Touring - How far off the beaten path have you taken your touring bike?

I like the idea of touring in remote, unusual locations. That is as long as it is safe. On one of my tours a woman member actually biked from St. Petersburg, Russia through Siberia and Mongolia and into China. Think her final destination was Shanghai.
How far off the beaten path have you cycled? Some of our Aussie friends have cycled across the Australian outback from coast to coast. That has some appeal.?
Sometime in my life I will ride from sea to sea, not 100 percent sure which continent, I will choose. Soon our nephew will reside in Perth, Australia . That is a possibility.... Many of us aspire to that? That would be pretty well off the beaten path.

So far all I've been able to do on my touring bike is from Portland, Oregon to Boring Oregon. Woo Hoo.

Actually a nice ride, but I do aspire to ride coast to coast somewhere sometime. I would love to just ride and ride all over the world.

I'm thinking about a round the world tour- but that takes a lot of money, time, and gumption. I lack two of the three characteristics!

I have so many places I've gone, and so many more places I'd like to go. I think my only real fear is that I'd be alone, and if I get in trouble, I may not be able to get myself out.

This woman travelling from Russia to China- it must have been nice- that's a long ride. How long did she take, and do you know anything about her route or what time of year she went?

I would prefer to do a trip of this magnitude with a buddy- and someone I really enjoyed spending time with. Otherwise, I could see it getting pretty tedious really fast!

Probably within the next 5 years, I'll actually take a year or two to do it.

I can ride coast to coast in one day...... thing is it's about 80km....

Brendon
:beer:

This person crossed Nevada with us last September. Seems like she said it took her a little over 3 months.. Recall she saw Lake Baikal. And then into Mongolia and Peking. A rough outline of her tour. She is to do Nevada with us again this year. Find out more about this trans Siberia tour this coming September.

This past autumn I moved back to Manitoba, which is off the beaten path for most and just completed my first test run on my new touring bike. I cycled about 390 km. in total from Winnipeg to the east through an area called Whiteshell Provincial Park and back. I have a few of these short trips planed and hope to do one every week or so, that is until I start working. Most of these trips will be to areas that have a unique topography and I will try to avoid the prairie as much as possible. I bought some 1-250,000 topographic maps of the region and I think I can keep myself entertained with this part of the world for a while and I can always explore neighbouring provinces and the northern US states. I have no around the world trips planed as of yet, however if I cannot find the right job by October I may re-consider and load-up my bike head to some place warm!

After boating up the yangtze, train upto Chengdu and bus to Xiahe we decided to get our wheels dirty. We had only an old chinese army map thing, and a 1972 Communist party plan/manifesto with chinese characters and a map in the back of Northen Sichuan to guide us from Xiahe to Langmusi.

The trip took us twelve days (approx450km of unsealed yaktrack) and three of those we saw NOBODY nor ANYTHING suggesting humans had been there. Even the yak track ran out. Accordingly to later research we reached a plateau about halfway through this trip that touched 4100m. Nothing but tundra and mud as far as the eye could see. Eerie.

I just went across the Navajo reservation in Northeastern Arizona. To beat some of the traffic going to Lake Powell, I took a 9 mile shortcut on a bumpy dusty dirt road that was nowhere. It was pretty remote at times, though I did ride with some other tourists when I got to Utah. I took one of the more main roads to be safer, but I would like to go back and take the roads that absolutely nobody but locals travel on.