05.26
Hello,
here is the finally-sumary video of the full silk road trip with footage not used in other videos.
It´s really been impossible for me to make it shorter, a long trip cant be sumarized more.
Hope you enjoy it.
Fernando
Hello,
here is the finally-sumary video of the full silk road trip with footage not used in other videos.
It´s really been impossible for me to make it shorter, a long trip cant be sumarized more.
Hope you enjoy it.
Fernando
Today I tell you some data about the blog, this inseparable travel partner I’ve had. My relation with him, you can imagine: love, hate. I’ve liked writing it, stop to think about what I’ve seen, what was different from the previous country and to the next. It’s been more enriching stopping to organize the ideas and the feelings.
At the same time I had proposed myself to write two posts a week and that’s been very time consuming, and sometimes I would have preferred to do something else, but I’ve been able to do it 2,3 post a week is the average of the trip.
Without further delay here you have the numbers:
I’ve been in Dublin doing a documentary photography training, my final work has not been as I expected, but I’ve learn a lot. Here you have some pictures about it, as there are not many pictures relevant to today’s topic.
After taking panoramic pictures on the trip it has not been easy to come back to the normal format.
Data about the videos:
Statistics about the videos:
Interacting with the architecture.
During the trip I’ve dismissed threevideos:
The countries with no video are: Turkey, Armenia, Jordan, Uzbekistan and Kazajstan. I wanted to make a video per country but after the mediocre videos of Georgia I decided to do only videos of the things that motivated me totally. Maybe that’s why Italy, Montenegro and China have two videos.
The videos that I’ve liked the most are “Not every day”, “Acqua Alta”, “Darvaza Gas Crater”, “Zadar sound and light” and “Beijing”, however all have been fun to record.
Here are the statistics of the visits to the blog:
The numbers are great, but to whom I’d really would have loved to show the videos and tell the trip was my mother. She knew the plan and the itinerary, and with how much she liked travelling, she would have enjoyed it infinitelly. I would have loved to travel with her in the most interesting countries… Things would have been more interesting. I know I would have done an effor to go to more special and remote places, to talk with more people, to try more foods, to… everything. All would have been more intense.
But as this has not been possibe I’ve told you everything. This is life, you carry the bad things on your back and grab the good things as strong as you can, as living this trip. In other way, bu she´s been travelling with me during the trip.
Around 90 visits per day.
A map about it.
Here is the list of countries that have access to the blog ordered from less to more accesses: Spain, United States, United Kingdom, Mexico, Turkey, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Argentina, Italy, Serbia, Albania, Colombia, Iran, Syria, Chile, Venezuela, Finland, Peru, Canada, India, France, Croatia, Australia, Switzerland, China, Sweden, Netherlands, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Slovenia, Belgium, Malaysia, Russia, Brazil, Armenia, Ecuador, Poland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, Norway, Montenegro, Romania, Lithuania, Iraq, Puerto Rico, Kyrgyzstan, Dominican Republic, Austria, Portugal, Philippines, United Arab Emirates, Costa Rica, Jordan, Uruguay, Bulgaria, Thailand, Guatemala, Japan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Israel, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hong Kong, El Salvador, Singapore, New Zealand, Ukraine, Honduras, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Macedonia, South Africa, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Bolivia, Egypt, Turkmenistan, Lebanon, Panama, Kuwait, Paraguay, Taiwan, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Estonia, Cyprus, Qatar, Tunisia, Azerbaijan, Algeria, Afghanistan, , Malta, Vietnam, Morocco, Macau, Bahrain, Nepal, Liechtenstein, Iceland, Ghana, Luxembourg, Mali, Andorra, Laos, Mongolia, Nigeria, Oman, Bangladesh, Gibraltar, Libya, Belarus, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Tajikistan, Mozambique, Sri Lanka, Moldova y Yemen.
A view of the river next to the old port.
Another time in the hole.
A day with no rain.
Some other technology related curiosities:
A pity this year Lonely Planet has not done a Blog Award. I wanted to win it, hahahhahaa. At least the one in Spanish, but as they haven’t done the award… nothing.
One more data. 10000000000000000000000000 orthographic mistakes. Thousands apologies. There are things I do well and others I don’t, the orthography, obviously falls in the second bucket. Here my language teachers would say that little has changed.
I’ve done all possible to put the right data, but there may be things that are not totally fine. It would be impossible to continue the trip writing in a “quality” level as in a printed format. This is nature of the blog. Sorry for the mistakes.
I hope this blog has helped you to travel from home, to see places you didn’t know and have made you feel like moving away from the sofa.
I’ve always liked images of window cleaners. Google has bought the building.
I’m working on a summary video with scenes that are not in the other videos, was not sure on doing it but I feel the blog is not complete without it. It’ll be here in two or three months .
