OFF TO SULAWESI

Today, I will leave for Sulawesi, for a 14-day cycling trip that I have planned since mid-2008. A new friend, Acid will be accompanying me. He is trading his 700cc motorbike to a zero cc bike for this trip. Later, on the 9th, another hardcore friend Hatim, will fly in to Sulawesi. I called him "hardcore" because it's so hard to convert him to cycling. But I will not give up!

Hatim will rent a car, perhaps an Avanza and we hope to meet at some point of my cycling trip. We are all looking forward to this trip.

Sulawesi is a big island. On a bicycle, I can only hope to cover one-third of the island in 14 days. So, we would be doing the southern part of South Sulawesi.

As always, our journey will begin from the airport itself. We will assemble our bikes at the airport, and cycled off from there. Tonight's ride will be just a short 4km to Hotel Afiat. Tomorrow, we will bypass Makassar and headed for Takalar for our Day 1 ride. Day 2 we should be in Bantaeng and Day 3, we will in Bira. Though not in this tourist map, Bira is a beautiful coastal site at the tip of the island, 40kms after Bulukumba. We will stay here for 2 days for R&R.

Then we head north to Sinjai and Watampone to reach Sengkang. This will take us 3 days, cycling an average of 100kms a day. Hardcore Hatim will meet us in Sengkang. Here, he is expected to "beg" us to accompany him in his Avanza to Rantepao, where we will visit the Torajan village. The Torajans bury their dead in the hills. From there, we will swing south to Watansopeng. We would then be in the highlands of Sulawesi, cycling or pushing our bikes on the hilly terrain of the interior.

We should be back in Makassar either on 16th/17th of Jan, before our departure back on 18th Jan. We have kept our program flexible, depending on what we see along the way. Where there is internet connection, I may do some short updates.