21,500km cycled around the world
Mōrena,
I’m writing from the little kitchen table at my homestay in Kolkata. Two days ago I got up early and cycled the final 25km, trying to avoid the intense traffic and daytime restrictions prohibiting cyclists on Kolkata’s major roads and highways. Today, I waved goodbye to my bike as it took a ride on a little auto rickshaw truck to the bike shop for some new parts. Normally I’d ride there, but a 50km round trip from one side of the city to the other in traffic was uninspiring. Thankfully the rules only prohibit me from making progress in a vehicle: my bicycle can go on a silly little ride by itself if it likes.
India was tough. I’ll write a standalone post with all my tips for bikepacking across India, but the east was much tougher than the west. I was on the same highway for more than two weeks, and the biggest struggle for me was hyper visibility - constant stares and people trying to stop me to ask me what I’m doing. Many of the interactions were genuinely fun and interesting, but some are stressful. Usually it starts with a motorbike or scooter passing, then slowing, lingering in front of me until I eventually catch up. Most young guys want selfies, and in some states they may even try to take your phone to get you to post them on your instagram. KD, a cycle tourist from Myanmar I met on the west coast, confirmed this also happened to him in the northern states.
The feeling that you’re constantly watched was exhausting, especially coming from Aotearoa - I’m pretty sure I got more attention as a foreign cycle tourist on the highway in India than any genuine celebrity would walking down Queen Street in Auckland. The culture of attention in our two countries couldn’t be more different!
So right now I’m in hiding, enjoying some peace and quiet, and getting food delivered. Foreigners can use Swiggy, India’s answer to UberEats, and I usually get a huge amount of food that satisfies my cyclist metabolism for roughly $10 NZD. Last night it was some bloody amazing wraps from Faasos. I’m enjoying the one time in my life where I can get food delivered before I go back to being the budget cooking bikepacker instead.
You can check out the 3,800km route on my Komoot - however, if I wasn’t doing a record, I’d stick to the West Coast or do Manali to Leh instead - unless you really enjoy highways.
Some highlights
It wasn’t all bad though! In India, you’ll live five lifetimes in a month, because things are constantly happening here. I met some seriously wonderful folk. From:
hanging out with Swathik and Alexina at United By Cycling in Kochi and painting my bike on their wall,
to my 30th birthday at the Deca mini farm in Mangaluru,
getting in the newspaper three times thanks to all my friends in Kerala and Tamil Nadu,
hanging out with Satwik, an instagram influencer in Guntur, and trying some amazing food. I now seem to have gone viral amongst people who speak Telugu.
riding out from Palakkad with a huge crew from the cycling club behind me; the biggest ride out of the entire trip
catching up with Sarath, an Indian cyclist who had just cycled the opposite direction to me from Bhutan to Kerala
the countless people who hyped me up for cycling 21,500km through 19 countries
…I complain, but there’s a lot to be thankful for.
Launching the fundraiser
I also launched a fundraiser: attempting to raise $10,000 for Outline as I cycle home back to Auckland.
I really struggled to choose which charity to support, even though people asked me all the time as I cycle around the world, because there are so many good causes. Aside from trans rights I’ve also backed Palestinian causes, tangata whenua, climate action groups, refugees and asylum seekers…it’s easy to get paralyzed when so many great causes need help. Which obviously is the worst outcome!
the real answer is that any activism still counts for something. We can’t have the people power to make change if our neighbours are too busy struggling to care. So instead of getting stuck into an effective altruism rabbit hole, the decision got made for me: The New Zealand government decided not to grant funding to Outline, despite the general consensus from Health NZ that they are doing great work.
The government instead followed a dodgy process to award all the mental health funding in New Zealand to Mike King’s gumboot Friday charity… which, as Jess McAllen reported on Webworm, is a bit problematic.
Thankfully Outline was able to secure enough private funding to keep the lights on, but they’re not out of the woods yet, and they’re also fighting the unfair funding process that’s leaving LGBTQIA+ people behind.
All the funds that Outline receive go towards supporting some great, essential work like:
Running their LGBTQIA+ peer support mental health help line and online chat service, which is voluntarily staffed by a couple hundred queer New Zealanders
Providing transgender peer support services in Tāmaki Makaurau
Providing conversion therapy survivor peer support
They’ve previously provided specialized rainbow counselling services, and hopefully they’ll be launching this again when they are able to! (I had one of these once, a few years ago)
Transgender people in particular are overrepresented in mental health stats. Counting ourselves (2021), a large study on transgender and non-binary people in Aotearoa, references a study that in New Zealand, transgender people experience psychological stress at a rate nine times higher (72%) than the general population (8%). Obviously much of this would be better fixed by addressing all the external problems - lack of access to healthcare, transphobia at home, etc - but it’s clear that we have a transgender mental health crisis and any help is good.
And not to be doom and gloom about it all, but with international corporations pulling their equity policies down in compliance with the new Trump administration, these mental health outcomes for transgender people worldwide aren’t gonna get better any time soon.
So, if you like watching me suffer please consider making a donation to Outline through my donation link. It will be put to good use!
Onward to Perth
I’m currently stuck in Kolkata. Who knew the biggest thing that would slow me down wouldn’t be the car crash, or the motorbike crash, or the auto crash, or the scooter crash. Nope, it’s the Australians coming home from a summer abroad who have booked up all of the economy plane tickets. I can’t shift my flights any earlier than a week from now, and they’ve been like that since mid-December.
If I were doing a speed record I’d have to drop thousands on more flights right now, but thankfully at this stage, a week isn’t going to make any difference.
From Perth I’ll be heading south for a 5,000km run along Australia’s south coast, taking in sections of the Munda Biddi, the famous 1,000km straight desert road of the Nullarbor (no Guinness world curcumnavigation on a bicycle is complete without it), and seeing lots of nice friends along the way.
Then from Sydney I’m off to Invercargill, with a plan to cycle the final 2,250km in Aotearoa and finish the ride at Auckland airport around the end of April.
I’m so excited to be back in the convenient part of the world - where I recognise all the products in the store, I can ride at night with no worries, no language barriers, and there are lots of empty spaces for camping. Oh, and friends! Loneliness has never been an issue for me while I’m bikepacking, but friends are a nice bonus.
India has been the slowest section of the entire trip, with all the mishaps and social tax requiring days off, so I’m looking forward to doing some silly big days in Australia.
While I wait, I’m going to be here in Kolkata working on some extra writing and content - my ability to do marketing for myself isn’t great compared to most of the world cyclists on my social media. They’re moving slower and with less restrictive rules but regardless, I’m supposed to hustle for this fundraiser. My first plan is to publish a guide for bike touring in India, while all this stuff is fresh in my mind.
Regardless, just wanted to check in and say hi! Feel free to write to me in the comments, or head over to my instagram.
xo
Robbie
Approx 7,500km left to the finish line
Just 7,500km to go? That's just the equivalent of Portugal to Panama! You got this!
Awesome you are doing incredible mahi, very much enjoying following along on instagram.