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Liquica, Timor-Leste, 2018

Timor-Leste is a tiny country on the island of Timor, bordering only Indonesia. For a longer introduction, please read my other note.

Timor-Leste is a relatively poor country, and the infrastructure is still at a minimum. It's a hilly country, but certainly not the worst terrain to build roads. This picture is from the main road between Dili and the Indonesian border. It also connects Dili with several towns along the coast. Quite an important road in other words. The road between Dili and Baucau, the 2nd largest town, isn't a whole lot better.

The 118 km road between Dili and Baucau took me approximately 4 hours. That gives an average of 30 km/h. There seemed to be a lot of work going on close to the capital, but there's still a long way to go. For comparison: With a highway, this stretch would take just over an hour. There are almost no paved roads outside the capital. However, I think things will be very different if you go visit in 5-10 years.

The picture was taken out the window of my minibus. More or less a snapshot, but it gives a fairly good presentation of the state of their road system. You can see the dust of the other minibus. The buses also didn't go very frequent to Dili from the border. I eventually tried to hitchhike from the border town of Batugade, but soon after, a minibus passed by.