“The world is a good place.”
It is heartening to hear someone say that at the moment. At a time when the news appears dominated by war, political division, climate anxiety and a growing sense that the world is becoming more complicated and uncertain, it is tempting to look in the opposite direction; to worry, withdraw and remain close to what we know.
Markus Stitz has spent much of his adult life doing the opposite. He has cycled 34,000 kilometres around the world, travelled through 26 countries, slept far from home, crossed the Australian Nullarbor and found himself with a gun pointed at his head by Turkish military police in the middle of the night. He has experienced loneliness, fear, exhaustion, cultural confusion and the occasional miserable day when the wind is against him and his tyre is flat.
And yet, when asked what those years of travelling have taught him about the world, his conclusion is remarkably simple. “The world’s a good place,” he says. “I would still claim that’s the case right now.” There is, of course, a qualification. There are places he would not travel to at present. Nevertheless, his instinct remains to trust people. “Overall, I think people are kind, helpful, and curious.”
It is a philosophy that informs much of Markus’s work today. His work as a bikepacker, route designer, writer and filmmaker is not primarily about demonstrating how tough one can be on a bicycle. Nor is it about pursuing increasingly difficult challenges merely for the sake of being able to say they have been completed. It is about curiosity, about finding another road, and it’s about giving other people the confidence and tools to find their own adventure.
Markus is reluctant to describe himself simply as a cyclist. “I would describe myself more as an adventurous person who likes to travel a lot,” he says. It just so happens that cycling happens to be one of the best ways he has found to do so.
During our conversation, Markus reflects that there is something about travelling by bike that changes the scale of a journey. A car can carry you quickly through a landscape; walking can immerse you in it, but limits how far you can travel. A bike occupies a position between the two. It enables you to cover meaningful distances while still moving slowly enough to notice what is happening around you; a village; a ruined building; a turn in the road that was not part of the plan; a sunset; a conversation with a stranger.
The bicycle itself, Markus says, is also a conversation starter. That matters. His adventures have taken him across countries and continents, but his lasting memories are often not the headline moments. They are the human ones; the encounters, the unexpected kindnesses and the small exchanges that remind you that the world appears different when you are actually in it rather than viewing it through a screen.
That sense of curiosity also explains the way Markus approaches route design. He is not necessarily seeking the most famous landscape or the highest mountain. Instead, he looks for the story between places. In Scotland, that might mean linking historic roads, quiet lanes, coastlines, archaeological sites and lesser-known parts of the landscape into a route that reveals something about the place through which you are travelling. The bike makes it possible to stop, and stopping is often where the interesting things begin.
The culture of adventure can sometimes make suffering appear to be the objective. Social media all too often perpetuates the mantra of harder, longer, faster and higher. There is a particular form of outdoor storytelling in which pain becomes a badge of honour, and the more difficult something was, the more worthwhile it supposedly becomes. Markus is not particularly interested in that. He has experienced plenty of difficult days. His journey around the world was hardly a gentle holiday. However, he rejects the idea that pain itself is something to pursue. “I don’t want to be in the pain cave,” he says. If something becomes too painful or unpleasant, his solution is refreshingly pragmatic: stop doing it. “Do something else. I think you’ve got choices.” That may sound obvious, but it is surprisingly radical at a time when adventure is increasingly presented as a test of endurance. For Markus, difficulty can be valuable. It can teach you something about yourself and make a journey memorable, but difficulty is not the ultimate destination. Rather, the destination is the experience.
One of his clearest memories from cycling around the world comes from the Nullarbor in Australia. He had a flat tyre, a headwind and thousands of kilometres of open landscape around him. He was miserable. Sitting in a ditch, he found himself considering the most fundamental question an exhausted adventurer can ask; “Why am I doing this?” On a surprisingly practical realisation, rather than a philosophical one, Markus knew if he remained where he was, his water supply would eventually become a problem. So, he repaired the tube, and five minutes later, he was moving again.
It is an almost comically simple solution, but the memory has stayed with him. There was no phone signal, no quick internet search, no social media feed into which he could disappear and no easy way to summon someone to resolve the problem. He simply had to deal with the problem in front of him, and then continue. Later, he remembers the same section of road differently; the early mornings, the evenings, the vast skies, the sunrises and sunsets. The Nullarbor was demanding, but it also offered an extraordinary kind of simplicity. Sometimes, you need to be uncomfortable before you notice what is beautiful.
When Markus first set off around the world, the physical challenge was initially a much greater part of the attraction. He chose to ride a single-speed bicycle. One gear, one chainring, one cog. It was, deliberately, an additional challenge. On climbs, it meant committing to a rhythm and sometimes dismounting to push. On the flat, surprisingly, it could be even more difficult. The Nullarbor’s endless kilometres offered little distraction and required an almost relentless repetition of the pedals. However, somewhere along the way, Markus notes, the emphasis changed. As a result, to this day, Markus regards the bike less as the achievement and more as the means of reaching somewhere. “Bikepacking for me now is much more about the emotional side, the discovery side,” he says. That does not mean he has stopped enjoying riding hard. Sometimes he still wants to ride quickly for 50 kilometres and think about nothing except the road ahead. But he no longer needs every journey to be a test.
