Many of us spend time off the bike wondering how we can spend more time on it. How can we pivot our lives to be more focused around riding? For me personally, it meant refactoring my relationship with work—slowing down, focusing on this site, and reshaping how I approach my career.
While those changes have made a big difference in my life, I still have to balance work to make it all happen. Like a lot of people, I dream of the day I can fully live off my passion for cycling—a day that may or may not come.
When I meet people who have made that leap, I'm always curious about their stories. This year, we've made a concerted effort to talk with more riders, especially those who have built a life around the bicycle.
One of the people I've long admired from a distance is Tristan Bogaard. Along with his partner Belén Castelló, Tristan has built an incredible life traveling the world by bike, creating routes for sites like bikepacking.com, and documenting their adventures through photography, film, and writing.
I was thrilled when Tristan agreed to chat with us about his journey and how he's crafted a life on two wheels. Let's dive in.
What was your life like before that first ride across the U.S.? What were you doing, and what pushed you to even consider cycling coast-to-coast?
I grew up in a small town north of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, living a pretty quiet village life with neighbourhood friends, many dogs and cats at home and a family I could always rely on. But once I got my diploma from high school and “disconnected” from all of the elements that had accompanied that time, I fell into a bit of a deep hole. I lacked purpose while others around me went off to study, work or travel. My parents had divorced. The relationship that defined my late teenage years had been busted pretty badly, leaving me with little to build on. I'd never wanted to study, as it felt like a meaningless pursuit at the time. Something stereotypical one does to make sense of things or find a path they're interested in. I couldn't even find a subject I was interested in, let alone muster the confidence to engage in a system that—in hindsight—would've probably burdened my twenties with student debts. You can perhaps start to understand that to my friends and family, I seemed like an adolescent who needed to move out of his mom's house and get a job. But somehow, my interest in bicycle travel found me before that became my only option. I'd followed a YouTube series of a few British videographers who'd travelled through northern India in rickshaws to collect money for a charity, and felt so inspired by the way they'd portrayed it, I wanted to do something similar. Initially, as I was into running, I decided to I would run across the USA, from New York to Los Angeles. Planning this during Dutch summer holidays, my younger brother would join in on a bicycle to carry our stuff. As we planned and figured out the real length of the journey, it became apparent I'd also have to ride a bike, as we would not make it back to the Netherlands in time for my brother's schooltime. Practicality, my brother to offer the “we're Dutch, let's just cycle!” argument that led to the beautifully juvenile conclusion we'd be just fine that way. It's not shocking to me that we'd underestimated what travelling by bike is like and how the circumstances on the countryside roads of the United States would beat and bruise us in the most unforeseen ways. But that ain't part of this question!
Bikepacking full-time means constant change—new roads, new weather, new cultures. What's one lesson the road keeps teaching you again and again?
You're right, it forces you to engage with the opposite of life at home. Instability is imminent, and you'd better be ready to deal with it. Living your entire twenties on a bicycle, never really having to engage with the structures of society—paying taxes, rent, water and electricity, working for someone else, getting married, let alone raising a child—taught me how valuable instability really is. Let me try to explain that.
Travelling by bike, in one way or another, will force you to interact with people you may not have ever talked to, drank tea with or been welcomed into their home by. I have stayed with many people and listened to life stories on the spectrum of total disaster to luxurious heights. Each social experience is one I wouldn't have ever chosen to be in if it wasn't for my need to socially interact while gaining access to household practicalities like a washing machine, a shower or a real bed. You don't get to protect yourself from the weather. Instead, you prepare yourself as best you can or spend a potentially miserable time drying your camping kit somewhere, climbing a pass drenched in sweat and sunscreen or shivering through a cold night in your tent. You don't get to control what food you eat. Often, you just have to go along with whatever is on the shelves of the small shops along the way. Money is tight on a bicycle tour. What's left in your bank account, or the bills hidden in your dirty wash, decides how long you can go for. The arbitrary nature of how events will unfold in front of you each day is mesmerizing. You can plan as much as you want, but the events ahead will most likely prove to be different than what you planned. In between these moments, you get to ride your bike, pedal up mountains, breathe the air, pump blood through your heart and feel your body being alive. Decorating it all is instability.
