Favorite Pictures of the World Bicycle Tour
As a professionally trained artist, Scott’s photos have been featured in newspapers and websites around the world, such as: featured on NewZealand.com, used by the Australian Parliament, the Tanzanian Ministry of Health, The Malawi Association UK, The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle and much more. Scott’s photos are available for sharing with credit or purchase for commercial use. More info.
Below are some of my favorite pictures of my trip, featured in newspapers all over the world. (Of course, I’m saving the best of the best for the book and slideshows.) I took over 4000 photographs, most of them using a 35mm film Canon Rebel, sending the rolls of film home one by one in the mail. My camera survived all the crashes, vibrations and humidity. Unfortunately, the lens started to malfunction. I think I got it wet during my trip to Victoria Falls where the pounding waterfalls make a constant mist.
My Favorite Photograph
The bicycle that went around the world
The before and after picture
Funny Road Signs
Below is one of my favorite subject matters, though I don’t even know why — misspelled and misleading and just weird signs.
More Favorites from the World Bicycle Tour
Sorry, this organization of pictures is a bit outdated now. You can also view my photo albums on Flickr. Update 2020: Darn. Flickr is also out of date. They changed their rules. Well, you can always hire Scott for a slideshow, in person or virtually.
 The before and after picture. |  The bicycle. The bicycle. Plus 60 pounds of gear, plus food and water. Sani Pass, Lesotho. After climbing 1600 meters, sometimes up an unbelievable 33-36% grade dirt road at times surpassing the Guinness Book of World Records’s Steepest Hill in Dunedin, New Zealand, and it’s not even paved. |  Weather. The same location as the last picture after getting caught in a blizzard. 18 inches of snow. |
 The tent. An ideal campsite on the top of a mountain in Lesotho. Notice: The tent is pitched through the bicycle to prevent thieves from stealing my bicycle while I slept. |  The kitchen. Preparing coffee while surrounded by African bees. |  The bicycle dashboard. A common vantage for 4 years. |
 Water. Filtering about 12 liters of fresh water per day was a chore that could take hours. It took me two years to realize that I could just siphon my water through the filter. |  Hotels. About once a week I would get a hotel to wash, mend and maintain. |  Mountains. Climbing my first mountain pass in California. Only thousands of mountains to go including the Rockies, Andes and Himalayas. Photo by Dennis Snader. |
 Cycling through Yosemite National Park |  Dennis moving house. Often our camps were flooded by rain or overrun by pests like loudmouth tourists. |  Monoliths. El Capitan, Yosemite, California. |
 A roadside restaurant and a flat tire. |  Chili peppers drying on the road in Baja, Mexico |  Shrines. One of tens of thousands of roadside shrines I rode past. |
 Scenery. Decorated volcano. Baja, Mexico. |  Deserts. Cacti forest. Baja, Mexico. The daily temperature in the shade exceeded 120ºF (50ºC). |  Oddities. Drunken monkey. An alcoholic pet monkey steals a bottle of rum, gets drunk, falls out of the rafters, dies, and gets stuffed. |
 Monuments. Tzintzuntzan (hummingbird) Ruins – reconstructing reface surface with volcanic rock. |  Food. Meat hanging out to dry, Dennis ate at this restaurant before looking around the corner. |  Wildlife. The Monarch Butterfly Reserve, Mexico. Hundreds of monarchs clinging to a pine tree. |
 Roads. One of many rough but equally beautiful roads. Why is that the bigger and smoother the road, the uglier the scenery and the dirtier the air? |  Art. Oaxaca, Southern Mexico. Animal wood carving souvenirs. |  Work. This man walks to the top of the mountain every day, then rolls his cart of wood to the village below. |
 Language. My Spanish teacher striking a pose in Antigua, Guatemala |  Festivals. Sawdust street paintings for the largest Easter parade in the world. |  Border crossing Nicaragua/Costa Rica. Don’t forget to get the bond receipt for your bicycle, so you can get out to the other side of the country. |
 For Sale. Iguanas: “Good food. Tastes like chicken.” |  Work. A day in the life of Central America young men and boys harvesting bananas. |  At last, Scott is fit again and can admire his inner tiger |
 Tourist attractions. A tree full of iguanas waiting for the tourists to feed them. |  Arenal Volcano, Costa Rica |  Communication. Most people don’t own a phone. This phone for rent reminds me of the Bat Phone. |
 Volcano beginning to erupt. Ecuador. |  Sacred Valley and the lost city of the Incans from Machu Picchu mountain on the Incan Trail |  Incan Lawnmower. The famous llama. “Como se llama, llama?” |
 Alto Plano, Peru |  Muddy “shortcut” |  Moss and volcano, Bolivian Alto Plano |
 One of the coolest and most bizarre places on the planet. Isla de Pescado and the salt flats of Bolivia, Salar de Uyuni. |  Tree rock, Salar de Uyuni |  Salvador Dali Rocks, Bolivia |
