Note: Thank you to NetGalley, Atria Books, and author Noraly Schoenmaker for the advanced reader copy of this book. This review will also be posted on NetGalley. What follows is my unbiased review of the book.

Many of us have had a crossroads in life where we wanted to just jump on a motorcycle (or in a car) and take off without any real direction. There’s usually a personal catalyst to this. In my case, it was my daughter’s death. I just wanted to jump in my car by myself and drive anywhere. I believe it’s one reason why I really enjoyed Neil Peart’s books, especially Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road, which dealt with him doing just this after losing his daughter and his wife in a short span of time. I’ve also watched the Ewan McGregor documentaries about his own motorcycle road trips. Long Way Round was great if you can find it.

That’s why the promotional blurb for Noraly Schoenmaker’s book Free Ride intrigued me so much. I’d never heard of her before, nor viewed any of her YouTube videos, but I will definitely be checking out her channel after reading this book. She already traveled the world quite a bit as a geologist working for companies looking for certain rock and mineral deposits. After being confronted with the fact that the person whom she thought was her life-partner was cheating on her, and quite openly, she had the same urge to just get away from life in the Netherlands. Her choice was a motorcycle trip in Southern Asia.

Noraly admits she was somewhat naive in how she approached the trip. Maybe that helped. She goes through the process of buying a motorcycle in India and all that it entails. In certain countries, she needed particular paperwork, and it was challenging to get it all done before she hit the road. She also took a short course in motorcycle repair, thinking that would have her covered if she broke down. The smartest thing she did, though, was carry along spare parts for nearly everything on the motorcycle, which she names “Basanti.”

The original plan was to go from India east through Myanmar into Thailand. Myanmar required that she be part of a group with an escort. Once in Thailand, she didn’t want to go back home, so she went on to Malaysia. Not satisfied with finishing there, either, she had Basanti shipped to Oman, where she turned north through Iran, then into Turkmenistan and several other former parts of the Soviet Union

Living in the United States, some of her choices gave me pause. We’ve been trained in the media to see places as dangerous. Yet Noraly traveled alone on a motorcycle and only had a few questionable encounters. She was met with hospitality everywhere, as that seems to be an international language. Iran? Noraly seems to have met some of the nicest people on earth. I was expecting encounters with soldiers, but that didn’t happen. The few checkpoints she did encounter in any country were filled with people who were mostly helpful, even with a language barrier.

While describing the beautiful scenery, she also reflects on what got her to this point. This is a good break-up of the travel part, as I learned more about her, as well as the life of a geologist. It’s not until near the end that she tells the whole story of her break-up. It felt like that was the time she could finally talk about it without it still having power over her.

Eventually, she headed back to the Netherlands. She had been away for nine months, and it felt like she had purged her system of the anguish of having her world turned upside-down. Where did she go from here? Well, when she first started out, she had dreams of being a travel blogger. Her attempts at blogging didn’t seem to get much traction, but when she started uploading videos to YouTube, she found a way to possibly make enough money to keep travelling. I commend her for it.

I recommend Free Ride as a great travel book that shows us places in the world we normally don’t see. It also shows the kindness of people all over the world. There are a few lessons about preparation here as well. I didn’t want to book to end, and I’ll now follow her adventures on YouTube.