A world of beauty and diversity

A World of Beauty and Diversity World cyclotourists talk about their motivation

A view from Daman, a Nepalese settlement perched high on a ridge of the Himalayan front range.

From here, one can see eight of our planet's ten tallest peaks — from the Annapurnas to Everest.

Nepal, January 1998.

Photos and captions by Pierre Bouchard and Janick Lemieux

A Conversation with Pierre and Janick There’s a little bit of every touring cyclist in Pierre Bouchard and Janick Lemieux. Like all of us, the intrepid Canadian couple are adventurous, selfreliant, and driven by a burning desire to explore by bicycle. Their drive, however, seems to have a couple of extra gears.

Consider that for the last seventeen years, and somewhere in the range of 70,000 miles, they’ve been riding and taking photographs nearly nonstop on every continent on the planet — as seen, in part, in their photo essay “Andean Impressions” in the May 2006 issue of Adventure Cyclist).

We talked with Pierre and Janick at their home in Quebec City as they were preparing to leave for Bali and the third and final leg of their epic Ring of Fire tour that is taking them on an eight-year, 30,000mile tour of all the major volcanoes along the Pacific Rim. AC: How did you first get into bicycle travel?

Pierre: I used to spend summers in college backpacking in Europe, then I saw a couple flying by on their loaded bikes, they waved hello as they went by and I thought, ‘wow, that’s the way to go.’

So, after graduating from college in May 1990, I decided to spend two years before getting my masters riding in Europe and Africa. Then my friend Steve Bellemare and I decided, ‘To heck with the two years, let’s take five years and ride around the world.’ So we went from Canada back to Canada staying in the Northern Hemisphere.

Janick: I was nineteen when I met Pierre in Whistler. He was giving a slideshow on his trip and it opened my eyes to what you could do on a bike, it was a revelation to me that you could go so far away on a bicycle. So I started dreaming about it and then Pierre asked me to live on the road with him and I thought, ‘I’ll give it a try.’ That was ten years ago.

I’m not particularly athletic, so at first I was intimidated. But then I did a few day rides with Pierre and realized that you don’t have to be an Olympic athlete. And when you travel on a bike, it’s not a race.

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The crater lake of Irazu volcano The reward for a grueling climb from San Jose. We reached the summit the previous day so we could get an early-morning start to the volcano’s summit, which tends to disappear daily behind a curtain of heavy clouds. The never-ending descent to Carthago made our visit to Irazu taste even sweeter. Costa Rica, May 2000.

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Cascade Lakes Scenic Byway We stopped for lunch at a roadside turnout with snowy Mt. Bachelor gleaming in the distance. Skiing was great and the Sisters and Broken Top volcanoes looked sublime draped in their purest white.

Central Oregon, June 1999.

Sweet Spot Meeting on the porch of our idyllic oceanfront campsite where we delivered news and views from the oustide world to Chief Mowa and his fellow villagers on the east coast of the island of Epi, one of the New Hebrides. Vanuatu.

September 2003.

Tropical Paradise Camping on the island of Moorea, Tahiti's closest neighbor.

Remnants from the sinking volcanocrater walls, jagged and dramatic pinnacles stand like sentinels over the milky lagoon. French Polynesia, May 2003.

Feathered Friend A Mexican artist and eccentric proudly wearing one of his creations. Baja, Mexico, October 1999.

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Rejoicing the Chinese New Year Pedalling through Guangdong and Guangxi, I was continually stopped by people to take pictures, share a drink or meal, and even to acceptgifts of money. China, February 1996.

Pierre: She was not a cyclist at all, but like we say, ‘The most important muscle is between your ears,’ and she had that. So we decided to ride together through Asia’s hinterland and across the Tibetan Plateau.

That was in early winter, 1997.

AC: Good thinking. Pick an easy ride to start with. So, how did that go?

Pierre: It took nine months. We started in Siberia, through Mongolia, across the Plateau, the Himalayas, and ended in the Bay of Bengal, India. Up there it was usually around eight degrees Celsius during the day, most nights were minus 10 or 20. We rode as high as 5,225 meters, and went over twenty-seven passes in Tibet.

Then, in the tent one night, when it was fifteen-below, we said, ‘if we make it out of here alive, what are we going to do?’

