Legendary motorcycle routes around the world

“There’s something so alluring about the open road with the freedom and spontaneity that comes with it. It’s the way the road snakes endlessly ahead, surrounded by stunning scenery, and it’s the liberation to stop wherever you please while discovering hidden gems along the way.” Sophie Clapton, travel photographer and road trip lover.

While these words apply to a road trip in any type of vehicle, for me, it took riding a motorcycle to really understand the words. After lockdown was partially lifted and we were allowed to go beyond our neighbourhoods to more than the shops, I rode out towards Hartbeespoort and on towards Rustenburg without a destination in mind, not realising that I had crossed provincial lines between Gauteng and North West until I was stopped at a roadblock and asked for my travel permit, which I did not have.

The traffic officer was bewildered by my response to the question “where are you coming from and where are you going?” which was “from Joburg, to Joburg.” His colleague piped in and said, “these guys on motorbikes do that. They ride without a destination.”

Fortunately, they let me go with instructions not to do it again unless I had a permit.

In my early riding days, I was invited to a Harley Davidson launch in the Western Cape which started in Cape Town and ended in Barrydale for the night. It was a full day of riding through amazing scenery and different landscapes from the flat roads along the ocean and rocky mountains to rolling hills. We also rode parts of the Cape Route 62 which I still dream of riding in its entirety from Cape Town to Gqeberha through Oudtshoorn and the Garden Route.

About a year after this experience, I embarked on what has probably been my longest ride to date, Johannesburg to East London via Kokstad.

The experience also reignited the desire to ride the famous American Route 66 which starts in Chicago and ends in Los Angeles, going through a number of states, including Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. While it was decommissioned as a highway in the 1980s, the trip, including on parts of the original route, still seems worth it. There are multiple companies providing tours from guided to self-guided with options such as motorcycle rental — usually Harleys because it is America, after all — support vehicles, and so on.

There’s also the Pyrenees Loop that goes through Spain and France, across some jaw-dropping mountain passes and coastal roads. The prospect of tackling this route one day is both exciting and terrifying with the roads on the Pyrenees mountains snaking back on themselves. Truly hairpin central. It is about 2,400 kilometres of open road with stops along the way that vary depending on your interests and whether you go on a tour or navigate your way through it yourself.

I have found that the more one looks, the more one finds epic roads, passes or road trips, across the world. As much as it is about riding the motorcycle, it is also about experiencing different countries and cultures with a different lens. There’s the 1,600 kilometre Ho Chi Minh Trail in Vietnam. There’s the shorter nine kilometre Strada della Forra road in the northern part of Italy that is literally carved out of and through a mountain, or the Amalfi Coast in the south of Italy with tours for as long or as short as you would like.

Top of my list is a tour of Japan, which goes from the bustling city along the coast and into the mountains with the opportunity to visit Mount Fuji and various heritage and historical sites and cities along the way.As Pico Iyer is quoted as saying, “We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel next to find ourselves.”

 I reckon travelling on a motorcycle reflects this, on steroids.