You might think the headline sounds crazy, but that is exactly what two dutch men have set out to do. On July 4, 2010, Joost Notenboom & Michiel Roodenburg, have begun an 18 month bicycle journey from Deadhorse in northern Alaska to the most southern tip of Argentina at Ushuaia. Their mission is to take one bottle of icy Alaskan water from the Beaufort Sea down to the seas around Tierra del Fuego in a symbolic effort to complete the natural water cycle and raise awareness for the global water crisis that is leaving over 1 billion people around the world without access to safe and clean drinking water.
What a bamboo bike looks like (not one of the actual bikes)
This incredible adventure will take them through sixteen countries and across more than 30.000 km of paved and unpaved roads, mountain passes, and dirt tracks. The trip started above the Arctic Circle and other regions along the way will include the Alaskan and Canadian wilderness, the forests of the Pacific Northwest, the desert areas of Baja, the rainforests of Central and South America, the Andes highlands of Peru and Bolivia, and the steppes of Patagonia.
To make this an ever greater challenge, Cycle for Water is the first ever attempt to do all this by cycling the entire route on bamboo bicycles. Not only is this counting towards their efforts to minimize their own footprint, but this will simultaneously demonstrate that a lot of challenges can be overcome using sustainable solutions.
why cycle for water?
‘when living in the Middle East and Africa I witnessed the importance of clean and readily available water sources. If we don’t act now and contribute, each in our own way, it will be much harder to change the situation later on. Everybody has a right to clean water since it is essential for life to exist. This cycling adventure will be our own personal effort to raise awareness and make a change, however big or small it will turn out to be…‘.
‘like most people that I know I never really gave much thought about the water coming out of my tap. It wasn’t until I saw the people in Africa and the Middle East struggling for access to clean and safe water that I began to appreciate my own fortunate situation. My thesis research has furthermore shown me that water can be a sensitive and complicated issue which involves many stakeholders and conflicting points of view. This is why I want to Cycle for Water; to help those people in need at the local level‘.
Find out more at Cycleforwater.com
