What do you do when the only way out of the country during a pandemic is to advertise yourself on a Facebook sailing group and hope someone takes you? If you're Matt Whitley, you pack your bags, fly to Spain, and spend 21 days crossing the Atlantic with a family you'd met on one 20 minute call. Matt is a 23 year old adventurer from South Manchester quietly living a life most people only dream about. At 19, with COVID shutting every door, he hitchhiked onto sailing boats across the Atlantic, worked in the Amazon jungle, and sailed the Caribbean before making it back just in time for university. Fresh out of graduation, he flew his bike to Vietnam with nothing but dots on Google Maps, and spent a year cycling through Vietnam, China, the Tibetan Plateau, Mongolia, and Central Asia, roughly 100km a day. In this episode, we cover his bike completely breaking down in the middle of the Tibetan Plateau and how he got himself out of it, a stranger he met at a frozen mountain lake whom he never expected to encounter, a 5:30am wake-up call in Mongolia that turned into one of the scariest moments of the trip, and how he pulled off a year like this with barely any plan at all. We also go deep on privilege, what it means to be born in the global north, why the poorest countries on his route made him feel the most welcomed, and what to actually do with that beyond feeling guilty. This episode is for anyone who has talked themselves out of the thing they actually want to do, or wondered if the world is as scary as it looks. Spoiler: it's not. Matt is living proof. This is Part 1. Part 2 is coming, and it's the one that stops people in their tracks. Stay close! Connect with Matt: Instagram Fund a kitchen in Gaza Follow along on other platforms: Instagram ~ KEYWORDS: bikepacking Vietnam to UK, solo cycling Central Asia, cycling the Tibetan Plateau, bike touring Afghanistan, sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, hitchhiking on sailing boats, crossing the Amazon rainforest by boat, adventure travel podcast, cycling Pakistan mountains, solo travel fear and courage, charity water fundraiser run, global privilege and travel perspective, bikepacking route planning tips, Suriname sailing adventure, Mongolia cycling trip, extreme endurance challenges, long distance cycling gear and logistics, travel storytelling podcast, backpacker life lessons, gap year adventure travel, cycling through China, Kyrgyzstan travel story, sailing the Caribbean, ultra marathon training, run club culture, digital nomad travel podcast, world travel and humility, dangerous travel encounters, global south vs global north, meaningful travel experiences, van life and camping on the road, cultural immersion travel stories, remote adventure cycling, travel and mental resilience
