This Lithuanian couple is chasing summer on their motorcycles. They left home on two BMW’s GS in October 2016. Their plan? To return in spring 2018.
Apart from some bad weather in Kazakhstan, everything has been swell!
2WheeledAdventures - Chasing Summer on motorbike
Motorcycle Diaries
Like most of us Asta and Linas are very keen on sunny days. But unlike most of us they are enjoying a two-year-long world-trip summer!
They met each other at work. Asta and Linas worked for the same company, Linas as an IT-professional and Asta in the sales & marketing department. After a couple of day trips on their motorcycles they realised they were the perfect ‘partners-in-crime’, as Asta puts it.
With a shared passion and a dream to discover vast horizons, it didn’t take them too long to plan their overland trip. There is thin line between dream and reality. It is called will-power. Lucky for them they had enough courage to pursue it.
“We both had this dream before we even met each other. When we started to organise three-week-long motorcycle trips with friends we experienced a feeling of well-being, especially when we were roaming freely through unknown places. At some point we realised that there was almost nothing that held us from travelling so we decided to make our dream come true. We calculated our savings, sold whatever we could to get more funds and changed the status of this whole undertaking from ‘dream’ to ‘plan’”.
After 416 days on the road, 68000 km, 5257 litres of fuel, 106 nights of camping under the stars and 23 bikes dropped, they’re now in Dubai, halfway. They have had a blast so far, and there is only one thing they would do differently: take some Spanish lessons.
Asta: “Latin American countries are amazing and local people have a lot to tell. We did learn some basic Spanish on the go, but it wasn’t enough to truly get to know the people and their lives. We realised that our scarce knowledge made us miss out on a lot. As our route went through South America, North America, Asia and some Central Asian (or Silk-road) countries we only needed to speak three languages to understand the culture and to communicate with the locals – Spanish, English and Russian.”
“To have the opportunity to see the real world is priceless, it’s eye-opening and it’s shocking”
Having the opportunity to see so many different cultures and lifestyles can definitely be an eye-opener. Reality is not the reality we know. The latter is what will most likely fade away as you move further into the world.
As Linas says: “Traveling and experiencing the world is one thing that enriches a person and changes one for the better. The world is full of good people; we were lucky to have met so many amazing people along the way. People who, no matter how poor they were, were trying to give us something and help us in any way they could. It saddened me to see the living conditions of many people and their animals, in different corners of the world. It made us appreciate our lives more. And it triggered the question: what we can do differently to make the world a better place.”
That knowledge is definitely one of the nicest souvenirs to take home. For many travellers, going back home can be a challenge; many spend months inside a bubble, fighting with routine, agendas and
responsibilities. The notion that you can actually take this experience back home and use it not only to change your life but also the lives of those around you, can make the process much easier and more meaningful. For Asta and Linas, there will be for sure no hard feelings when going back home.
“We like the idea of going home”, Asta says, “It’s not that we want to go home already, but we look forward to returning. We left for this adventure because we wanted to enhance ourselves, experience the world and let that experience change us for the better. The only way to see how much this trip has affected us is to go back to the place that we left. We’re very curious! You could see it as going home with a gift. We have gathered so much life experience that we are returning with a different mind set.”
We hope this feeling stays with them for the second half of their journey and we wish them a safe ride back home. By the time they will come back it will probably be spring, which will leave the summer free for someone else to pursue it.