See you soon.
Fernando
Finally, I see the total number of kilometres of the trip. I thought that they would be less than 40.000 but after reviewing some of them this is the final number. The kilometres are quite exact as I’ve been taking notes and numbers during the trip, now, I’ve estimated a short number of journeys have been estimated but less than 5%.
The post also has some curious statistics about places in which I’ve been sleeping
Here you have the first graphic with the kilometres per country:
Armenia and Kazajstan, I was telling you that I don’t consider them as visited in fact, appears as the ones with less kilometers.
Here in detail the kilometres per country:
Country | Kilómeters | Country | Kilómeters | Country | Kilómeters | ||
China | 7532 | Greece | 1819 | Jordan | 874 | ||
Turkey | 5347 | Turkmenistan | 1746 | Iraq | 810 | ||
Iran | 5212 | Montenegro | 1682 | Slovenia | 630 | ||
Uzbekistan | 3387 | Croatia | 1620 | BiH | 552 | ||
Kyrgyzstan | 1962 | Italy | 1590 | Armenia | 536 | ||
Syria | 1920 | France | 1324 | Spain | 474 | ||
Albania | 1903 | Georgia | 939 | Kazakhstan | 460 |
With the number of kilometres per country, they countries are nearly organized by country size.
During the post, to make it easy, as I’ve done during the blog, each time I’ve moved I’ve called it generically “transport”.
In the 42.319 kilometres, I don’t count the transports in the city (metro, tram, taxi…) neither the daily hours I’ve spent walking. This total can be considered inter urban distance travelled. I’ve just counted the walking journeys that have been needed to move from a place to another, which have not been too much.
I love train station.
The most curios transports have been:
A graphic with the number of times I´ve taken each transport.
I would have liked travelling more by train but in many places they don’t exist or they are too slow.
In addition, a list with the numbers.
Transport type | Kilometers | Transport type | Kilometers | Transport type | Kilometers | ||
Bus | 57 | 4×4 | 8 | Private Car | 5 | ||
Shared Taxi | 42 | Rented car | 6 | Hitchhiking | 5 | ||
Mini Bus | 35 | Boat | 6 | On foot | 5 | ||
Taxi | 26 | Kayak | 6 | Motorcicle | 1 | ||
Train | 22 |
The most used types have been:
And the last graphic with the kilometers per type of transport.
The bus wins but with not that many trains it get´s into second possition.
Tipo de transporte | Kilómetros | Tipo de transporte | Kilómetros | Tipo de transporte | Kilómetros | ||
Bus | 14715 | 4×4 | 2792 | Autostop | 204 | ||
Train | 7971 | Taxi | 2749 | Kayak | 160 | ||
Shared Taxi | 5424 | Private car | 1003 | Scooter | 88 | ||
Rented car | 3709 | Boat | 296 | On foot | 40 | ||
Mini Bus | 3160 |
The three longest transports:
On the 3709 kilometres done in rented cars I haven’t have a fine. A policeman forbid me one in Jordan and my friend Aitor was forbidden one in Montenegro using the technique of asking, why? So, where do I pay? And then what I do? How do I go to the place to pay?
I haven’t taken metrics on the hours on the transports but now I’d like to have it. As estimation, I can set the average speed to something between 70 and 85 kilometres per hour having a total of 500 to 600 hours.
If you see one of this, you have to jump into it for a picture!
Cleaning the road to Theth in Albania after the winter.
We move now to the numbers related to accommodation. Here are the numbers I’ve found more interesting:
Ushguli in the hight Svaneti. Incredibly arriving, incredibly seing it and incredible breathing it. That’s why it is UNESCO heritage.
To finish the post here is the list of the 41 UNESCO heritage places I’ve visited:
As soon as I have some time, I’ll prepare some data about the web to tell you. A novel has around 100.000 words. How many have I written? How many pictures? How many minutes of video produced?
I’ve been surprised by some of the numbers, but until next week I don’t tell you.
Soon back
Fernando
Mi friends are a bunch of bast.. pricks!, they have developed a theory to tease me. From them, I haven’t done the trip, on the contrary I’ve filled up a blog stick head to the computer screen with internet and Photoshop. The most stunning thing of this theory is that two independent group of friends have come up with it, hahahahha. Fortunately they don’t keep gong with it.
What I tell you today are some numbers I’ve been collecting during the trip. I’ve organized it in smaller groups so it’s easier to follow:
Here you have the list.
First a few numbers of the trip as a trip:
Some more numbers about countries:
Some numbers about the passport:
Backpack in Albania, when it had a month of travelling.
Backpack today. Where is that bright blue colour?
Some unclassified numbers:
My traffic light in the middle. Yes I stopped to get a picture.
