Sichuan – the best way to see it, is to ride it.
Check out the state of my front disk brake pads. Two massive descents on the way to Daocheng at 3750 m altitude did this. Amazingly the pads just kept on going, and going for three agonising days right up until my approach to the town of Daocheng. I couldn’t believe it, it [...]
“You won’t find Shambhala on any map”
And so I set off to find more clues on my quest to learn more about Shambhala. I ride north west from Lijiang and make my way to the beautiful Lugu lake before crossing over to Sichuan province. After two days riding in heavy rain I find a sign which says “Welcome to Shangri-La”! I [...]
A hidden valley – but for how long?
It’s not often I feel sad to leave a place when riding my bike. Usually I’m super excited to get cracking but last week I left a beautiful tea horse road node village and felt, well, sad.
I intend to go back in 5 weeks and will write more about it then. I was lucky enough [...]
Beat Heim in Australian Mountain Bike magazine
For anyone who is thinking of packing their bike up in a box and heading off on holiday with their pride & joy, check out my Beat Heim interview in this month’s AMB magazine, on the shelves now!
The guys did a great job (nice work Jordan) on the layout as always. Hopefully some of Beat’s [...]
How do we get across those mountains then?
Tim was worried that if we were left out here for the night, we would surely perish, Andy was pretty quiet and I began to really feel the cold. 45 minutes went by and still nothing. I was starting to shiver now and I was beginning to come around to Tim’s thinking.
Australian Geographic sponsor Search for Shambhala
I’m proud to announce that the Australian Geographic Society have come on board for the Search for Shambhala solo mountain bike expedition this year! The Australian Geographic Society support community, research and adventure projects throughout Australia and overseas and is an invaluable source of knowledge and inspiration.
I applied for a grant from AG late last [...]
The Dirty Nomad e-magazines
Over the next few weeks I’ll be popping some of my published and unpublished features on this site for any cyclists out there who might be interested in planning their own long distance off road mountain biking adventure. Some of the e-zines will be straight out of the magazines and I hope to find some [...]
Kona COG publish
Kona Mountain Bike’s funky new blog, COG, features a primer of the Tour de Timor story this week and can be seen on the following link; http://cog.konaworld.com/archives/1646
Here’s a photo I took of Team Kona Australia rider Campbell Townsend on the King of the Mountain (KOM) on stage 4. Melbourne based rider Campbell rode his Kona [...]
Mushypea on Ricoh’s Facebook page
Mushypea is featured on the Ricoh Facebook site.
Click on the photo below to head straight there ….
“Dave Turner is an Adventure Cyclist and Freelance writer/photographer. He writes and photographs his journeys for mountain bike magazines in the UK, USA, Australia and New Zealand, hoping to inspire others to grab their bikes and go in search [...]
Rubbing shoulders with a world leader
Here’s a picture of Ivan and I with President Jose Ramos-Horta at the Presidential Palace after our interview in Dili. I’m writing up the 8 questions we asked the 60 year old Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and I must say for our first interview, Ivan and I did great! We’ll be popping some of the [...]
Fun re-living the Tour
It’s Saturday morning and I just got from the beach and Bacinos coffee shop in Manly. I brought the Bacino boys some Timorese coffee we picked up from Dili which seemed to be a hit!
I’m going through the 600 photos and notes I made on the trip today and putting together some stories together for [...]
Back from Timor-Leste
Wow, what an amazing trip! Ivan and I got back late last night after almost two weeks traveling and racing our bikes around Timor-Leste. I wasn’t able to blog on the actual trip as I was riding as well as media so I will try to get some photos and info up here over the [...]
Touch down in Dili, the capital of Timor-Leste
We have only been here one day but so far we have:
Sneaked our way in to a press conference for the Timorese press at the Presidential Palace,
Met the race organisers Michael, Mel, Joel and Shaun,
Built up the bikes
Spent the night in a container.
We are now heading west on our own leaving the UN cotton wool [...]
Tour de Timor 23-28 August 09
Where is Timor?
What started as a bit of a joke has suddenly become a weird mountain bike race reality. The Knitting Circle, (Alex, Ferg, Ivan and I) will once again unite, this time in East Timor of all places to race the Tour de Timor. It looks nuts and is probably the most stupid thing [...]
