Mark Kolody, Canada – Inside the Balkans Mountains tour (Romania, Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina) – August 2015,

When I arrived home last night, my wife had warmly welcomed me back with an iced glass of my favourite Japanese lager. I shared it with her, but truth be told, my heart wasn’t into it. It wasn’t just the same without the feeling of being sticky, sweaty, and salty, peeling off gear in the baking heat of the Balkans after a long, glorious day of riding.

This morning, too, I woke up just before 6am – the ghost of a practical joke haunting me – and made a pot of coffee. Alone, I worked my way through it, reflecting on how odd the sensation was of not sharing the intimate, disorienting moments of the morning with a group of strangers who’d become treasured travelling companions.

I suspect that the normalcy of life will return in time, but the incredible luxury of not knowing what day it is or what country I’m in, with my only responsibilities being keeping the bike on two wheels and maintaining a thirst for end-of-day beers, is a hard sensation to let go of.

I tried to describe what it was like to ride through majestic vistas and sweeping mountain roads of the five countries to my wife. (She’s very patient with my stories). The challenge I had, however, is that it’s hard to sum up such an incredible experience and encapsulate it into simple words. How to describe the sudden cool moisture and dappled light of a forrest road after hours of baking sunlight in full armour? Or the gleeful (somewhat guilty) experience of cue-jumping 7 kilometres of cars to get through a border control? Or turning a hard corner and seeing a breathtaking landscape open up? Words exist for such things, but they don’t do the living of them any justice…

Thank you all for being such wonderful companions, skilled riders, and good natured partners in this tour. Thank you Cristian for the endless things you did (often out of sight) to make it so that our experience riding through the Balkans was consistently sensational and without concern or worry.