The greatest motorcycle trip in history: 30 years after an Argentine's feat

Thirty years ago, on April 2, 1995, Emilio Scotto arrived at the Obelisk of Buenos Aires on his Honda Gold Wing 1100 Interstate.

The fact would be nothing special if it weren't for the fact that this was the end of what is still today the longest motorcycle trip in history , a record certified by Guinness : in 10 years, two months and 19 days, Emilio had travelled 735,000 kilometres in two trips around the world - equivalent to a round trip to the Moon - through 279 countries (considering both UN members and non-UN members), islands, atolls and overseas territories.

This journey is the story of how a child's dream can come true. As a child, Emilio used to say he was going to travel to the Moon . Then his mother gave him an Atlas that, after talking about the Moon, talked about the Earth. "When I read it, I changed the trip to the Moon to a trip around the world," he says. The dream remained, latent . Until it awoke.

“I had a 'normal' life. I was a medical representative for a laboratory, I rented an apartment in Belgrano, and I'd never had more than two weeks of vacation . The dream was there, but somewhat vague. Traveling around the world how, when, in what way... those questions had no answers,” Emilio says from his home in Olivos, where he lives part of the year with his wife, Mónica Pino.

A crucial answer came in 1980, when a coworker told him he'd bought a motorcycle. "I told him, ' Why a motorcycle ? Get a car instead,'" he recalls today.

But she accompanied him to pick it up. “At 25, I walked into a motorcycle dealership for the first time, and that’s when the question ‘in’ was answered . The trip around the world could have been in anything, but when I saw the photo—it wasn’t the motorcycle itself, but its photo—of the Honda Gold Wing 1100 Interstate , with a phrase that said ‘ your world on two wheels ,’ I realized that was it. I’d never ridden a motorcycle before, but life gives us signs, like a little bell ringing. I listened to it, and I paid attention .”

On January 14, 1985, he dressed in his work clothes (shirt, pants, blazer) because he didn't have motorcycle gear , and left his apartment for the last time. "I saw myself reflected in the building's glass. I touched the reflection with my own fingers, and in that moment, filled with both sadness and joy, I said goodbye; I said 'goodbye forever, Emilio Scotto,'" he recalls.

Thus began the journey that from “around the world” had become “ visiting every place on the planet where at least one human being lived .”

He set out alone, with just $300 , a borrowed camera, and two rolls of film. “ It was a different world . There were no cell phones, GPS, or ATMs , I didn't have a credit card, and there was no information about other countries. I looked for maps, but there weren't even maps of the province of La Pampa. I set out with no knowledge of the world, no resources, and no sponsorship.”

Instead of following the “logical” route to travel north through America, along the Pacific, Emilio took the most difficult route: the coast of Uruguay and Brazil , and then the Amazon rainforest to Venezuela .

He traveled to Rio de Janeiro with a lot of luggage. In the first volume of his book series "From the Earth to the Moon" (there are three, not to be missed, and the fourth is coming soon, www.emilioscotto.com), he recounts how he left the Black Princess for a few minutes in the care of some Argentinians, and when he returned, everything had been stolen , except for his motorcycle.

He writes: “ I’m wearing white shorts and a sleeveless blue muscle shirt, white sneakers, and tennis socks. Apart from the underwear I’m wearing, and the Victorinox in the glove compartment, which they didn’t open, I have nothing else left in this world . And the motorcycle, of course! ”

Far from being depressed, he says that was the best thing that ever happened to him ; he learned the value of traveling light, without so much baggage.

“By the third week, with all the guilt weighing on me—leaving my mother, my job, not living up to my obligations to society, retiring with $300—I arrived in Salvador de Bahia for Carnival, when Brazilians shed taboos, guilt, and ills. They shed their skin , like a viper, and that's what happened to me; I shed everything and moved on like a man , no longer like a boy,” he recalls.

