| Nationalities: | Russia. |
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http://kickasstrips.com/2016/04/vladislav-ketov-cycles-162000km-loop-following-worlds-continental-coastlines/
http://www.vokrugsveta.ru/blogs/ALola/1735.php
http://www.ketov.com/
info@
Vladislav Ketov, a Russian artist, set out in 1991 on his bicycle with the insane goal of cycling the entire coastline of the Earth! He literally went to cycle following the coastlines of Europe, Africa, Asia, North- & South- America. Since then he has traveled more than 161,500 kilometres, through 93 countries, eight deserts, eight war zones and used 100 visas on his bicycle tour around the world’s continents’ coastlines.
Vladislav Ketov cycling the edge of earth (route map 2)
Vladislav Ketov cycling the edge of earth (1)
Vladislav Ketov: Cycling the world’s coastlines
In 1983 Ketov set out for the first time on a long-distance cycling tour from Leningrad to the Ural mountain range in his own country. He fell in love with bicycle travel and it was during that trip that it occurred to him that the ultimate trip around the world would be one where he would follow Earth’s natural borders: its coastline.
While looking at the world map he realised that the entire dry land of the Earth, save for Australia and the Antarctic, represents a pretty much single whole, undivided by seas and oceans. There are only two canals: Suez and Panama and one Bering Strait which is 90 km wide, that divide the single landmass by tiny stretches of water. But given that there are two islands (Little and Big Diomede) between Chukotka (the last part of Russia) and Alaska, the water barrier is not wider than 40 km. Therefore, Ketov reasoned, moving along the earth’s shore you would be able to span nearly the entire dry landmass of the world in one continuous loop.
While people had been traveling many thousands of years, never had anyone traveled around the outer periphery of this dry landmass. Better even, no one had ever suggested such a route, the only one coming close to this sort of ‘bicycle touring magalomania’ has been Jumber Lezhava who cycled 264,000 kilometers to every country on Earth (234 in his days).
Ketov was stunned by the fact that nobody had ever attempted a trip along the outer periphery of the earth’s dry landmass and it would become his life’s mission to accomplish this goal.
Copyright on a travel idea
In 1988 Ketov went to copyright his ‘novel travel route’ at the Soviet-US fund “Cultural Initiative” and he started preparing himself to implement the idea. Bizarely his request for the travel patent was validated under number # 3101. The reason he copyrighted his travel plan was that he wanted to avoid a situation whereby some enterprising person in the West would steal his idea and accomplish it before he could.