Janick: We wanted to maintain our lifestyle and we loved mountains. But we wanted warmer ones.

Pierre: So we decided on the Ring of Fire. We’d get four continents, all types of weather and ecological zones, and we’d have a theme. We’d learn about one of the earth’s major formative processes, volcanism, and about many world cultures. Plus it’s great material for presentations.

AC: With all of the riding you do, how do you earn a living?

Pierre: Since 1997, all of our money comes from selling stories and photos to magazines. I’ve contributed to Pedal magazine for eighteen years. Every second issue gives an update on our travels. We’re also regular contributors to Velo Mag. And we’re getting free gear now because of the exposure in mags. We’re good testers for them, because we are so hard on the equipment.

AC: What’s the hardest ride you’ve ever done?

Pierre: The most physically challenging thing I’ve done on a bike is crossing the Tibetan Plateau in the winter. If there’s such a thing as stretching beyond your limits, I did it there.

When I find myself in trouble, I ask myself, ‘am I in worse trouble than I was then,’ and 14

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Northern Vietnam Miao-Yao women dressed in traditional garb. Vietnam, February 1996.

Ni-Vanuatu men curious about the strange couple on over-burdened bikes. Vanuatu, August 2003.

Graceful Mayan girls reluctantly pose for the insistent and unnerving visitor. Guatemala, February 2000

Chopstick lessons in the twin homonymous provinces of Shaanxi and Shanxi. China, June 1995.

A Tibetan man with a contagious smile, greets us on the Friendship Highway. Tibet, December 1997.

Hmong kids in a hill-tribe hamlet nested high up in the mountains.

March 1996.

Wild Desert Tracks (Above) Primitive tracks of the northern Gobi Desert shift constantly making road maps less than reliable. When in doubt, we’d wait for a sharp-eyed herdsman and ask for directions.

This led to invitations to drink airag (fermented mare’s milk) and visits to the family ger where warm hospitality would inevitably be lavished on us.

Mongolia, August 1997.

Tibet’s Chengdu-Lhasa road (Below) We hoped to avoid travelling during winter on this North-South crossing of Asia’s hinterland but we quickly realized that it would be a cold and snowy ride when we reached the summit of the first of a series of twentyseven mountain passes. Tibet, November 1997.

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the answer is always no, that still sets the standard.

Janick: The Tibetan Plateau was my first bicycle journey and after that I had nothing left to prove to myself. After that everything came easy, but nothing was harder and I’ve never been sicker. I was innocent about it and figured that was how hard it was supposed to be.

AC: What do you love most about bicycle travel?

Pierre: It’s the best way to see the world. You’re totally immersed in the environment — you feel it with your skin, you smell it, you hear it. I love camping and being outdoors.

The most peaceful way to arrive in a foreign community is on a loaded bike.

Everyone comes to see you. They’re curious, they want to know what you’re up to. They’re not threatened. They know you got there by pushing those pedals, so maybe it tells them a little about your intentions. Then they think it must have been hard for you to get there and maybe you need something to eat, or a shower.

I’m still studying philosophy like I did in school. But now I’m studying what a French philosopher calls the great book of the world.

Caravan Contemporary Chinese-era Tibetan rig traveling the dusty Friendship Highway. Tibet, December 1997.

Stormy weather ahead Riding from one coconut grove to another around Karkar, a circular island off the town of Madang, on New Guinea’s north coast. The heart of the island is an overlapping double caldera animated by a lethal and explosive volcano, Mt. Bagiai. Papua New Guinea, January 2004.

AC: Out of all the places you’ve been, what’s your favorite?

Pierre: I love the Andean altiplano.

In Bolivia, northern Chile, and Argentina.

It’s challenging and the most surreal. I love that place. My favorite country is Indonesia. You could say I’m an Indonesia-philiac.

Janick: Mexico … and all of South America, or Chile. I love Japan. Indonesia is always great … I mean I can just go on and on.

AC: What are you guys going to do when the Ring of Fire ride is over?

Janick: We’re going to write a book about the trip, with lots of photos. We want to give presentations in Europe, too.

We want to focus on sharing this trip for a while … but not for more than two years. We still haven’t ridden across Africa.

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