French Cyclist to Ride 19,000 km Over 14 Mountain Passes

Bastien Rebotton, 29, will leave his home in Savoie, France, on July 6. His route to Vietnam is 19,000 km long. Rather than take the shortest line, he has mapped a course through 14 mountain passes above 2,000 meters, ending at O Quy Ho Pass in Lao Cai province on Sept. 24.

The idea started after a car hit him about a year ago. He said the accident made him stop putting off the trip. Now he expects to average 200 km a day. The hardest part of planning was not the altitude or the distance. It was finding border crossings that let cyclists through. That pushed his original 17,000-km route to 19,000, including a 1,000-km detour through Mongolia.

He will skip Russia and Iran by taking a one-hour flight across the Caspian Sea. From there, he rides again. He carries cameras and plans to post real-time updates on his personal website. Instead of camping every night, he wants to stay with local families. He asks each host to teach him a traditional saying from their region.

The first climb is the Iseran Pass at 2,764 meters in the French Alps. The highest point will come later at Haizi Shan Pass in Sichuan, China, which sits at 4,685 meters. He has already done self-supported cycling trips across Europe. This one is longer and harder by design. He said mountain roads offer the best scenery and the most direct way to see how local life actually works.

His route crosses Istanbul, the grasslands of Mongolia, and multiple climate zones. He ends in Vietnam, where he will spend about a month before deciding what comes next.