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:

• 111 published posts.
• 95.492 words written. The other day I told you I had check how many words could approximately have a novel, and it’s around 100.000. None of my language teachers would have ever bet on me to write so much.
• 95.492 words translated. If any one was wondering, yes, I did translate it personally. And doing a bilingual blog is something I’ve regretted many times…
• Between 1 and 1.5 hours is what it has taken me to translate each post.
• Total of 8 hours to do each post.
• 40 hours dedicated to create and maintain the blog itself
• 928 hours of work to complete what you see here now. Wait! Still pending the time to do the videos but I’ll tell you about it in the videos section.
• 1279 pictures published
• 15.280 pictures taken, this number is after the review done every day to remove the useless ones, around a 25%.
• 385 gigabytes used to store the pictures and the videos.

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:

• 24 videos done.
• Total of 96 minutes.
• Each minute of video has taken me 3 hours. The editing work of videos is laborious by itself and my computer is not powerful enough for it so it’s been even slower.
• 2914 clips of videos taken. Those little images that have become the edited videos later.

Statistics about the videos:

• 18.236 seen videos. This number surprises me as it keeps growing.
• The videos are in Vimeo (The place with best quality), You Tube (where I’ve been taken out the sound of some due to copyright) and Daily Motion (to be in the three big ones). There are some videos in other specific sites also.
• The most liked videos are:
  – “Theth. The hidden Albania” with 4587. This shows something curious, the unity of the Armenian community, they have been sending the link from blog to blog.
  – “Greek Water“. This is the kayak video I did when I paddled in Greece, it has 1711 views as it’s in the Kayak Session magazine web page, one of the best white water magazines now a days.
  – “Albania. Not every day” and “Armand River” has nearly 1000 views.

Interacting with the architecture.

During the trip I’ve dismissed threevideos:

• One I recorded with my sister in Greece about the Delphi Oracle. I was doing as I was going to the Oracle to ask about my trip. The future teller, that in this case was called oracle straight forward, was my sister. She had a very passive attitude against me telling me very loose things about my questions about the trip. I wanted to know if I’d arrive China but she was not answering. It was a bit of a mess and we never went to the Delphos oracle so had to be dismissed
• In China I started to record a video called “Chinese Food”, it consisted on me eating all the Chinese food for a month telling the camera what it was, but during some days of a cold I starting feeling the video didn’t make sense and I gave up. Now I think it could have been a very good video. For other trip to China.
• One about how my backpack was structured.

Offices.

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:

• 20.627 visits.
• 121 countries have visited my blog. AWESOME. No mater how long you’ve work with internet, there are things that are always surprising.
• It started with around 700 visits a month and now I have around 2.700.

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:

• 100% legal software used.
• This must compensate the music I’ve taken for free.
• I’ve used 121 internet connections to do the blog.
• 9 countries had internet restrictions, the strongest: China.
• I’ve used 5 ways to access all I needed.
• The mini-laptop has survived. I was not very sure about it, I imagined myself buying a new one in the middle of the trip.

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.

Very early in the morning.

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:

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:

• The day that after crossing the border between Turkey and Georgia I hitchhiked with a nipo-suiss couple and a bus full of crazy Iranians got us. I enjoyed so much I did a video about it.
• Old red Mercedes taxi in Albania that as soon as we were in offered us a bottle of mineral water refilled with raki (strong homemade alcohol) that he had handy on the door, why?
• The most unpleasant journey was in China, going from Turpan to Lanzhou. The hotel played us not issuing the train tickets and we were all night sitting in the most uncomfortable sit ever built.
• The most memorable trip on boat that has been the one in the Koman Lake in Albania where I was not very sure where I was going, it was pouring rain and when I arrived to the other side of the lake I had to stay, as there was no ferry back. A huge feeling of being lost and a huge feeling of “I don’t mind”.
• One of the nicest journeys was the way to Mestia in the high Svanety north of Georgia. The journey was through an impressive canyon until the villages with watch towers started to pop up. I loved it even it was in one of the busiest minuses ever and after many hours.
• On the kayak, I’ve done 160 kilometres in five countries: Montenegro, Albania, Greece, Turkey and Iran. From all I keep fantastic memories, maybe the most different was the one in Iran, a remote place. A kind of place I wanted to go when I was planning the trip three years ago but that I couldn’t really imagine how it would be.
• Awesome the hitchhike I did to get to the Chinese border in Kyrgyzstan where I got for the first time in my life into a trailer.