That distinction is important, because if adventure is available only to those willing to suffer, most people will never experience it. This is perhaps the most significant shift in Markus’s work. He began considering how he could help other people experience some of the same sense of freedom. That thinking eventually led to Bikepacking Scotland and, later, Dirt Dash Events. The motivation behind both is straightforward: “enabling others to have adventures and giving them the tools to do that.” The idea for Bikepacking Scotland arose partly from the final four days of his journey around the world. After travelling across continents, he found himself cycling through Scotland and realised how beautiful and varied the country was; and how well suited it was to exploration by bicycle.
The biggest problem, Markus concludes, was that many people simply do not know where to begin. There is a perceived need for the right bicycle, the right equipment, the right level of fitness and the right amount of experience. Taken together, these barriers can make an adventure that should feel exciting seem impossible. Markus’s answer to this, was to make the routes do some of the work. Find the quiet roads. Link the interesting places. Research the history. Establish where people can eat. Identify accommodation. Make the route achievable.
The Dirt Dashes developed from the same philosophy, but with a social element. Markus recognised that introducing a newcomer to bikepacking through an extreme endurance race was unlikely to be ideal. Instead, the Dirt Dashes occupy a position somewhere in between. The events are self-sufficient, they are challenging, but they are also something people can undertake together, with riders able to assist one another.
Sometimes the most difficult part of an adventure is finding the confidence to take the first step. An organised event can remove that initial hurdle. Once someone discovers that they are capable of riding for several days, carrying their own equipment and navigating through a landscape, the next adventure can become considerably less intimidating. Eventually, they may no longer need the event. That, in many respects, is the point.
There is a wonderfully anti-elitist element to Markus’s philosophy. Bikepacking does not have to mean purchasing a new bicycle, filling it with expensive equipment and heading into the wilderness for two weeks. If you can afford a hotel, he says, stay in a hotel. If you do not like sleeping in a tent, do not sleep in a tent. And if you are concerned that your bicycle is not good enough, consider what can actually be achieved on an ordinary machine.
Markus recalls a recent trip in Norway when he was unable to take his expensive titanium gravel bicycle on the train. Instead, he found a 20-year-old mountain bike with 26-inch wheels. He rode 60 kilometres, and had an excellent trip. The story neatly illustrates the wider point; equipment can be useful, but it can also become an excuse to wait. The perfect adventure bicycle is not necessarily the one in the shop, it may be the one already in your garage.
For anyone who has never been bikepacking, Markus’s advice is to proceed in stages. Do not attempt to solve every problem at once. If you have never slept in a tent, never cycled a long distance and are not particularly confident on a bicycle, combining all three on your first trip is probably not the most sensible approach. “Try one thing,” he says, “Then another. Build your confidence gradually.”
It is the same principle behind the routes Markus designs. His preference is often for three- or four-day trips rather than journeys lasting ten or fourteen days. They fit more easily into people’s lives, and a shorter route can still feel like a genuine escape. There is also a psychological advantage. “It’s easier to extend a shorter route with detours than shorten a long route,” he says. “If you have a short route and complete it early, you can add something. If you have planned something enormous and realise halfway through that you have taken on more than you can manage, the experience can be very different.”
Adventure, in other words, should leave room for curiosity. It is a surprisingly sound philosophy for bikepacking; and perhaps for life more generally.
I asked Markus what constitutes an adventure, in his mind. For him, the answer is not a particular distance or destination, but something that frightens you slightly. Not by placing yourself in danger, but moving beyond what is entirely familiar. “Adventure begins where certainty ends,” he reflects. That might mean travelling to another country. It might mean riding alone for the first time. It might mean sleeping outdoors, or it might mean following a route you have never ridden before. Or, it might simply mean turning left when you would normally turn right. The scale is irrelevant. What matters is that you do not know exactly what will happen next.
It’s likely that is why Markus’s optimism about the world feels so relevant. His belief that the world is a good place is not based on pretending that bad things do not happen. He has seen enough to know that they do. He has been frightened. He has been exhausted, he has encountered cultural situations he did not understand, and he has experienced moments when he questioned why he was there. But travelling slowly, meeting people and placing yourself in unfamiliar situations can also complicate the stories we tell ourselves from a distance. The world becomes less abstract, people cease to be headlines, and places cease to be merely dots on a map. Ultimately, uncertainty becomes something you can navigate rather than something you merely fear.
There is an irony in speaking to someone who has cycled around the world about the idea that adventure does not have to be epic. The numbers are undeniably epic: 34,000 kilometres, 26 countries and a year on the road. But that is not what Markus seems most interested in passing on. The real legacy of that journey is not the distance. It is the perspective. It taught him to accept that plans change, that difficult moments can coexist with beautiful ones. That you can be frightened and continue regardless. That sometimes the best thing to do is simply repair the puncture and carry on.
And most importantly, that the world is still worth going out into. In an era when so much of our understanding of the world arrives through screens, often compressed into conflict, outrage, disaster and division, there is something pure about getting on a bike and experiencing a place at human speed.
With special thanks to Markus Stitz. Photo credit @reizkultur