 Contemplating how to get to the next city with a broken bicycle rack. |  Emergency repair. Rack temporarily fixed by using a door hinge. |  One of hundreds of river crossings in Bolivia. Sometimes the roads turned into the rivers. |
 Family and friends. I was honoured to have been hosted by families around the world. Like this family, many literally had no money. |  Politics. El Che Guevara. “Viva La Revolucion!” Argentina. |  Farms and agriculture. “Hairy coo.” Scotland. |
 Lore and legend. Loch Ness Monster. |  Corfu Castle, England. |  Sunflowers in Germany. |
 Citadel & Eglise Notre Dame on River Meuse, Dinant, Belgium. |  Castle and church, Lake Bled, Slovenia. |  History. Roman Arena in Croatia. |
 Monk skulls in the Holy Monastery of the Great Meteoron, Greece. |  Parthenon, Greece. |  Standing out like a sore bicyclist in a Turkish cafe. |
 Blue Mosque, Turkey. |  The Great Pyramids of Giza, Egypt. |  Mohammed the camel driver and Charlie Brown the camel. |
 Sphinx. |  God(s). Outside of a Hindu temple. |  Hampi, India. Temple from Hemakuta Hill. |
 Women. Indian women planting rice. |  Toilets. Most disgusting bathroom in the world. India. Toilet story — every traveler’s got one. |  Indian gas station. Note all the spilled oil. |
 Rickshaw driver in New Delhi in the steamy rain. |  Scott in the Maharaja’s throne with his self-appointed guides. Next on the tour, visiting the king cobra’s home. |  Jaisalmer Fort, Rajastan. |
 Scott invents bicycle yoga in the Himalayas. India. |  Traffic Jam. Blocked by wild elephants, Bardia National Park. |  Close-up of the previous picture. 11 out of the 60 remaining elephants in Nepal cross the road in front of me. |
 Traffic. The infamous Tata truck run off the road. So much for the miniature Hindu shrine inside. Trucks and cars and pollution were the major flaws with riding a bicycle around the world. |  Nepalese celebrating Holi, the color festival. |  On the road to Mt. Everest. |
 Mt. Everest and yaks at sunset from Base Camp I. |  Everest Base Camp I. |  Tea with local Tibetan farmers. |
 Thai Monks waiting for a buddha. |  The wheel of life. |  Campground and sunset on Phuket Beach, Thailand. (Two years later a tsunami wiped out the beach.) |
 Vietnamese dolls for sale. |  A conical limestone mountain, a common sight in South East Asia. |  Can you see the tiny fisherman on his houseboat? |
 Culture. Traditional H’mong women. Northern Vietnam. |  Saltwater crocodile, Northern Territory, Australia. The man-eating variety. Salties. |  Freshwater crocodile. The relatively harmless crocodile. The freshie. Who has time to tell the difference? |
 Fully-loaded bicycle and a termite hill and Outback adventure. |  Devil’s marble. |  Windmill and Outback sunrise. Gotta get up early to beat the heat. |
 Survival. Carrying 26 liters (57 pounds) of water through the Australian Outback. I needed special permission from the Aborigine Land Council for this adventure. Basically, I had to convince them I wouldn’t make a nuisance of myself by dying. |  The outback, back o’ beyond, no man’s land, and the middle of nowhere. |  Uluru (Ayer’s Rock ). The biggest monolith (rock) world. Even more amazing is the 1500 kilometers of nothingness in every direction. |
 Personal achievement. Cycling up the Guinness World Record for the World’s Steepest Hill in Baldwin Street, Dunedin, New Zealand. And I’m doing it fully-loaded. I’ve cycled up steeper unpaved roads. |  Natural phenomena. Climbing Franz Josef Glacier, NZ |  Inside Franz Josef Glacier, NZ. |
 Fairy-tale mushrooms. The poisonous kind. |  Masaai warriors, Kenya, and springtime flowers. |  Daily life. Typical Tanzanian fruit and veg market. |
 Life. A daily chore for me and African women: fetching water. |  Picturesque acacia tree. With beehives made out of hollow tree trunks by the villagers. |  Getting my machete sharpened by a man with homemade bicycle grinder. |
 World Wonders. Victoria Falls viewed from Zambia. Reminds me of Tarzan and the Apes. |  Victoria Falls, one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World as viewed from Zambia. |  Wild bull African elephant. This animal is so big, I could ride my bicycle between its legs and not even tickle its belly. |
 Giraffe sculpture and bicycle. |  Snow in Africa?! |  Visiting the corner store. |
 Kids are curious all over the world. Lesotho. |  Traditional Basotho men after sacrificing a goat. |  Even babies are curious about the white man. |
 Zulu women, South Africa. |  Cabbage for sale. |  Impala skull. |
 Fynbos flowers a plant kingdom (1 of 7) endemic only in South Africa. |  Newfound friend. |  Beach houses near Cape Town. |
 Sunset on my last full day of cycling. |  Sporting the Grizzly Adams look. Table Mountain, Cape Town in the background. |  Halfway up Table Mountain, can’t bike any further. |
 Celebrating on Table Mountain. The end of the road. Or is it? |  Table Mountain, Cape Town, South Africa, and Scott waving hello-goodbye. |
