Originally Posted by
Roughstuff
Go to a clinic which specializes in traveler medical care, give them a lost of your countries visited and tell them you will be doing it by bicycle, and then follow their advice.
+1 on going to a travel clinic and following their advice for immunizations, rabies and other things.
Prior to cycling across Russia, I did that with local travel clinic as part of the county health department. I listened to their advice and updated several immunizations but also decided I'd skip the rabies pre-shots and instead try to avoid getting bitten. My cycling partner did the same (at a different clinic in different country) and also avoided the shots.
At the end of each day of riding we would have our "water ritual" where we would stop in at a village or other place, talk with locals and see where we could get enough water for cooking, drinking and bathing. On September 1st, we were near town of Apxapa in the Russian far east. The road crossed a large bridge and there were guards watching that bridge. We asked them about water including river water and other drinking water. They offered to fill our drinking water and otherwise indicated to fill up from the river. They had two guard dogs there and as we were walking to the guard house, one of those dogs bit my riding partner in the back of the knee (a bit surprising since we assumed those dogs would be behaved with the guards there). Bandage quickly applied and we camped not far from there.
Riding partner had a restless night and we decided to go back to the bridge and observe the dogs. We also went back and took turnoff to Apxapa and took a rest day in town to observe things (not sure you can completely tell, but other than small clinic no medical place in this small town - if worst came to worst we'd be less than a day train ride from Xabarovsk). Fortunately, no bad effects. When riding partner returned home a month later, she went to local doctors and they still recommended some rabies shots just in case, so she still went through a painful set of shots.
So we probably got lucky. We did listen to medical advice an made our best judgment call based on that advice. As I remember it for me, it was a sequence of several shots that would help but still require attention if bitten.