Free Ride

Noraly Schoenmaker was a 30-something geologist living in the Netherlands when she learned that her partner had been having a long-term affair. Suddenly without a place to stay, she decided to quit her job and jet off to India in search of a new beginning. Her plans were dashed when she fell helplessly in love: with a motorcycle. Behind the handlebars, she felt alive and free - nimble enough to trace the narrowest paths, powerful enough to travel the longest of roads. She first rode toward the Pacific, through the jungles of Myanmar and Thailand, then into Malaysia. Rather than satisfy her appetite for the open road, this ride only piqued it. She shipped her bike to Oman, at the base of the Arabian Peninsula, and embarked on a journey through Iran, across Turkmenistan along its border with Afghanistan, over the snowy peaks of Central Asia and into Europe, all the way back home to the Netherlands.