

Simon Brain [00:31:55]:
Okay, all right.

Jerry Kopack [00:31:58]:
So, very cliche question, but I ask it from time to time. So every place is different, every place is unique. But did you have a favorite place or a place that you'd like to go back to at some point?

Simon Brain [00:32:09]:
We always say our favorite country in the world is Thailand. It's where we used to live there. That's where we met. We're both living there and working there. And, yeah, we will always go back there. We're actually going to go there in about a week's time as well, for. For the second part of our honeymoon. So Thailand, it's just got everything.

Simon Brain [00:32:27]:
The people are so good, the food's so good. You just. We can't help but be happy when we're in Thailand.

Jerry Kopack [00:32:32]:
Yeah.

Simon Brain [00:32:33]:
So just. I mean, the heat is the only bad thing you've got to deal with there. And if you can get through that, it's just impossible to have a bad time there.

Jerry Kopack [00:32:41]:
Yeah. The Thai smile is real. The street food is unbelievable.

Simon Brain [00:32:46]:
Yeah. And we really explored. We spent four months of our trip riding around Thailand and really explored areas that we'd never been before. And probably not a lot of tourists really travel to and finding those. Those places, even the really tiny islands that are a lot harder to get to, but they're worthwhile when you make the effort. It's just. It's an unbelievable spot.

Jerry Kopack [00:33:08]:
Are you in the north, like Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai areas, everywhere?

Simon Brain [00:33:12]:
Yeah, we went north to south, east to west. Yeah, we went. We rode the Lana Kingdom route when we were over there, the bike packing route up north of Chiang Mai, up to Pai, and yeah, we rode all over. We spent a lot of time on the west coast and in. In that area, visiting all those little islands and riding around them. Yeah, it was great.

Jerry Kopack [00:33:35]:
So that kind of answers my next question where I was going to say, is there a country they thought, like, I really don't want to leave or I could spend more time here. And it sounds like Thailand definitely checks that box for you.

Simon Brain [00:33:46]:
Yeah, Thailand definitely checks that box. We always say when we're in a country, you know, could I live here? And the answer is yes for probably 75% of the places we were. Places like Morocco and Oman as well. And like I said with Mongolia, we definitely want to go back to. And they. They are places we will get back to. Yeah, there's pretty much everywhere. That's a bit of a trap with travel, isn't it, that once you go somewhere and you took Route A and you meet people that took route B and all of a sudden you've got another reason to go back there.

Jerry Kopack [00:34:18]:
Yeah. Was there, was there a particular place or country that that was particularly challenging to you guys? For one reason or another.

Simon Brain [00:34:27]:
Mexico was quite hard. It was challenging route wise because of the conflicts with cartels and stuff there. So it was sort of hard to, to be, to go exactly where we wanted to go with everything with all the advice that was getting given to us. But in the end we found, I mean everywhere we were felt super safe. Everyone was super nice and yeah, it was a really great place to be. So we never had any problems. But it was a bit challenging finding our way through.

Jerry Kopack [00:34:57]:
Yeah, I, I know the people in Mexico in general are very kind and very generous and very open people. So glad you had a good experience.

Simon Brain [00:35:06]:
Yeah, we did and we had, we were invited into people's homes. When we asked if we could camp in the yard, they said, you know, I've got a spare bedroom, just come on in and stuff like that. So yeah, just like everywhere El. Just meet amazing people there.

Jerry Kopack [00:35:19]:
So based on a prior answer, I think I know the answer to this question too. But what was your favorite food country?

Simon Brain [00:35:27]:
It's probably India or Thailand.

Jerry Kopack [00:35:30]:
Okay.

Simon Brain [00:35:31]:
Definitely. Yeah. Like I said, we didn't have a bad meal in India. It's just constant, you know, the constant quality food. But it's pretty hard to beat Thai food.

Jerry Kopack [00:35:41]:
Yeah, it is. Completely agree. How about favorite landscape? Desert, mountain, coastal.

Simon Brain [00:35:51]:
That's a tough one. I really love coming from Australia where we don't really have amazing mountains. I really love seeing a snow capped mountain. So when we're in Canada riding through the Rockies, I was just sort of awestruck every day and similar in. We rode through the Atlas Mountains in Morocco. I really love Morocco because of the variety of landscapes there's so going through. It was, there was snow on the mountains when we're riding through them and then you drop down into a dry desert with palm trees and stuff. So sort of the variety was the best thing.

Jerry Kopack [00:36:23]:
Got it. Okay. Did you carry any luxury items with you? Like thing is like I don't need this, but it's nice to have probably our chairs.

Simon Brain [00:36:34]:
So we have those super light Helinox zero chairs and those paired with a Kindle is just, just make camping so comfortable.

Jerry Kopack [00:36:43]:
Yeah.