The road has taught me that I can choose to set comfortable boundaries that guide my life, or I can let go of those structures and live a “free” life. One where my physical progression defines what I'll see and whom I'll meet. Travelling, or going from place to place, especially so by bicycle, is how I preferred to live my twenties, and how I'll most likely live a significant part of my thirties. It taught me to never be too comfortable with your current circumstances, for they can always change. To be grateful for modern luxuries while consuming resources frugally. To practice patience and realize when something is enough. All derived from that bike travel lifestyle, where these lessons are but a part of a normal day, and limits are set by either the bicycle, your storage space, budget or the environment around you.
Out of the many, many routes you've designed and ridden, is there one that left the deepest mark on you?
Every ride leaves a mark of some kind, but lately, each design project has done so in a more lasting way. I've found that designing a route, both in anticipation ahead of the ride and while riding the actual trails you spotted on satellite before, forces me to be present in that very moment. Mapping crucial details matters to me, so I stop even more than when documenting the ride, and for some reason, it calms me down as I get to see the places I cross through with far more clarity. I love finding the main theme for each route too, and my latest route project, together with my partner Belén, has left the mark I think you're referring to. Based in the area of Parque Natural Las Ubiñas-La Mesa and Parque Natural de Somiedo in the Asturias province in northern Spain, the focus of this route is to experience what was once a large bear habitat, and what is being done to maintain and protect the current population of Cantabrian brown bears. We named the route after this theme: La Huella del Oso The Bear's Footprint. I loved the creative process of building it and am so glad it's out there now, for other people to ride and hopefully feel a similar enthusiasm for the region, its natural treasures and how people are living among it. Watch the film here.
Kyrgyzstan, Spain, Corsica, the Alps—are there any places you haven't been yet that are calling your name for a future project?
For some reason I've not yet defined, China has been reserving a corner of my imagination. It may have something to do with the solo journey Belén is currently on, in northern Vietnam. Having followed a section where she cycled next to the Vietnam-China border, along a meandering path, the country fascinates me. Just as Singapore, it came up so fast, and has taken on the role of manufacturer for the world. So much of our physical goods come from there, yet neither I nor anybody around me speaks a word of their language or knows anything about their culture, food, natural environment, history, demographics and so on. It's all stereotypes that fill my mind when wondering what it would be like to ride my bike there, so I'd love to find out. Having such an enormous landmass, I'd opt to ride an “emptier” mountainous region where I could find contrasting modern and traditional settings and ways of living, while fulfilling my own egocentric need to find solitude among high peaks. I'll continue investigating the idea...
How does the concept of solitude play into your travels?
Funnily enough, I've had a rollercoaster relationship with the concept of solitude. I rode across the US alone, but stayed with other cyclists almost every night via the Warmshowers community, and this continued as I rode through all of western Europe alone from 2015 to 2017. Honestly, I was afraid to sleep in my tent, but I also wanted to socialize. I never spent a night without some form of social interaction. When Belén joined in and we started riding our lives together, I slowly discovered the beauty of wild camping. We set up our tent on our first journey through Scandinavia quite often, and we learned the practical side of making our meals, cleaning up and finding a place to be left alone. Sometimes we mixed it up by staying with a hosting cyclist, but my preference started shifting rapidly. I have years of wild camping under my belt now, and have become somewhat of an expert at the art of finding scenic and safe off-the-beaten-path locations to pitch, and this is what defines my friendship with solitude now. Nothing better than overlooking a valley full of noise below, while hearing only the wind whisper through the trees surrounding me. The same counts for my riding style too, as I prefer riding alone far more than together with others now. Besides, my constant stops to either document or mark something on a map have proven unbearable to those whom I've ridden with in the past.
Belén is the exception in both situations. We are so in tune with each other that we essentially blend together in how we like to ride, camp and share our days. Whether I ride by myself or with her by my side, solitude is what I'm looking for.
