Eat, pray, ride…

NOT many of us can say that we have travelled to 103 countries, visited six continents, and lived to tell the tale.

When Ronnie Borrageiro from Uvongo set out on the open road in 2010 on his ‘Gypsy Biker World Tour’ with his bike named Big Fella, a very large ‘mean machine’, he decided to make it count and do something ‘big’.

“I wanted to travel non-stop and do it in one hit. I had set goals for myself,” he said, chuckling.

The gypsy rider is the first South African to have ridden around the world non-stop. Ronnie and Big Fella have covered the southern and most northern tips of Africa, crossed the Straits of Gibraltar and then into Europe, travelled through the Middle East, Asia, Australia and Alaska and then ridden across North America and South America.

He has even ridden to the northernmost point of Europe, Nordkapp, which is a high cliff rising above the Arctic Ocean.

Shortly after his arrival back in South Africa, Big Fella, a BMW 1200 GS, spent two days being hammered, bent and welded back into shape at a panel beating shop in Uvongo.

Sporting a ‘NPS’ registration plate, Ronnie’s around the world tour notched 165 000 kilometres. He filled Big Fella 486 times with 9 000 litres of fuel.

He also snapped 82 000 photographs and filmed 500 hours of video.

In total Ronnie travelled an impressive 205 000 kilometres.

So it was not surprising that Big Fella needed some straightening out after being to the ends of the world and back.

After all, Ronnie did need evidence that he had an accident in Oklahoma, an unexpected meeting with a wall in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and later, a stormwater drain on the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia.

After Ronnie and his wife divorced in 2007, he sold everything and embarked on a three month road trip through Africa. A journey he later wrote about, calling it, ‘Taking Back My Heart’.

But the travel bug had bitten Ronnie and he shortly afterwards set out on his wild biker adventure around the globe. An unique experience he documents on his blog ‘Gypsy Biker – Taking Back My Heart and Other Stories’ which has attracted roughly 325 000 followers.

Ronnie is currently back home, in South Africa, to plan the next phase of his life. “My travels opened my eyes, and I came back to SA feeling grateful. We don’t realise how well off we are. Sure we have problems, but there are places which have far more problems,” he said.

He does, however, have plans in the pipeline to travel across eastern Russia and write a book.

The gypsy rider is a strong believer that ‘everything happens for a reason’ and his journey could be the ‘guy-version’ of Elizabeth Gilberts’ book ‘Eat, Pray, Love’, and possibly even her second book, ‘Committed.’

The only difference is that Ronnie travelled to 100 more countries than Gilbert, before he found Patricia…