Simon Brain [00:36:43]:
You can set up your tent and sit back in a comfortable chair and read your book. Which, you know, the Kindles have Laura's load them up with over 100 books. So we're never starved of anything to read. Yeah, yeah, probably those two were the. The best luxury.

Jerry Kopack [00:36:59]:
Did you figure out some things that you just didn't need along the way that maybe you thought you should and maybe you offloaded it?

Simon Brain [00:37:07]:
We probably. I mean, we didn't take. We were pretty light right from the get go, probably because of all the. We did quite heavy research and we were pretty well versed in camping and stuff. Before there were. There would have been things. Oh, like a note. Like we thought we'd take a notebook with us which probably wrote in one day of the trip.

Simon Brain [00:37:26]:
You know, you just do all your writing on the phone these days. Yeah. And just small things. Everyone says to take a head torch everywhere you go, but I don't think we use the head torch the entire trip because when you're stealth camping, you don't want to be drawing attention to yourselves. Yeah. And yeah, otherwise we're just in our tent and we just never really felt like we needed a head torch, which is probably a controversial one that everyone.

Jerry Kopack [00:37:51]:
Swears by paper maps or offline on your phone?

Simon Brain [00:37:57]:
Offline on our phone for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of old school people sort of bag out the phone maps now for sure. Going through places like India and Indonesia and, you know, Vietnam, that the road system's so intricate. There are a million roads there. And if you're using a paper map, you would be taking the main road. Whereas you get put on these routes when you're using an app like Komoot that you just, you're like, how do.

Simon Brain [00:38:25]:
How do they even know that this is a road? Because often it's not a road. It's just a path through a farmer's field or something, you know, and somebody.

Jerry Kopack [00:38:32]:
Had plotted it on that. On that map. It's crazy.

Simon Brain [00:38:36]:
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of the time we wouldn't have been able to stop in big cities like Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh or Mumbai. You wouldn't be able to follow a paper map because you're making 100 turns a minute. And so. Yeah, definitely using our phones the whole way.

Jerry Kopack [00:38:50]:
Yeah, I agree. I started off with a paper map probably 15 years ago, before all these offline apps were available. And it changes the entire plan. It changes your ability to go to these very unique places and take secondary tertiary roads that.

Simon Brain [00:39:07]:
Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Jerry Kopack [00:39:09]:
Let's see, favorite snack food on the road. Like, what do you keep in your. In your frame bag or in your. Your panniers?

Simon Brain [00:39:16]:
A big variety, but we're pretty much junk food addicts. A Lot of chocolate bars.

Jerry Kopack [00:39:23]:
Snickers and Cadbury.

Simon Brain [00:39:25]:
Yeah. And Stroopwafels. A favorite. Anything. Yeah. Sugary was usually a favorite.

Jerry Kopack [00:39:32]:
I feel like Coca Cola and Snickers is available every place in every city in the world.

Simon Brain [00:39:37]:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Jerry Kopack [00:39:40]:
All right. And lastly, any tips for people who are listening to our show today who are thinking about this idea and where would they start?

Simon Brain [00:39:51]:
Just pick a place in the world that you would really love to explore, somewhere you've been interested in and go for it. Don't be hesitant about it. Don't worry about what's going to be there because, you know, I mean, we might have had a dream run, as I said, but I think the same story is for a lot of people that you're just going to have an amazing time and you don't have much to worry about. Just get out there and do it. I love it.

Jerry Kopack [00:40:15]:
Simon, thanks so much for taking time and sitting down with me today. How can the people listening out there find out more about your travels or your next trip?

Simon Brain [00:40:25]:
We are on Instagram and YouTube as well. We ride bikes, places you'll be able to find us there. And yeah, we put up a couple videos and, and reels and lots of photos and stuff like that. And yeah, hopefully we'll be back out on the road before too long.

Jerry Kopack [00:40:41]:
Yeah. Thank you. I look, I checked out both those sites and there is some fun, funny and inspiring stuff on there. So you guys should all check it out.

Simon Brain [00:40:49]:
Thanks.

Jerry Kopack [00:40:50]:
All right, everyone, thanks for listening to my conversation today with Simon Brain. If you enjoy our show, give us a like a share on our social channels or maybe just tell your friends. These stories hopefully will inspire you to set off on your own bicycle adventure and maybe make the world feel a little bit smaller. One pedal stroke at a time. And until then, keep the wheels rolling and the story's coming. Thanks for joining us on Bike Life. I'm Jerry Kopeck and I hope you enjoyed today's episode as much as we enjoyed sharing it with you. Please leave us a rating and review or just tell your friends.

Jerry Kopack [00:41:24]:
This helps us reach more cyclists and hosts around the world to learn more or become part of this amazing community. Visit us@warmshowers.org or follow us on Instagram @warmshowersoreg. If you'd like to be a guest on the show or have a question you'd like us to explore, email us@podcastarmshowers.org.

Simon Brain [00:41:49]:
Sam.