Japanese traveler completes bicycle journey in Vladivostok

Hiromasa Ando, the famous Japanese traveler, has arrived in Vladivostok after a bicycle journey from Murmansk, a city on the Barents Sea which borders on Norway, to Primorye, the Western coast of the Sea of Japan. He covered a 15,847-kilometer route from Murmansk to Magadan to Khabarovsk to Vladivostok in a matter of 8 months and 21 days.

Bicycling is the main hobby of the 33-year-old specialist in computer games and radio-controlled toys, who accomplished his first bicycle tour, which ran through Nepal, India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, and Ukraine in 1991. In 1995, he scaled the snow-covered mountains of Tibet and described his journey in a book titled "The Conquering of Tibet on a Bicycle." Well known in Japan as a writer and journalist, Ando intends to write a book about his Russian journey as well.