11th November, 2024

It’s a still autumn evening, but a familiar cold is creeping up and beginning to get under my layers. Behind, I can feel the warmth of idling engines and smell their heavy fumes wafting forward. And then there’s Sarah, mounting her bike, wrapped in all her layers but looking back at me, grinning wildly, her face glowing under the distant ferry lights. It all feels surreal.

It’s just a ferry journey, I think to myself. But my stomach, awash with nerves and twitchy excitement, seems to think otherwise. Standing under neon lights, time seems to have slowed. It does feel like more than a ferry journey, I think to myself; everything is about to change. After almost a decade waiting, this is the boat that will take us from England to the European Continent, and our journey east will begin.

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It was never our intention to leave with winter knocking at the door. It seemed silly to us, and ridiculous to friends and family. But, after such a long time on hold, we figured there would always be another reason to delay. Tomorrow wasn’t guaranteed, after all. Numerous failed attempts, family illnesses, and hospital operations had taught us that.

After getting discharged from melanoma treatment in October 2024, we vowed to set off at the earliest possibility. That happened to be November 11th. And so, with little winter experience but Sarah grinning at my side, we rode aboard a ferry from Harwich, England, to the Hook of Holland, bloody nervous but high on all the possibilities that lay ahead. It felt like a door to the world was opening.

The big world we live in

I think we’re damn lucky to be alive on this giant, rotating mass of earth and elements, perfectly positioned from the sun to support life. Any closer and we’d burn; any further and we’d freeze. Instead, life has bloomed into abundance, with rainforests growing our modern-day medicines, whales the size of buses that mourn the death of their children, ants that can lift fifty times their body weight… all living together in perfect balance.

Then there’s us humans, probably the most curious of all. Awfully flawed and throwing everything off-kilter, but bringing heart, passion, culture, faith. More than 8 billion souls, all unique, with their own stories and dreams.

No two places are quite the same—no two landscapes, or villages or countries. Take life in the Cumbrian Hills of England, from the Serengeti, or Papua New Guinea, or Alabama, USA… they’re like different worlds. And being eternally curious, I never felt like I could spend life in one country, knowing just how much was out there.

A slow journey east…

India has long been the dream. A vibrant land of contrasts and complexities, from ethereal monasteries in the Himalayas to the mayhem of India’s booming megacities. The music, the food, the wildlife, the wild riot of colours, sounds and smells… it all seemed impossible to properly comprehend without experiencing it first-hand.

And so, our dream became slowly and sustainably reaching India. That’s how the bicycle journey came into being. After India, who knows? Japan? Sudan? Bolivia?

Interestingly, whilst this journey has had a few setbacks (you can find more in our film, lower down), they’ve only reinforced how we want to see the world.

The slower we go, the more we see.

The more we absorb all the nuances and details that separate one place from another. And so, instead of keeping our heads down, letting the world stream by on an easterly rush, we want to take it all in. We connect most with people and nature, but go in search of the places and faces that make a country unique—the small villages and forgotten valleys. We don’t just cycle either. Bikes are our way to explore, but we like to get off, walk, stay, be amongst the people.

This is the way we’ll slowly make our way around the world.

This film gives a bit more background on what got us here

“Not all who wander are lost“

– J.R.R Tolkien