Cycling East Statistics

Here are the results from the group poll of the Cycling East / Silk Road WhatsApp group, conducted in October/November 2025.
A total of 85 members participated. This is about 11% of all members and about 40% of all active members (those that wrote a message between 15th June and 15th November).

Many participants supplied their rough locations. A map of these can be seen here.
Further, some useful route maps, with info for road conditions etc. made by the participants are gathered here.

This survey was designed, prepared, conducted and evaluated under the aegis of Cycling East group admin Felix Puff (@radelix_and_rebikkey on Instagram)!
It is not the work of Belinda and Tizian from Zweiradler-Touren, we merely provided the webspace to publish the results.

For the results from other years, see here.

Contents

Services (like laundry and showers), resting, bad weather and having a place to leave the bike are the main reasons people pay for accommodation.

Wild camping is the preferred sleeping option for nearly all participants. Other options are generally less preferred, but ok for most people. Many people (probably travelling on a lower budget) try to avoid accommodations where you have to pay, like paid campgrounds, dorm rooms and private rooms.

Note: This graph shows people's preferences, not where they actually sleep!

Most people wild camp daily or most of the time. Paid accommodations (hotels, hostels or campgrounds) are the second most frequently used alternative. Invitations or organized hosting (Couchsurfing, Warmshowers etc.) are less frequent and never used by about 1/3 of participants.

These graphs compare people’s preferences (orange) with where they actually sleep (blue). Wild camping is preferred by most and fittingly most people also wild camp. Paid accommodations is less preferred, but there is a slight mismatch between preferences and reality: People sleep more often in paid accommodations than they would prefer to. Likely because it’s the most convenient alternative. There is a huge mismatch between preferences and reality when it comes to invitations and organized hosting (CS, WS etc.): People less often stay in these accommodations than they would prefer. This most likely comes down to the difficulty in finding hosts or the rarity of getting invited (in most countries).

Contents:

Zweiradler Tours: Central Asia Tour

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