Held hostage by Kazakh locals….. From the low lands of Almaty in Kazakhstan I headed to Esik and rode up to the top of a 2600m high Mountain range. Admittedly was mostly pushing my bike up steep gravel tracks, sometimes so steep I would slide back down and my loaded bike would fall to the…
Tag: andrea peebles
Why did I come here?
It was 9:30pm at night and I found myself in a town with no where to sleep. I had been driven to come here but I could not work out why. An hour earlier I had found a camping spot, admittedly it was next to a cemetery, but I’ve always thought ‘you’re not a real…
Walk turns into ‘Extreme Kazakh Adventure!’
3 days ago I invited my Kazakh host, Svetlana, to accompany me on a walk up the Almaty Mountains. Now Svetlana is originally from Russia, and is a stay at home Mum to 2 kids, currently learning English and has a Husband. She is beautifully sweet, kind and has manicured toe and fingernails. We clambered…
Be careful who you surround yourself with
Be careful – choose carefully – who you surround yourself with. What other people think and believe will also come true for you, for better or for worse. Story time: I arrived at a Hostel in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan and was happy to be greeted by another fellow cyclist. He groaned about the horrible ride in…
Crawling out from the Shadow
So I’m slowly coming out of my ‘can’t be fucked’ ness – apologies to those who I’ve offended – it is just a word – and really the only word I can find that adequately describes how I’ve been feeling. I could go on here about my word finding difficulties and severe memory issues that…
Now is the only time you have
I don’t know about you, but I sure needed this reminder today of something that happened to me nearly 6 years ago and the huge learning that I received…… As the ‘Silly Season’ can take hold of us, suck us into that vortex of consumerism and throw our values of good health and vitality to…
How do you afford it?!
What’s the number one question I get? And no, it’s not “Are you Single?” 😆 Hard to believe right? 🤣 It’s a question I get ALL the time “How can you afford to travel? To live the way you do?” “How do you afford it Andrea?!” Do you know what my no.1 reason is? The…
Listen to your Intuition – being drugged, robbed, attacked… and eating Watermelon
The village is awake early here in Kawkariek. It’s 5:15am, the sun is bright and the piercing groaning and rattling from the trucks shakes through into your bones. I pull on my bright pink body covering poncho, pull my dress down past my knees (to fit in in conservative Myanmar) and go to wander the…
Myanmar Mountains, bye- byes, and rationed power – welcome to Burma!
As I reluctantly handed over 20,000 kyat for a windowless room large enough for a single bed and a fan on the wall, I padlocked my bike downstairs went upstairs to have a shower. The only unlocked door was that of what seemed like a giant concrete bath full of water. The drain pipe was clogged…
Crossing into Myanmar
So my last few days in Thailand had me clinging to the edges of my tent at 1am to hold it down from a furious wind in pouring down rain; walking my laden bike hill after muddy hill through small, rustic villages in unrelenting, cold, rain, completely out of character for the season; frantically trying…