Uncountable:
I’m actually not a big fan of face book, but it helps to communicate when you are away.
Some other mixed numbers to finish:
I think this is enough numbers for the day, I have two more posts with numbers, one about transport, final number of kilometres and related stuff and the last one about the blog and how many people have read this?
In a week you’ll have it here.
Have a good day.
Fernando
During all the trip I thought his would be a sweet and sour moment, like the food. But I’m happy. Happy for having done it, happy for having left home that day with the backpack and for having arrived to China, to Xian and Beijing ten months later, which is what I wanted.
During all the trip I thought this would be a sweet and sour moment, like the food. But I’m happy. Happy for having done it, happy for having left home that day with the backpack and for having arrived to China, to Xian and Beijing ten months later, which is what I wanted.
I’m happy for having been able to fulfil my objective, the bitterness of the trip finishing is very small, in one or another way all finishes, and this is a happy ending, like in the horrible Disney movies. All has gone fine, I’ve arrived and I smile. Even though a part of me wants “not to be happy”, doesn’t want the trip to finish, wants to keep being nomad.
As I knew this would be publish later I’m writing this on the plane. I couldn’t writ this a month later.
I was sure that I wouldn’t put a plane picture, how unmening. Once I saw the work of a photographer that was a retired Iberia pilot. He had carried his camera during his service years as pilot. Those were truly spectacular pictures.
In the morning I record the last images of the Beijing video so I haven’t had time to have breakfast so I’ve bought something in a smoky stall that threw a good smell while I was recording. It appears in the minute 1;48. It’s good, like a sandwich with meat and soya seeds that fall in every bite. I was hoping to fry by the terminal they built for the Olympics but I’m not lucky.
I love airports, searching for my fight reading quickly the screen and finding it surrounded by other attractive names, seeing people with their bags searching their destinations. I’m sensitive, if I see somebody sad and overwhelmed sad I feel pity and if I see someone happy I euphoric.
But if I like airports , I like planes even more. For me, a plane is a “non temporal window” in which there’s nothing you can do. Before a trip I always have thousand things to do and the plane is a place to relax in which I hardly ever do anything useful. Normally I fall asleep before taking off, when the big airplane moves slowly and clumsy to the runaway. By the time I’m awake, there are times I’ve been hours on the air.
If I’d flight direct I’d had flown by most of my route, of my silk road. Even it’s not the exact terrain I’ve gone by, I look down, I’m crossing Eurasia in the opposite way, gaining the seven hours I had lost the clock. I think in all the things I’ve done, in all the people I’ve talk to, on the times that I’ve sweat and silver, en all the things that have happened to me… I smile.
Madrid awaits me. This was one year ago, the day before departuring.
Coming back would be harder if my time would have finished, something would have happened back home or money had finished. It would have been even harder if I had had to come back after four months of travelling, that would have been horrible! The reason of coming back is strong and appealing. I’ve got a civil servant job organizing the town hall bill in my hometown… OK, I’m joking… The reason is better, it’s a live reason full of hope. In a few days I’m going to(I was going to) become an uncle. The rest of China can wait, I can’t miss this.
My vegetative plane state get’s altered by my accumulated memories during the trip. The images get amounted in my brain, moreover I’m hearing Radiohead and Thom Yorke’s voice messes my thoughts, the music puts them back in order, I don’t know how this will en up. Is like doing the trip in fast speed. One of my favourites sons sounds; “Idioteque”.
We make a stop in Moscow. The pilot announces that it’s -22 degrees. They put us the stairs instead of the finger and I have my coat in the luggage for not carrying it. I had always wanted to come to Moscow, but I have only 35 minutes to change flight and there are too many shops and too little amount of signs to find my gate.
Other while seeping and the pilot tells us that we arrive to Madrid, how weird!, he talks in Spanish.
How different this is from what I´ve seen the last months!
I’ve arrived, all is easy, I know where the underground is, how much it is, the stop where I have to change to another line and in what stop to go out. It’s 12 at night, my street is deserted as usual. They’ve change the business in the corner again. I have no keys, I didn’t know how long would I be away. I call the bell; “Hello. It’s me”.
I still have things to tell you about the trip, some interesting numbers, curiosities, and… maybe another video.
Soon more.
Fernando
I imagined beijing as an ant nest of incessant movement, millions of people stuffing everything day and night. I imagined lines for the nine million bicicles, smoky food stalls and constants trafic jams. And i wanted to make a video of it.
Beijing dissapointed me in that part, I haven’t find it such an ant nest, there were not that many people in the street neither so many cars, neither bicicles, but still the vide has became very good, very experimental. Let’s see if you like the style.
After the last image i went to the airport, after 10 months i get into a plane.
Soon the post of the come back with what was crossing my mind.
Fernando