Micro Review 24 (2025) / Women in Translation Month

Free Ride by Noraly Schoenmaker, translated by Bo-Elise Brummelkamp (Canelo)

I think that this book popped on to my radar after reading Sovietistan by Erika Fatland (translated by Kari Dickson) and enjoying the accounts of female travellers in more obscure or intrepid locations - why should men have all of the adventures?

When the book arrived at the library there was no clue that this book would qualify as a read for Women in Translation Month - poor Brummelkamp gets no mention anywhere in the book apart from a tiny line on the copyright page and this is in a tiny type size. I am assuming that this, lets call it, discretion rather than obfuscation, is because Schoenmaker's YouTube films are all in English and the publishers didn't want to put any readers off by announcing that it was a translation.

Like so many big trips Schoenmaker's was kickstarted by a personal upheaval but became so much more adventurous once her travels had started: 

Noraly Schoenmaker was a thirty-something geologist living in the Netherlands when she learned that her live-in partner had been having a long-term affair. Suddenly without a place to stay, she decided to quit her job and jet off to India in search of a new beginning. Her plans were dashed when she fell quickly and helplessly in love: with a motorcycle. Behind the handlebars, she felt alive and free – nimble enough to trace the narrowest paths, powerful enough to travel the longest of roads.

She first rode toward the Pacific, through the jungles of Myanmar and Thailand, then into Malaysia. Rather than satisfy her appetite for the open road, this ride only piqued it. She shipped her bike to Oman, at the base of the Arabian Peninsula, and embarked on a journey through Iran, across Turkmenistan along its border with Afghanistan, over the snowy peaks of Central Asia and into Europe, all the way back home to the Netherlands.

She covered remote and utterly unfamiliar territory; broke down on impossibly steep mountains; and pushed too many miles along empty roads, farther and farther from civilization. But through her travels, she discovered the true beauty of the world – the kindness of its people, the simplicity of its open spaces, as well as her own inner strength.

Now I've never even sat pillion on a moped let alone tried riding a powerful motorbike in such varied terrain and I'm afraid this book hasn't enticed me to try either, long distance motorcycle touring is not for me in any way shape or form (which my family will be pleased to hear as my lack of balance and coordination is legendary!).

Schoenmaker's writing also didn't inspire me to think at all of exploring the countries she visited, probably because her book isn't really about the places she visited - it is all the journey.

In normal circumstances I'd never have reviewed this book but I was so incensed that the translator wasn't mentioned I wanted to acknowledge Brummelkamp's work!