Tim Cope

Tim Cope (born 7 December 1978) is an Australian adventurer and world traveler from Gippsland, Victoria.

First tour

At age 21, Cope began his first major tour. In October 1999 he started in the far west of Russia, Petrozavodsk, to a one-year trip on a recumbent bike to Beijing, which he reached in October 2000. This company he committed along with Chris Hatherly and described his impressions collected in a book published in 2003.

From Kharkhorin after Ópusztaszer

In Australia, as well as in Asia and Europe Cope reached a wide fame through his ride from the steppe of Mongolia, starting in Kharkhorin at Karakorum, to Hungary. Alone with a tent and three horses intended Cope to follow the footsteps of the Mongol horsemen armies of Genghis Khan, relying as much as possible to dive into the nomadic lifestyle of the Asian steppe peoples. So he learned in addition to riding quickly adapt his life rhythm to the needs of his horses. From the original estimate of eighteen months for the path of almost 10,000 km there a three-year journey developed by the summer of 2004 until the summer of 2007.

After crossing the Altai Cope followed in Kazakhstan to the shores of Lake Balkhash and crossed the middle of winter the wide Kasachensteppe until almost dried up Aral Sea. From its local leaders he received while his dog Tigon paid, a means Asiatic Tazi, which henceforth became beside the horses to single permanent companion for Cope. In a very remote and ruined Russian settlement Tigon it was stolen, but he still found time again before the dog could be eaten. Russia he crossed the Caspian Depression and the Manytsch lowlands to the Sea of ​​Azov and entered the Crimea on their Ostausläufer. The further he came to the West, the more his trip due to the increasing civilization disclosedness Europe difficult. So he had to contend with his horses with the dangers of automobile traffic or had long search for suitable grazing land, as in Europe, most of the free land is used for agriculture. In the Crimea Cope was also witnessed violent clashes between the ethnic Russian population and the Crimean Tatars, who retreat to their deportation in a Stalinist time again in their ancestral land. In the resulting conflict, he claims to have detected an incompatibility of landsässigen living with a nomadic culture. In the course of his journey through Ukraine Cope had to interrupt his journey, after he learned about his satellite phone from the accidental death of his father in Australia. After returning from the funeral, he continued his journey to the place where he had interrupted them.

After the grueling crossing of the Carpathian Mountains, taken ill at the Tigon, Cope spent several weeks in a remote mountain village of Hutsul, before he moved on to Hungary. The Danube marked the westernmost end of his journey, as he regarded this river as the boundary of the urban Western European cultural area to the nomadic driven world of Eurasia. Hungary had Cope therefore identified as the end point of his journey, because here the first from Asia to Europe had become sunken nation of horsemen landsässig once with the Magyars. During his journey, Cope had drawn the attention of international media attention, particularly from those countries he had visited, but also in Australia. When he reached his ultimate goal in Ópusztaszer at the monument to the Magyar princes and statesmen founder Árpád, he was received by his family, numerous spectators, media and diplomatic representatives from Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Hungary and Australia. Especially in the coverage of the Asian countries its journey has been recognized as a tribute to their nomadic roots. In a final summary Cope came to the conclusion to have donned the " fur of the wolf " in the course of his three -year journey, and that the return to the urban civilization it will be difficult. His three horses he gave to a Hungarian orphanage, the dog Tigon he took only twelve months later to Australia. In the garden of his home he erected a yurt.

Book and Film

On his bike ride from Petrozavodsk to Beijing Tim Cope published in 2003 the book Off the Rails: Moscow to Beijing by Bike ( Penguin Books 2003, ISBN 978-0143005568 ).

From the video diaries of his Asia traversal he produced in November 2009 for the ZDF and ARTE, the four -part documentary series In the Footsteps of the Nomads (eng: On the Trail of Ghengis Khan, directed by Tim Cope, Richard Dennison ). The series was transmitted for the first time on ARTE in February 2010 and a second time in August 2010 at the transmitter PHOENIX. For the end of 2013 also publishing a book is planned.