GRADUATE’S FLAT-OUT TRIP FROM BRUSSELS TO DUBAI
▶ Lebanese Bilal Ghomraoui cycled 7,000km – while trying to avoid the hills– to reunite with his family
Next time your legs start to ache on a bike ride around Yas Marina Circuit, spare a thought for Bilal Ghomraoui.
Bilal, 24, has just completed a 7,000-kilometre, thigh-busting ride from Brussels to Iran.
Over the past two months, the electromechanical engineering graduate spent up to seven hours a day cycling through nine countries, before a quick air trip took him to the UAE last week.
“I finished my studies this summer and I’ve always wanted to do some kind of trip at the end,” Bilal says. “I’ve lived most of my life in Dubai – from when I was 3 to 17 – before moving on to Belgium for my studies, and I’ve always loved cycling.
“So it occurred to me to try something meaningful, like this trip on my bike between two cities that I love.”
His plan was to meet his parents in Dubai, where they live, to celebrate Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
Bilal set off on October 15 and cycled between five and seven hours every day, covering up to 150km.
“The biggest challenge I found was being alone for that amount of time and also being far from relatives and friends in an unknown land,” he says. “Being on a bicycle you cover some distance, but it’s not that fast so you need a long time to get somewhere, so there’s that perspective that it will take a while before I see a familiar face.
“But on the other hand, almost every day I got to meet great people who hosted me, invited me into their homes and gave me food, especially in Turkey and Iran, and I got to see lots of magnificent landscape.”
His journey took him through Belgium, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Iran before his flight to Dubai.
“The plan was to get on a boat but once there, the sea was very rough so I took a plane,” Bilal says.
“Eighty per cent of the nights I stayed in people’s homes and just a few in hotels and a few in tents.
“I was surprised to see how hospitable most people were because it’s really on short notice that these people would accept me in their house, give me food and shelter, even though most of the time they didn’t have huge houses or apartments.”
He says mental fatigue was a greater challenge than the physical one. “I have a lot of background in endurance sport because I’m a triathlete and I’ve been training 10 hours a week for two years every week, day in day out,” Bilal says. “Being alone was harder and tough. I would do it again but not alone.
“It’s a mix of not being able to share the landscape and people I met with my relatives or friends. I was far away from everybody, in time and in distance. That combination really was tough to absorb.”
His Lebanese and Belgian passports allowed for smooth travel.
“You don’t have any borders in Europe and I don’t need a visa with my Lebanese passport in Turkey,” Bilal says.
“I’d prepared a visa for Iran prior to the travel, so that was sorted out already.
“People look at you weirdly but as long as your papers are in order, it’s fine. You hear that Turkey and Iran are dangerous but people were so friendly, kind and helpful whenever I’d stop at a petrol station. They would invite me for tea or lunch just to have a little chat when they spoke English.”
Bilal’s original route plan changed every day.
“I wanted a route that was as flat and as easy to follow as possible,” he says. “I was meant to follow the Black Sea in Turkey and a central road in Iran, but it changed in Turkey because that road is far more hilly than I thought and with lots of rain and a big highway, so it wasn’t very interesting.
“Instead, I went through Cappadocia through the centre of the country and other interesting places where roads were much less busy.”
Different Sim cards allowed him to stay in touch with his family and send pictures with a brief descriptive text every day, with only a few moments of no network connectivity.
“The landscape in Europe was mainly flat because I followed the Danube River,” Bilal says. “But near the end of Europe it starts to get hilly, even more in Turkey and most in Iran so it was a smooth transition.
“When I reached Dubai I felt relieved but honestly I still don’t really realise it. It’s been a couple of days but it’s now sinking in – not having to think about tomorrow, what I’ll eat and what will happen.
“But I still have some dreams about how to find a place to sleep and I still get woken up. The idea now is to spend time with my parents for a month then go back to Belgium and find a job there.”
I was surprised by how hospitable people were because on short notice they gave me food and shelter BILAL GHOMRAOUI Lebanese cyclist