LONG WAY HOME

The phone line is poor and it must be pretty late in Kyrgyzstan, but Kinga Tanajewska’s voice comes through clear enough for me to be surprised how fresh she sounds. Fresh, given that she has spent the last three months riding her BMW F800GS solo from Australia to Kyrgyzstan.

Kinga got her first taste of biking as a teenager back in her native Poland, where in the Nineties old Russian bikes like Urals were readily available. She quickly got into sports bikes and track training, before finding herself doing more touring.

After finishing her engineering degree, she moved to Australia, where she continued to ride in Sydney. Her riding took a different turn when she was offered a job on the other side of Australia and a plan to make the journey there on a motorcycle emerged. What followed was part