And he says he didn't go there to teach anything, but to learn, to listen . "I stopped being Argentine and I stopped being Emilio Scotto. I was like a piece of meat with an impossible-to-contain curiosity; with a daring even unknown to me."

“The dangers and problems begin, and you begin to discover how to confront them. In the Amazon, I was told that where the garimpeiros —gold prospectors—were, it was impossible to pass, I had to go back. And I began to discover the world of 'no's' —this can't be done, that can't be done either. But also, that behind a thousand no's, very hidden, there is a yes . You discover how to survive, how to pursue your dream, and that you were born for this.”

And he also discovered that his journey wasn't so much a journey, but rather the adventure of living an unknown life . "Every minute of every day, you have to generate things, soak them up, let the bad in with the good. That was perhaps the greatest secret of the trip: having transformed myself into a magnet for things."

They told him not to mess with the garimpeiros because they were very dangerous. But Emilio joined them on a boat because they sailed the Amazon for six days. They had warned him not to play cards there, but he did; he began winning games and money and emerged unharmed, even though they insulted him and threatened to throw him into the river.

Upon reaching his destination, the gold miners confessed that they had let him win to help him continue his journey. “Most of them are convicted by the courts; they're in the jungle, but prisoners, they can't leave. And they told me that if I could circumnavigate the world, somehow they would too, ” he explains.

The journey continued to North America; upon returning from Canada to New York, he was interviewed on TV, where they named his motorcycle Black Princess and asked for help, so a cargo airline offered to take him to Europe on his motorcycle .

In Naples she met Maradona , who gave her money for three nights in a 5-star hotel, although she preferred to use that money to stay in a guesthouse for a month .

Pope John Paul II blessed his journey, which became unstoppable: Africa, the Middle East, Oceania, back to the United States and from there Japan, China, the islands and atolls of the South Pacific... the entire world .

In Africa , he suffered a severe illness from malaria and was imprisoned five times ; once in Liberia, accused of trying to kill the president , Samuel Kanyon Doe. And in Zimbabwe, he was accused of carrying a fake passport, because immigration officials thought they were all written in English, while his was in Spanish.

Among the thousands of moments, situations, and experiences of the trip, Emilio highlights a few that have remained etched in his memory , "perhaps because they changed my life more than others." One is the experience of the gold miners in the Amazon; another, a boat in Somalia escaping pirates when it was caught in a hurricane—"I thought I was dying, I said goodbye to everything"—and also crossing the Sahara, alone , for 18 days pushing a motorcycle through the sand.

“And in India, when I finally realized I was looking forward to what I had left behind. I was looking for the geisha when the woman of my life was in Argentina.” It was Monica, the girlfriend I had left behind when I left. She traveled, and they were married at the Taj Mahal in 1990.

Emilio was the first foreigner to enter post-communist Mongolia , after sleeping for two weeks at the border, asking every day if he could pass. Muammar Gaddafi himself let him enter Libya from Tunisia and gave him money for fuel; China allowed him entry without restrictions or censorship; he entered Guinea Conakry through a border that had been closed for 35 years, and he was also able to enter Qatar, Bahrain, Dubai, and the United Arab Emirates, at a time when no one visited those countries.

He entered Kuwait on the condition that he would become a Muslim . He did so, taking the name Khalid Sagal Yunali , which means " the man who travels in the first light of day and the last light of night in paradise ." He did, however, warn that he would remain Catholic and that he would also be a Buddhist in China , a Hindu in Bali , and a Jew in Israel . And he crossed the Berlin Wall at its most dangerous crossing , Checkpoint Charlie.

“After the trip, I wondered a lot of things: how I survived the wars in Africa and Central America, how the ship didn't sink in Somalia, or why so many borders were open to me... The answer to this question came to me much later, and it was that the world was changing . Until the end of the 20th century, it wasn't much different from the 19th century; a closed, 'anti-global' world, with wars and conflicts everywhere, where at every border you were a spy ,” he says.

