(This is a placeholder writeup with a few photos, perhaps I’ll come back some day and flesh it out…)

I spent a week cycling the length of Korea (~400 miles from Seoul to Busan), as a fully supported** ride with an organized tour group and about 20 strangers (though a few I’d met on a bike tour in Vietnam the previous year). By the end I felt exhilarated, challenged, stimulated, and full of great food.

Korea’s a sleeper hit when it comes to cycling infrastructure, I’m surprised I hadn’t heard more about it. We rode multiple days on paved fully separated bike paths, starting from the heart of Seoul, with infrastructure like this:

I don’t think I’ve even seen this in Denmark or The Netherlands: a traffic circle at the intersection of four different paved cycling paths outside Seoul– no cars here!

Clean bathrooms periodically along the bike path (especially on the first two days of riding out of Seoul):

We saw so many young Korean cyclists out riding in groups on these paths.

The riding was smooth, but the days were challenging: about 55-80 miles/day with 1500’-5800’ in elevation gain (Korea gets quite hilly). More challenging than the raw amount of elevation gain, many of the roads were cut directly up hills at 10-16% grades for significant periods of time, rather than following more gradual contours as I’m used to at home. In all, this route was about 400 miles with 19k ft of elevation gain:

The cities we traveled through or stayed overnight in were interesting as well– from hot springs to towns known for their pheasant, crab, or ancient tombs:

Perhaps some day I’ll find time to write more about the route, the riding, and the cultural experience, but this is a start. After this, I was immediately off to Japan for a longer ride…

Footnotes:

**In this case, “fully supported” included:

  • The tour company had pre-scouted a route in detail (including working with local cycling guides), booked our hotels for each night, and provided us with maps / GPX tracks.
  • Each evening there was a “ride briefing” in the hotel for the next day, highlighting any unusual challenges, difficult sections of navigation, and whether it was generally an easier or harder day.
  • A guide drove a van to the next hotel each morning carrying our bags (one duffel each), so we just needed to ride with whatever we needed for the day.
  • The company even set up a roadside tent ~midway along the route each day with lunch, snacks, and big jugs of water to refill our bottles, because on some of our ride days we didn’t pass through towns with open restaurants at convenient times [in practice, I would have been fine finding my own lunch or packing one, but this was certainly a nice perk and made it easier to ride long days!]
  • The van was also available for emergency shuttling of people– if you have a major bike breakdown you can’t recover from or are having health issues, you can call them. I didn’t use it on this tour, but even knowing it exists as a safety net made  it less daunting to tackle a lot of challenging riding days back to back.

I enjoy the process of planning routes and tours, but it does take a lot of time, and there’s no substitute for someone scouting routes on the ground in person. Despite the tour cost, it was nice to let go for once and just show up in Korea with my bike and gear knowing there would be a plan.

We were still each free to ride at our own pace, with others or alone– there wasn’t a guide-on-a-bike we were following each day. I enjoyed this freedom (I like to make a lot of sightseeing stops or short detours) and don’t think I’d be interested in a tour where there’s a required pace and I felt people were waiting for me. Sometimes I would ride with others, but about half the time I enjoyed just riding on my own… I’d often get an earlier start, ride casually, and get passed by other riders over the course of the day (or, as someone passed me, I’d get inspired to speed up to stay with them and then stop together for a coffee or so on).

Later Recap / Conclusions**:**

Looking back at a paper trip journal years later, some my highlights and learning, in a quick list in no particular order:

  • Taking a city bus within Seoul– getting much more of a feeling of the city looking out the windows vs. taking the subway.
  • Somehow I got a reputation as a “local food finder” among other riders during the trip, with pressure to find interesting cafe stops along the road or restaurants in whatever city we spent a rest day in :)
  • The 7-11 “Jeonju BiBimBap” is my favorite convenience store triangle gimbap (unlike Japanese onigiri, sauce/flavored rice)
  • Flan at Hills & Europa in Seoul
  • Eating pheasant in many different ways in Suanbo
  • I loved the frequent theme of “this town is known for ______” (pheasant, crab, rice, etc), and it being legitimately great
  • Hwangnamppang (pastry filled with red bean paste) in Gyeongju
  • The range of pastries at Do Not Disturb cage in Gyeongju
  • The first few days of astounding separated bike infrastructure riding East and Southeast from Seoul…
  • Many coffeehouses didn’t open until 10 or 11AM (more of a lunch break place?), it was somewhat difficult to find a cafe with coffee along the road early in the morning.
  • Going to an evening concert in a local park by old-school K-pop stars from the 90s and 2000s (from translating posters and looking at photos, I think they were So Chan Whee, Park Mi-Kyung, and two others) was a great decision, even if I was tired after a lot of riding. Note to self: always say yes to events / festivals that happen to be going on where I’m traveling.
  • I learned a lot about Korean hot spring / sauna etiquette and processes, won’t bother to jot it all down here.
  • Had my first broken chain in a long time, standing up and pushing too hard on a 15% grade? It had been long enough that I didn’t think to have a master link with me during the day (and had forgotten that it’s not as practical to press new pins into a modern chain). I fortunately had a chain tool and was able to take out a few links of chain near the master link and re-join it, and limp along with a shorter chain and reduced set of usable gears until that evening, and was carrying a whole spare chain in my duffel bag that had been shuttled to the hotel.
  • I’d read about Korea’s rapid growth/modernization, but I really had to experience it to begin to appreciate it. The cities felt very young. Seeing a small city out in the country that consists of a few ~30 story skyscrapers surrounded by rolling fields and gardens (no sprawl) is surreal. Major bike infrastructure built across the country by top-down direction.
  • I felt more culture shock and initial disorientation than I expected, given I’d traveled to many other countries across Asia in the past (and even to Korea for work, though that was a brief trip spent mostly in offices and factories, speaking English). Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot to learn and pick up on, so many little details were very different from home.
  • Getting dinner with a small group of riders (3-5) is a better way to connect and get to know people that a big group dinner.
  • Had a great discussion with one of the guides about topics related to Expedition Behavior. The simple phrasing “the point of travel is it’s not like home” is an interesting way to set expectations (for yourself, or for a group you’re leading). I’ll have to think about this more.
  • Packing into a Korean photobooth (optionally with costumes) is a great icebreaker with a group of strangers.