Travelling using your imagination, living the adventures of others who have been lucky enough to make the journey you most desire, or simply having a good time reading about subjects that attract us because they revolve around motorbikes.
Books about motorbike travelling form a category within the Adventure section that year after year adds new titles. In this article we will try to mention a few titles that may be a guideline to take into account. These are not reading recommendations, they are simply some of the many books that exist and which, because of their affinity, may catch your attention.
Setting Free the Bears – John Irving
This isn’t strictly an adventure book, it’s a novel in which motorbikes are part of the central theme. Set in a rather peculiar Europe for the time, the late 1960s, when Siggy and Graff travel through Austria on a Royal Enfield 700cc looking for sex and adventure. Along the way, we can see some ’34 N.S.U. Grand Prix and several German BMWs from the Wehrmacht’s “Balkan 4” battalion.
Jupiter’s Travels – Ted Simon
A trip around the world told by a traveller on a motorbike. Note this definition: Ted sees himself as a traveller rather than a motorcyclist. Through its pages, many bikers have become hooked on travelling with their bikes. The journey begins in 1974 and Ted and his 500cc Triumph Tiger set off on a 120,000 kilometre journey of experiences and thoughts of this journalist-turned-biker-turned-worldwatcher on a motorbike.
Amazigh. En moto hasta el desierto – Mario Montoro
A journey to the near and at the same time distant Morocco immerses us in a very pleasant reading about the peculiarities of this trip to a world that many will find familiar because they have experienced it first hand.
360 Grados. Una mujer, una moto y el mundo – Alicia Sornosa
A novel that mixes reality with fiction during a vital journey. It focuses more on her life than on the details of the journey, but it is interesting as a whole.
Motorbike travel literature has also left us other great names that are easy to remember for their adventures and achievements: Helge Pedersen, Emilio Scotto, the Ratay couple, Grant, Elspeth Beard and Susan Jhonson, among many other well-known and lesser-known names that make us devour lines of texts.