And he adds that, towards the end of the 20th century, an unprecedented movement of openness emerged. “It was something that had to happen, and there was this Argentinian , and an Argentinian doesn't bother anyone; it wouldn't have been the same if he were American, English, or French. Besides, he rode a big motorcycle—I couldn't hide; he was white, had short hair, and looked like an abandoned puppy. He knew how to express himself, and he didn't run anyone over. So many people said, ' Let's try letting him in, let's see what happens .'”

“ I was an experiment,” he defines, “not because it was important, but because it was the right time. They wanted to see what would happen; it was a world that needed to tear down borders and walls.”

And he says the world he traveled through no longer exists : “The world of the 1980s was a different planet; there were few airlines, few hotels, very little tourism, and virtually every country required a visa . But in 2000, one humanity died and another was born; we went from primitivism to riding on a rocket.”

Of course, he was impressed by the Pyramids of Egypt, the Taj Mahal , the Statue of Liberty and landscapes that he defines as having a beauty “that strikes the eye,” especially on the islands and atolls of the South Pacific.

But his search went beyond the landscapes : “In reality, what killed me was that old man sitting on the side of the road near Kathmandu, in Nepal, the Chinese man whom the Government had sent as a caretaker to the Taklamakan Desert - to take care of what, sand? -, the Tuareg dressed in blue who came on his camel and from his clothes took a little turkey, made a little fire and offered you a little tea... wherever there was a human being I wanted to know what they were thinking, what they were laughing about, what they were doing .”

When he returned to Argentina in 1995, Monica had prepared a surprise for him: a caravan of police motorcycles that accompanied him the last 400 km, to which private individuals gradually joined: when he arrived at the Obelisk on April 2, the line had more than 3,000 vehicles .

Then there was another caravan in Córdoba and also in Madrid: “I had a commitment to Spain because it was the country that made me a writer , when the magazine Motociclismo found out about my trip and asked me to write notes, and I became a chronicler .”

Finally, another caravan in Barcelona, ​​where the president of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Jordi Pujol, turned off his motorcycle in front of the TV . "I didn't want to use it anymore; the Black Princess was already a legend in itself."

After two years in various museums in Europe, the United States offered to bring the motorcycle to that country. Don Laughlin himself, in the city that bears his name, near Las Vegas, offered it the best spot in his classic car museum, the Riverside Casino and Resort , where he exhibited the DeLorean from Back to the Future; Peter Fonda's motorcycle in Finding My Destiny; and a scooter used by The Three Stooges, among other vehicles. There, the Black Princess is carefully maintained and visible, on a rotating platform .

When he returned from his trip, Emilio didn't know what to do - "I only knew how to travel by motorcycle" - until he eventually settled in Los Angeles - where he now lives part of the year - and began organizing motorcycle and 4x4 tours around the world , which he continues to do today with Monica (emilioscotto.com/tours).

“On these tours, I return to most of the countries I've visited, and I realize how the world I traveled through has disappeared . When I first went to Tibet, for example, God lived there; Jesus Christ was walking around. Today, it's more like Disneyland. Countries like Kenya and Tanzania were breathtaking adventures; today, they're full of luxury safaris.”

Partly because of this - although much more because of the journey itself - the Guinness organization itself believes that Emilio's trip cannot be matched .

In 1997, Emilio Scotto received the Guinness World Records award for the " longest motorcycle journey in the world ." It was Guinness World Records itself that contacted him in the final year of his journey, telling him that they had been following his journey for years through the chronicles he published in various magazines. To this day, he holds that record, which has since been renamed "King of the Road" or "Super Epic Journey."

In addition, since 1994, New York has commemorated every 27th as “ Emilio Scotto Day in New York City ”; he received the keys to the city of Puerto Rico, was declared an Illustrious Visitor of the Federated States of Micronesia , was honored by the Argentine Congress, and was included on the list of the 50 most important explorers of humanity , alongside legends such as Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, James Cook, and Ferdinand Magellan.