What's one piece of gear you'd never leave behind?
You're dealing with a camera nerd here. I can't go without my Sony B1M wireless mic. It offers the perfect form and functionality for bikepacking: small enough to fit in a pocket, wireless so no cable can break, it's capable of recording sounds with little background hiss. However, it broke on me within a year and nearly ruined an entire project's audio files. Considering how much I value a clean image and audio, to transport viewers as close as possible, in their imagination, to the same scene, these sorts of equipment mishaps are frustrating. I can't go without a good wireless mic.
Storytelling seems just as important to you as riding. How do you balance being present on the ride with capturing it for others?
I'd love to explain this, but I don't quite know how to do so without sounding like someone who fabricates their entire world. Documenting my rides seems almost more important than the ride itself, as photography and videography dominate my days on the bike. I guess it's just become my way of paying attention to what I see around me. It may sound strange, but it's also the way I balance being present, enjoying my ride, and working on the final project. When I sit down to edit, I relive the ride exactly as I thought I saw and experienced it. Relive the little details I'd otherwise forget. It took me a while to understand that there are many moments I miss capturing on camera, and that those I should instead savour privately.
Practically speaking, while photography is an ongoing process that never stops, on trips longer than a few days, I section video shots to be either morning or evening sessions, so I get to take a break from tripod stops and have the time to just breathe, ride and look around. This structure has helped me not to prioritize the digital aspect too much. Knowing that I'll forever have a video for each ride to look back at makes this whole roadshow worth the effort it takes, balanced or not.
Bikepacking long-term isn't always dreamy. Can you share a moment where things went sideways—and how you handled it?
We'd set up camp by a dry riverbank the evening before. Others had camped because of the campfire pit and makeshift wooden bench on the spot. Night fell as normal. There was no rain, nor wind, and we slept at ease. When I woke up around 2 a.m., I somehow thought I was still dreaming, as when I pressed the tent on either side of my sleeping pad to lift myself, it felt like trying to get up on a waterbed. A sensation I remember to this day! Chaotically, I pushed Belén awake and within half a minute we'd gathered whatever bags we could save from the water that started flooding inwards, standing knee deep in the river that had risen far past its shores. My camera and her phone had both drowned. The darkness was dead silent. Belén cried as we squished all the water out of our sleeping bags and simply stuffed them into our panniers, making the bikes weigh a lot more than usual. We rode out about an hour later, in the depths of a Norwegian summer night, fortunately finding an open gas station. A rather confused yet kind, softly spoken employee offered to help us figure out our mess. At the end of his shift, still early, he took us to his home where we spent a full day washing, drying and fixing our kit before moving on. For months, we never slept close to any water, and even a year later, on the shores of a reservoir in Kyrgyzstan, I set multiple alarms throughout the night to make sure we wouldn't be flooded again.
I think the floating tent serves as a perfect example of how things can take an utterly unexpected turn. To this day, I'm quite proud of how we handled it, not letting it deter us from continuing our first ride together.
What does bikepacking mean to you today, after all these years and all those miles? Has your “why” changed since the beginning?
I feel like I've changed a tremendous amount since I first set out to travel by bike. Looking back, bike travel has been the central theme of my life for more than a decade, which means that a third of my life has been dedicated to this constant flow of change. That's baffling to me. I don't count my kilometres. If I did, I should probably change to how many meters I've climbed. There is no doubt that bikepacking is what defines a large part of my personality. It feeds my inner sense of purpose, and practically earns me a living these days. But I don't think that means the why. In those early, emotionally fertile days, it's not any different from how it is now. At my core, I still want to ride my bicycle the same way I did then, and it's still my escape method when any large, unwanted or impactful change takes place in my life.
I joke with Belén sometimes that if we ever split up or pass away, I'd go on a long bike ride with no end in sight. A decade ago, I felt some of that, and it may as well have fueled everything I've lived since then.
Thanks, Tristan.
For more on Tristan and Belén's creative bikepacking journeys, check out their books Bike Life and 50 Ways to Cycle the World, and explore their storytelling through film, photography, and words at their website.
