What is this cult of struggle?

This is the thing that has made me almost unable to listen to ARR Raw any more. There is this persistent ideology that "it has to be difficult and lonely and undiscovered, otherwise you're not doing it right". Infrastructure - from paved roads to cheap local SIMs and accepting card payments - is seen as some kind of evil, that is ruining the purity of the endeavor.

That's gatekeeping bullshit.

Too many people seem to be in this not for the trip itself - not for the experience and pleasure that they get out of it for themselves - but for the ability to brag in the pub about how many problems they encountered and overcame.

When I think of my trips, be it on a motorcycle or not, the things I remember are not the times when I was miserable. The trips I most enjoyed were not the ones where I got stuck in the mud or had to deal with crooked border officials - it's the ones where everything went well and I really enjoyed myself throughout.

I don't understand this obsession with getting to places where nobody else has been. I understand the pleasure of being in solitude in nature - in a place where nobody else is at the same time as you - but that just means getting up early, or going slightly out of season, dealing with colder or wetter weather. (I really enjoyed renting a scooter in Lisbon and riding out to Cabo de la Roca in February - I'd brought much of my gear from home, and was probably the warmest, best-protected scooter rider in Portugal on that day!) But if there is a place worth seeing, the locals will know about it, and will build a road to it. If some place is properly difficult to reach, it's probably because nobody needs or wants to go there!

Why are we supposed to idolize struggle and misery? It's fun to read about someone else having a bad time while you're warm at home with a cup of tea, but that doesn't mean I want to go and be miserable myself!

So no, I don't think the world shutting down makes ovelanding better or more "genuine". There SHOULD be more people doing it. It SHOULD be more accessible. There SHOULD be options on roads to take, so that you can go around the world on a Gold Wing, and you know what? If it takes you a thousand days, there will be enough great experiences to fill every single one of those days. Even if you aren't riding a KTM with knobbly tires up into the Hindukush.

The golden age of overlanding was when you could take a scheduled car ferry from Korsakov to Wakkanai, or from Panama to Columbia; when any passport besides an American or British one let you get into Iran with only a bit of bureaucracy. The next golden age of overlanding will be when China allows foreign vehicles to transit unaccompanied.