Dmitry and Mila Brompton packing list


Starting from our very first ride, Dmitry and I were excited to think about what we would do differently and better. We are traveling fairly minimalist (at least compared to bike tourists who have full size bikes, camping gear, and so on ), but we were both excited to lighten the load even more. After the first few weeks in Thailand, our main topic of conversation while we rode turned to re-packing, what we could leave behind, what we would acquire, how we would reconfigure our bags. We weighed ourselves and bikes outside a 7/11 in Thailand: Dmitry+bike+luggage was 97 kg (214 lbs), Mila+bike+luggage was 102 kg (225 lbs). Meaning that since Dmitry is a little heavier than me, I was carrying way too much stuff. (My bike is also about one pound heavier than Dmitry’s bike – 28 pounds as opposed to 27 because my handle-bars are a little higher).  Luckily, our two weeks in the US for the holidays allowed us to completely change up our rigs – paring out some things (mostly clothes), adding a few others (mostly bike repair items).

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Western Ghats on a Brompton


Taking our fully loaded Brompton six-speed bikes from sea level up to 1700 meters (5600 feet) required us to briefly engage the Brompton "super-power" - a quick fold, and into the back of a three-wheeled taxi they went. We have been traveling the world on our Brompton bikes for four months, through Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, and Nepal, but the ride up to the Indian Hill Station town of Munnar, nestled amid emerald tea plantations, was our biggest challenge yet. The route took us to the peaks of the Western Ghats, a mountain range that spans the west coast of India.
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