When else in life are you granted a window between employment to embark on a three-month adventure? That’s what former AM Show newsreader Isobel Ewing thought when Newshub’s closure created the perfect opportunity to make the best of an awful situation.
So the 34-year-old and her partner – Canadian environmental engineer Cael Geier, 28 – set off an epic bikepacking journey along the least-beaten paths they could find. It meant days with no cellphone service, civilisation or showers.
Starting in India, the pair headed into Kashmir, before flying from Srinagar to Almaty, Kazakhstan and cycling across the border into Kyrgyzstan.
While their total mileage equates 1800 kilometres, the more astonishing number is their vertical gain – roughly 31,800 metres. That’s eight Mt Cooks!
At the time of talking to the Weekly, Isobel and Cael were camped on the steppes in south eastern Kazakhstan, making tea from foraged rosehips. They’ve recently cycled into Turkey, where Isobel starts a new job this month as a TV presenter for English-Turkish broadcaster TRT World in Istanbul.
After having her dream job as a climate correspondent in New Zealand taken away, Isobel never imagined a pivot to Turkey, but she explains it’s exciting to start afresh.
Growing up in the Waikato, did you come from a cycling family?
My dad Mark has always been a mad-keen mountain biker, competing in the Karapoti Classic. This meant we did a bit of mountain biking as a family, including riding the Rameka Track, but we also went tramping every year, which was my mum Alison’s thing. So, spending days in the wilderness, carrying all our gear and sleeping in tents was something imbued at a young age.
What got you hooked on bikepacking?
Riding 2500 kilometres across Central Asia and the Pamir Highway with my brother Jack in 2019 hooked me. No one could understand why I was going straight to one of the most intrepid places on Earth with zero bikepacking experience, but biking is the best way to completely immerse yourself in a place because you’re going slowly enough to notice everything and interact with local people. After that trip, I knew I’d be doing more.
You made the award-winning short film Inshallah from your last cycle trip with director Georgia Merton across Pakistan. Will there be another?
Inshallah has been a raging success and a bit of a tough act to follow, but I do have a film project we’ve been working on during this trip that I think viewers are going to love.
What’s the most inventive meal you’ve had on the road?
Near the top of Juuku Pass in the Tian Shan Traverse, we had a lunch of oats with chicken stock, salami and peanuts. At the time, it was delicious, but I grimace when I think of it now. We decided that of what was available in Kyrgyzstan supermarkets [buckwheat, bulgur wheat, rice, pasta], oats is best value for weight and cooks the fastest, saving precious fuel. What I miss most is a big, sharp knife and a cutting board! Hunched on the ground after a day’s cycling, chopping carrots and salami with a Leatherman, and using the lid of our pot as a chopping board definitely gets a bit tiresome.
Describe a highlight of your journey…
It’s very hard to pick, but we had a magic experience as we came to the end of a six-day stretch in the Tian Shan mountains. We were riding out towards civilisation along a gravel road in a deep, narrow gorge and about 10 horses were on the road. As we approached, they broke into a canter and we were riding in their wake, only metres behind them, the dust kicked up by their hooves. Other special moments tend towards the “phew, we’re alive”, like the night we were still pedalling as dark fell on an alpine plateau. The temperature plunged to zero, and we happened upon a cosy yurt, whose lovely inhabitants fed us mutton soup and chai next to the wood stove, and lent me an extra sleeping bag.
Has the kindness of strangers humbled you?
Universally everyone meets us with warmth and kindness. I put this down to a huge surge in popularity of bikepacking, especially in places like Kyrgyzstan. One time, we were camping in the middle of nowhere on Assy Plateau and settling down to sleep when a ute hooned up, tooting its horn. When Cael got up to see what was going on, it was a man with a huge grin and a bunch of sheep on the back, holding a bag of the local hard, salty cheese made from fermented milk for us.
It seems like you encounter so much warm hospitality, despite the language barrier…
The slow pace really lends itself to these lovely interactions, which remind you of the importance of slow travel to truly experience a place and its people, rather than whistling through by car. In Georgia, we were pedalling along a mountain path when a shepherd greeted us. He rushed out and invited us in for coffee. His home was a rudimentary shelter with an open fire on the earth floor, over which he heated water. We communicated via Google Translate and he fed us sheep’s cheese and bread he’d baked.
In Kyrgyzstan, we ended up staying with a family who operated a natural hot spring and guesthouse. They invited us to join a feast to commemorate five years since their parents had died. We watched the men butcher a freshly killed sheep and the women cooking borsook [fried puffed bread]. It was a pretty intimate family affair.
What happened when you fell off your bike and gashed your knee quite deeply?
We were in a tiny village and a group of local men quickly gathered, talking amongst one another as to how they could arrange transport for us back to Tbilisi. One of them, Beso, invited us to wait at his home, where he picked me grapes from his vines and disinfected my wound with home-brewed chacha [strong Georgian brandy] before bandaging it for me. He cooked us eggs and poured us shots of chacha while toasting peace, God and family in the Georgian custom. We stayed for hours and as the number of shots stacked up, so did Beso’s professions of love for us and declarations that we were family! He eventually sent us back to Tbilisi with a friend who he’d organised to drive out to get us, sending us away with two bottles of his own wine.
Can you share some of the other challenges you’ve experienced?
I arrived in Ladakh straight off the back of the emotional whirlwind of Newshub ending and picking up a sinus infection in transit, which really affected my acclimatisation to altitude – we flew into Leh, which is at 3500 metres above sea level. That made the start of the trip really challenging because my fitness was not up to the task of pedalling two 5000-metre mountain passes in two days in hot and intensely dry conditions. I’m a stubborn mule and hate feeling weak, so I pushed myself through those tough first days. I could probably be kinder to myself and accept that taking it slower is okay. No matter how long it takes to reach the mountain pass, it’s still an extraordinary feat to be celebrated.
How has this trip renewed your appreciation of New Zealand?
Being in places like Kashmir and Georgia, which have very recent histories of violence, has made me appreciate being from a country free from conflict and repression of human rights. It’s such a privilege to be free from the kind of trauma that creates and to have the ability to travel.
Have you always liked being pushed out of your comfort zone?
Yes, I love it. My dad loves a good uphill biking suffer-fest and my mum still goes tramping every year in the mountains in the South Island, so I get it from them. To me, it seems a waste of a healthy body not to test the limits of what it’s capable of, and the beauty of physical challenge is that it’s temporary and you feel great afterwards.
Was there a time you ever felt your safety was at risk?
We had a moment in Kashmir where I accidentally navigated us into a wooded area where armed militants had arrived the night before. State police armed with AK47s stopped us. They were incredulous that two western cyclists were unsuspectingly pedalling through this place, where two German tourists had been shot at a few months prior. They gave us an armed escort back to a village, then organised a ride back to Srinagar.
How are you feeling about your new role as a presenter for TRT World in Istanbul?
I’m really excited. I filled in presenting on almost all of Newshub’s shows, but was never a full-time presenter, so this gig will be a great opportunity to really hone my skills. Also, Turkey is a regional power in the Middle East and will likely play an important diplomatic role as we see conflict escalate across the region, making it an interesting time to be based there as a journalist.
To follow more of Isobel’s bikepacking adventures, follow her Substack newsletter open.substack.com/pub/isobelewing
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