My ride for the next 4 months..
Choosing the correct bike, most probably the most important decision I had to take in preparation of this trip!
Which kind of bike will it be? A Hard Tail to have some suspension? A road bike for more efficiency? A touring bike for a more comfortable position? As the biking world is getting more and more complex with a new bicycle type popping up almost every year, taking a decision is not so easy. (For the non-bikers you can find a nice description of the different bike types here)
Next question was: Which material and set up? Here one needs to take into account the fact that we will be biking more than 10,000 km in Africa, therefore the bike must be robust and fixable. This means, no carbon fibre, no aluminium and no electronic gears. The last question was regarding the brakes: Disc brakes, v-brakes or standard Caliper brakes?
And after some long research I opted for a bike from a small company based in Dresden and bought a beautiful blue Veloheld Icon-x.