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.

The most used types have been:

• Bus with 57 transports
• Shared taxi with 42, an interesting way of moving that doesn’t exist in what we call the civilized world. You go to a parking and a taxi is filled up with other people that share the same destination. It has nearly all the advantages of gong in a car and nearly none of the inconvenience. The price is a bit more than a bus, but takes shorter to arrive and it’s a LOT cheaper than bringing your own car. And you don’t have to drive! We should institute it.
• 35 minibuses have terrorized me, mainly in the Caucasus area. Is the transportation system I’ve liked the less. Filled up with people, you see nearly nothing through the windows. Also it’s dangerous for the extra weight and the speed they put on those vans reforested with seats. However, cheap and fast is.

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.

The three longest transports:

• 1480 kilometres in a bus crossing the Taklamakan desert. Here I added another two more hours to arrive to Turpan making it a 25 hours trip.
• 1378 kilometres with the rented car with Silvia and Aitor when they came to visit me and to paddle around there.
• 1191 kilometres of the last transport on train from Xian to Beijing

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:

• 129 is the number of different places in which I’ve slept.
• 16 nights sleeping on trains or buses, some more comfortable than others. I’ve tried to avoid travelling by night as you don’t see how the landscape changes.
• 145 is the total number of places I’ve sleep in adding both. That’s why it’s not strange that when I arrived home and I saw my be, I didn’t even got flustered, it was simply another bed to sleep in. Two days later I realized that it was my bed and I was supposed to have missed it.
• 2.28 stay per place, going according with my intention of moving every two days to avoid packing and un-packing.
• 2.03 if we take into account the nights travelling.
• There are several places in which I’ve had to change accommodation during my stay. Tashkent was the worst as I had no reservation in advance (as I nearly never do) so I had to go to a 50 Euro hotel, then to a 35, then to a 20 and then to a 10 Euro as I wanted.
• I’ve shared room 83 times, the preferred option as it’s cheaper, however a room for yourself is a much enjoyed thing for the peace and the space.

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:

• Albania: Butrint, historical centre of Berat and Gjirokastra.
• Bosnia and Herzegobina: Old Bridge Area of the Old City of Mostar.
• China: The Great Wall, Mogao Caves, Temple of Heaven and Imperial Tombs of the Ming and Qing Dynasties.
• Croatia: Old City of Dubrovnik, Historic Complex of Split with the Palace of Diocletian, Plitvice Lakes National Park and Stari Grad Plain.
• France: Bordeaux Port de la Lune.
• Georgia: Upper Svaneti.
• Greece: The Acropolis, Meteora and the Paleochristian and Byzantine Monuments of Thessalonika.
• Iran: PersepolisE, Esfahan and Tabriz Historic Bazaar Complex.
• Italy: Venice and its Lagoon, Pisa, Vatican City and Historic center Rome.
• Syria: Ancient City of Damascus, Site of Palmyra, Ancient City of Bosra, Ancient City of Aleppo and Qal’at Salah El-Din.
• Turkey: Historic Areas of Istanbul.
• Uzbekistan: Itchan Kala, Historic Centre of Bukhara and Samarkand.
• Montenegro: Natural and Culturo-Historic Region of Kotor and Durmitor National Park.
• Jordan: Petra.
• Turkmenistan: Ancient Merv and Kunya-Urgench.
• Spain if we want to count it and to make some marketing of my hometown: Burgos Cathedral.

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