Lawrence Casiraya’s Reviews > Lone Rider: The First British Woman to Motorcycle Around the World > Status Update

“Even when problems seemed insurmountable, I’d learnt there was always a way to deal with them. Do what you’ve always done when faced with more problems than you can handle, I told myself. Break it down. A big problem is no more than lots of small problems.”

“It struck me that people in poorer countries appeared happier, even though they had very little. Life was much simpler in the less developed countries we’d travelled through, and it seemed the more people had the more they wanted. It was clear to me now how easy it is to take things for granted and forget to be grateful for the basics in life: family, food, and shelter-“

“After two years of travelling slowly through the developing world, sometimes at walking pace, it was a massive shock to find myself on German autobahns. Whenever I ventured into the overtaking lane, hugely powerful BMW and Mercedes cars would bear down on me at frightening speeds, their headlights flashing. Suddenly I was back in the manic thrust of Western Europe.”

“I had to stop and take a picture. Just seeing London painted on a sign for the first time in two years was a very significant moment in my journey. For the first time I felt completion was within my grasp. Now I really wanted to get home quickly. I was tired. I was ill. I was weak. My bike was just hanging on, bandaged together by too many makeshift repairs”

“Dealing with the hassles of riding in India – sometimes a dozen or more of them in a day – pulled Robert and me closer together. We became a team, helping each other get through it all. But I worried all the time that eventually it would be too much for Robert – he seemed to be becoming increasingly frustrated with it all. I started to worry that, when I least expected, he would completely lose it”

“I rode out of the port feeling very apprehensive, as I often did when first setting off in a new country. That sense of being unsure, feeling my way, discovering how much things should cost, always unnerved me.”

“Surviving a life-threatening accident taught me to worry less about what lay ahead. I couldn’t anticipate the future, which paradoxically made me relax. Instead of obsessing over details, I’d eased into the rhythm of the journey, living in the moment, taking each day as it came. Whatever was going to happen, would happen.”

“Passing through cotton fields, it felt like life was slowing almost to a halt. I stopped to take a photograph and there was total silence, absolute peace, one of those perfect moments, just me on my own in a motionless environment. No cars, no voices. Nobody there. No one wanting anything from me. I loved it. It was exactly what I’d been seeking for the last few months.”

“With my helmet off, I was a source of fascination, but with it over my head, they didn’t want to know me. I wondered if it was because bikers didn’t have a good image in American culture. Marlon Brando in The Wild One, Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider. Maybe it was no surprise many Americans thought anyone on a bike was definitely male and definitely trouble. “

“It was for times like these that I loved riding my bike. Those moments when all thoughts of the past and future slipped away and I existed entirely in the present, the miles rolling past beneath the wheels of my big BMW, the morning light clear and golden, throwing shadow bands across the road as I carved my way around the world.”