Defying the ‘norm’: Overlanding tales from women on the road

During our own four-and-a-half year road trip through Latin America, many conversations I experienced hinted at a lingering perception that women are less likely to want to ‘rough it’, less willing to defy societal expectations, less comfortable with an unpredictable nomadic lifestyle.

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Perversely, I perhaps shared some of these assumptions, because I found myself mentally taking my hat off to the many women I encountered who’d stuck two fingers up to convention. She’s riding a motorbike, I’d think, she travels alone, she had a baby on the road, she’s road-schooling her kids, she sacrificed an amazing job…

But flick through the pages of a new photo book that features 50 of our stories, and it turns out we all had our heroines—and they included each other. “We need to hear those voices,” says Karin-Marijke. “We need more women’s travel stories.”

Co-authors of the book, Sunny Eaton and her wife Karin Balsley, couldn’t have agreed more. Like me, they hadn’t appreciated the extent of the gang of sisters out there, on every continent. They were solo, in couples, towing kids and taking pets. They were on motorbikes, in cars, vans and trucks.

When the couple packed their own 1997 Toyota Land Cruiser and left Nashville for a two-year overland trip through Central America, they were warned it was too unsafe and physically demanding for ‘lone’ women.

“I get cheers and lots of praise. Everyone is so excited to see a black woman from Africa ride a bike long-distance.”

Wamuyu Kariuki

“An uncle told my mother I’d come home in a pine box,” says Sunny. “People sent every article they could find about terrible things that had happened. They questioned us managing such a big car, saying ‘What if you get stuck? You won’t be able to push it’. They also suggested we take a gun.”

The truth was, she says, that overcoming their initial uncertainties and a few hairy moments—including almost sliding off a muddy clifftop in Costa Rica—only proved their resilience. “I’m so much more capable than I ever thought, physically and mentally.”

The pair wanted to celebrate the women that were inspiring them. After a “galling” response to a post on the realities of menstruation and overlanding in an online forum, they created the Facebook group Women Overlanding the World, a supportive space in which to talk freely—whether about tires, periods, campsites, roads, or mental wellbeing. The concept morphed into a website and the crowd-funded book I Can. I Will: Women Overlanding the World.

Its title sums up Chantal Simons’s response to anyone considering talking her out of motorbiking solo across several continents. The 29-year-old Dutch woman clocked up a trans-Australia journey before shipping the bike to Asia and driving to the Netherlands.

Due to her diminutive stature, she rode throughout on a little Yamaha trail bike, nicknamed the ‘chook chaser‘ because it’s usually found scooting around Aussie farmland.

Her determination meant “giving up a relationship with the only guy I’d ever imagined myself having children with,” she says. “I knew that if I didn’t go by myself, I would forever regret it.”

She was continually asked why she was traveling alone, but adds: “Because it’s such a male thing to do, a woman on a motorbike receives a great level of respect. Sometimes you’re regarded as almost gender-neutral. It felt like my bike was a protection in many ways.”

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As an African woman, fellow biker Wamuyu Kariuki, 43, says she has battled a whole other layer of societal pressures to realize her travel ambitions. “I’d tell my younger self not to live for society’s expectations and cultural conformities. I’m now living my life.”

After completing a 3,000-kilometer solo drive across Tanzania, she recently re-married and embarked on a three-year world trip with her husband.

Currently on the Africa leg, her rarity as a female rider is evident. “Every time we stop for gas, border checks or police stops, I’m greeted with ‘Hello sir’,” she says. “When I lift my helmet, their faces are in shock.

“I get cheers and lots of praise. Everyone is so excited to see a black woman from Africa ride a bike long-distance.”

Claudia Janssen has traveled with male partners over the years, but now has no plans to change her solo road life. Living permanently in her car and currently in Uruguay, the 51-year-old German is often asked why she’s going it alone. “My standard answer is: ‘Why not’?”

“There are definitely some rules to follow to stay safe,” says Claudia. “I always have a close eye on my surroundings and listen to my instincts.

“Solo men—travelers or locals—sometimes think, because I’m alone, I must have special needs they can ‘fulfil’! It’s very important to make it immediately clear that we can have a chat and no more. So far my own rules work well. And finding good workshops that take me seriously is also not so easy.”

“After my father passed away, I realized I could save up for a beach holiday that would last two weeks; wait for retirement before traveling full-time; or give up the things that didn’t matter and do it now—spend the time with my kids and husband, and die happy.”

Luisa Bell

Dealing with casual sexism is, sadly, par for the course. During my own trip, I often faced bemused looks when I jumped into the driver’s seat. Men would look askance at my husband—why was he ‘letting me’ drive? Once, a Colombian farmhand told him that if he loved me he’d be “giving me babies” instead of dragging me around in a van.

Or why not do both? Californian Emily Harteau, 37, and her husband Adam combined travels in their VW camper with their toddler—and their second daughter was born while road-tripping.

“I spent my entire pregnancy on the road,” says Emily. “I took my paperwork to a different doctor every month and explained, to their slack-jawed amazement, that we were a nomadic family. My first appointment was in Cusco in a shipping container hospital. We continued traveling in Peru, then Chile, Argentina and finally Brazil, where Sierra was born. Welcoming her was the most special moment on the road.”

Although they suffered a traumatic end to the trip, when they escaped a hostage situation in the Brazilian Amazon by jumping ship on a surfboard and hiding in the jungle, they’ve been kitting out a new overlanding vehicle and recently moved to Bali for a year.

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Luisa Bell’s family was already complete when they set off round Africa in 2009, in their Land Rover with rooftop tent. As their son and daughter, now 19 and 13, approached adolescence and their trip became a full-time lifestyle, they converted their car into a tiny home that’s currently taking them round Europe.

Luisa, 42, from South Africa, has faced some backlash from “certain folks who believe my children’s future to be harmed by our life-style,” but when they meet the kids, they realize how resourceful and balanced they are, she says.

“After my father passed away, I realized I could save up for a beach holiday that would last two weeks; wait for retirement before traveling full-time; or give up the things that didn’t matter and do it now—spend the time with my kids and husband, and die happy.”

Luisa’s remark reminds me of a feeling—the elusive sensation of truly living in the moment that explains why so many of us become addicted to ‘roughing it’ as nomads.

People would ask me, “How can you do it, don’t you miss having a home?” But I was home, and everything I needed was in that tiny space.

In 1,597 days on the road, I never lost the sense that when I pulled the door shut each night I was in my happy place, the van serving as an unlikely anchor. And the beauty was that in the morning I could pack it all up and take it with me.

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Read more

I Can. I Will: Women Overlanding the World, co-authored by Laurie Holloway, Sunny Eaton and Karin Balsley, is available to buy here.

This article was written in memory of 27-year-old Eva Žontar, who features in the book and was killed in an avalanche in Peru on 30 June 2018.