If you’re looking to get into bike touring, the route from Seoul to Busan might just be the most straight-forward and comfortable in all the world. It provides nearly 400 miles of well-signed, off-road bike paths, with frequent delicious food and pleasant lodging. And you can get a week-long rental with all the fixin’s in downtown Seoul for $100. I missed most of the autumn leaves, but the rivers, mountain backdrops, and pastel shrubberies provided ample scenery throughout.


Bike

I couldn’t find many offerings on Facebook Marketplace or any local equivalent, but the Giant store in Mapo offers bike rentals with helmet, rack, pump, tube, tools, and the most pitiful lock ever for about $17 a day, or $104 per week. You can return it in Busan for $35 extra or stash it on a bus back to the start. The bike proved to be in excellent repair, and aside from a single flat, and wrestling it up to my room each night, I had zero issues.

Koreans seem to believe that bike theft doesn’t exist in their country and they’ll happily leave their bikes unlocked outside overnight. But Google says bikes get stolen all the time. Do with this information what you will. I tended to be less cautious than I would be elsewhere, leaving my bike and all my possessions unattended for minutes at a time. But I always brought it inside at night.

While the quality of the off-road cycling network is rather excellent, I didn’t find any evidence that there is much infrastructure beyond it. Most of my rides through Busan and Seoul were a bit awkward and scary. And the route up to Gyeongju was clearly designed by a roadie who had no qualms about riding alongside traffic. I may have been using the wrong app – Google Maps has no support for directions in Korea and Naver’s algorithm is laughably bad; Kakao looks more promising. For their part, Korean drivers were extremely considerate and never once ran me over.


Food

Did I primarily choose this route based on the prospect of eating Korean stews four times a day? Maybe. I never had to go too far to find a little restaurant where an elderly woman would prepare me a tofu and kimchi dish, accompanied by unlimited sides, for around $5. As an added bonus, nearly every restaurant provides free instant coffee.

And if you don’t have the time to stop for a proper meal, every convenience store has a diverse collection of cheap, yummy dishes and microwaves to cook them.

Sadly, snacking between meals is problematic. Most everything offered in supermarkets seems to be overly sugary, unsubstantial, expensive, and/or hard to transport. My usual staples of oats, peanuts, and raisins are nearly non-existent.


Lodging

I used Agoda and booked all my hotels in advance, but I doubt you would have any trouble just showing up and finding a room. The most common option is a “love motel”, which you can rent by the night or in 3-hour blocks. The five I stayed at were all very clean, quiet, and comfortable. Most had free coffee, laundry, toiletries, and a microwave, and the most expensive came in at $33.

There are also ondols, where you sleep on a thin mattress atop a heated floor. The ondol where I stayed was one of several “bike hostels” advertised along the route. The owner was ridiculously helpful and lavished me with free beer, coffee, ramen, eggs, toast, and porridge. And the floor pad was surprisingly comfy.

I was intrigued by a third option that I never got around to using – you can apparently pay $5 for a 24hr hot spring/sauna and sleep in a communal lounge designed for the purpose. These occur frequently along the route..


Weather

I got sunshine and moderate temps every single day. It was never below 50 or above 70. There were two days of smog at the start.


Flights

There usually seems to be a roundtrip out of SFO for $660 on Air Premia. I couldn’t find any good options for getting to the Bay Area, so I opted for a cheap one-way from Denver to Hong Kong, and did a visa-free transit through China (ufadventure.com/blog/1818). But I got a lovely half-empty flight back to SF for $290 that I booked a few hours before.