We have received several inquiries asking if we are running ahead of schedule and we feel a route update and explaination is in order.

The “schedule” got blown out of the water way back in Austria and we have been since flying, more or less, by the seat of our pants. Some days you wake up and decide to make changes; some roads take you in a different direction.

When we had arrived in Zadar, Croatia we were supposed to cut in land towards Bosnia, but the route was ridiculously mountainous and would have been frigid. We had met Tobias at this point and really enjoyed his company and the comforts of the Adriatic Coast. Then when we got nailed by wind and rain on the ride to Zadar, we decided to hop a bus to the south of Croatia. Since we gained five days time in about six hours, we decided to ride through Albania into Greece instead of taking the ferry in Bar, Montenegro to Bari, Italy, and then to Patras, Greece.

We were planning on riding through Albania to Greece, but then our road turned into a river bottom and we went through Macedonia instead. When we got to Greece and back to the Euro and pissed off sheepard dogs and crappy roads, we knew we wanted to get to Turkey quickly to find a place to take a vacation for a week or so.

So maybe we are head of schedule, but in reality, we took our proposed route and cut it into pieces. We have probably reduced the overall distance, but that was not our driving force to begin with.

The blue line is the Actual Route to date. Tomorrow we head north to Istanbul