10/05/2026
𝗘𝗽𝗶𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘂𝗲: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗟𝗼𝗻𝗴𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗥𝗶𝗱𝗲 𝗛𝗼𝗺𝗲
The odometer bled out at 150,000 when I got home. That’s where ‘The Longest Ride Home’ flatlined, and where my Round The World project ended.
The bike is sold.
Not stored. Not mothballed. Not parked like some loyal dog waiting by the door.
Sold.
Gone into another man’s hands, with my ghosts still in the shaft grease.
I wasn’t born into this. Never had the myth of it. Never thought my name belonged next to “circumnavigation.” I grew up in a tough environment where motorcycles were not freedom. They were algebra. Fuel. Time. Rent. They were how you outran the clock to work and back. Adventure was for other people — the ones on TV with satellite phones and sponsorships. My motorcycle was small. My maps were smaller. My life was a circle with a tight radius.
But there was an itch.
Under the helmet. Under the skin. The kind you get when you realize routine is just a coffin you choose every morning.
The Round The World project didn’t come like thunder. It came like a slow puncture. Curiosity first. Then a friend died too young and his unfinished list screamed louder than my excuses. Then a promotion landed on my desk and felt like iron bars. Then one night, living through Walter Colebatch’s "Riding from Tokyo to London", something in my chest kicked over. After that, every night after work, I logged into ADVrider forums and mainlined other men’s dust. I followed their wheel tracks across continents while my own tires cooled in a HDB carpark.
Stupid questions are how you start. Departure dates are how you finish.
People ask why I didn’t do it in one shot. The truth? The longest home isn’t poured in a single season. It’s built in stages because life doesn’t grant you leave. Parents age. Bank accounts bleed. Visas rot on desks. And sometimes the only sound in your helmet is your own voice telling you to quit. Coming home between legs wasn’t surrender. It was letting the road harden inside my bones so they wouldn’t break next time. Each return made the next departure a vow, not a vacation.
So what did I see?
Not flags. Flags are cloth.
Not borders. Borders are ink. I saw a young Thai mechanic in Ratchaburi pull a burst hose at dusk, hands black, eyes kind, and shove my money back into my jacket like it insulted him. I saw myself in Naryn, Kyrgyzstan winter biting through my gear, when a door opened and I was pulled into a "home" that smelled of mutton and diesel. Fed. Bedded. No questions asked. I saw dawn in the Pamirs and it was so empty, so godless and perfect, I finally heard the silence that lives under my ribs. That silence is a country. I have a passport there now. I saw ten thousand things I would have died blind to if I hadn’t kicked the stand up and rode out of my own cowardice.
And what did I learn?
You can’t outrun yourself. But a motorcycle gives you a hell of a head start — enough to look over your shoulder and see who you really are.
I learned “dangerous” is a word people use for beds they’ve never slept in.
I learned hospitality has no language. Paperwork has all of them. I learned the world is 80% safe, 100% worth it, and the 20% that isn’t will make you immortal if it doesn’t kill you. I learned the hardest border crossing is your own front door — when your family hugs a stranger who remembers where the coffee mugs go but forgot how to sit still.
The Longest Home was never the 150,000km scarred into that odometer. It was the raw, godawful distance between the man who left Singapore thinking he had to escape, and the man who rides back home knowing he was carrying home in his panniers the whole damn time. In the rust. In the scars. In the breath between downshifts.
The bike is sold.
The road isn’t.
I’m not done yet.
