Adventure riding is addictive. But just how addictive, and is it possible to dose your adventures right?

Over the years, I’ve owned horses and competed in showjumping, gone skydiving, played handball and classical guitar, briefly became a Buddhist, and hitchhiked all over Europe—but nothing has changed my life more than adventure riding. It happened by accident some ten years ago in Peru: I simply wanted to learn to ride so I could travel more independently, but it grew into a passion, and finally became a full-on lifestyle. At first, it was about transporting myself from A to B, namely from Peru to Bolivia. Then, as I found myself in Tierra de Fuego months later, it became something more than a means to travel; by the time I’d looped back and reached Colombia, I realized I had no desire to stop.

Photo: Egle

And so I didn’t.

A decade on, not much has changed: I’m still on the road. I’ve done some amateur rally racing, led tours, and wrote about motorcycling in addition to riding around, but traveling by bike has remained the one constant I can’t quite see my life without any longer. The means might have evolved – there’s now an overland truck in the equation – but to this day, getting on the bike and going somewhere new or exploring a new area off-road is the one thing that, without fail, makes me feel more alive than anything else.

Photo: Egle

I sometimes wonder if the same would have happened if I’d learned to ride properly, on a proper bike, in a proper riding school (instead, a passing traveler taught me the basics on a 150cc motorbike outside a dusty small Peruvian town), at home. Motorcycling is a big deal where I come from – that is, it’s still seen as something unusual, extravagant, dangerous, or all three. Everyone drives cars; bikes, not so much. By contrast, in Peru, just about everyone rides bikes because bikes are cheaper. Since most ride small bikes, learning to ride isn’t a big deal at all.

Because I’d traveled extensively before, covering long miles didn’t seem like a big deal, either. Bike or gear brands didn’t matter much since I had no knowledge of them back then; riding across South America felt natural as opposed to something you do once in a lifetime for the simple reason that I was already there. But the journey itself slowly escalated into something bigger – a realization that the world is a big and wonderful place worth seeing, along with the idea that the traditional school/fixed career/house/family path was one of the options, but not the only one. And so, while horse riding and skydiving were certainly fun, adventure riding has literally changed the way I live. Then again, I never rode a horse across Mongolia or became a professional skydiver; it was something that provided a break from everyday reality, but did not end up transforming it completely.

Photo: Egle

Of course, it doesn’t have to. Adventure riding comes in many forms and shapes – whether it’s weekend rides, riding holidays, motorcycle tours, long solo trips, or anything in between, it doesn’t need to become a life-changing obsession. It can be enjoyed in smaller or bigger doses, alone or with like-minded souls, on this bike or that, around the world or around the corner; in fact, that’s possibly healthier than quitting everything you’ve ever known and designing your life around adventure riding rather than the other way round.

After all, adventure is all about stepping out of your comfort zone; I remember the great big ridicule and negativity pouring from keyboard warriors about the Long Way Round and Long Way Down series – oh look, rich actors with support vehicles and fixers, this isn’t adventure – but few stopped to think that riding motorcycles across places like Siberia for someone like Ewan McGregor must have been a massive comfort zone expansion, support or no support. Equally, venturing off the road for the first time as a newbie might be a bigger adventure than riding the length of the Carretera Austral as a veteran rider, and completing a six-month journey abroad if you’ve never traveled before is likely more of a challenge than living on the road.

Perhaps that’s why adventure riding is something that’s impossible to get enough of – with every new journey, you find that your comfort zone is expanding in ways you’d never imagined before.

How has adventure riding impacted your life? Share in the comments below!