In 2015 Swedish, small-town girl Fredrika Ek decided to go for the journey of her life around the world. Not by plane, by train or by bus, but on a bicycle! Forty-five countries, 51,000 km, and 1042 days later, she returned to her hometown with a backpack full of memories from riding her bike through the Argentinian Andes mountains to getting hit by a car in Australia, getting caught inside an electrical storm cloud, to making friends for life in West Africa. We had the opportunity to chat with 2017's "European Adventurer of the Year'' about her travels and what she has learned. Tell us about your background My name is Fredrika Ek. I come from this quite boring ordinary town in the middle of Northern Sweden. Growing up I've always just been this ordinary girl. I think that I still am, but I have had some big ideas from time to time. Quite young at the age of 22 I decided to go for one of them. So I set up to ride my bicycle around the world! Wow! So had you been biking a lot, like were you a professional biker or how did you come up with the idea that - “I'm going to take my bike and ride around the world. Where did that come from? I still wouldn't describe myself as a cyclist. I found the bike to be just a perfect tool to explore new places. A lot of the places that I've had the fortune to visit or see and discover at a slow pace would have been impossible to reach had I not had the bicycle. But for me, it's really only been a tool. For me, it's been about traveling and just curiosity of seeing what's out there. As I told you, I come from this quite mundane place in the world, and I’ve always watched TV, movies, or read books about all these other places, and I wanted to see them for myself.
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I laugh alot because I was super naive and of course, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into” Vol 10
When you decided that you were going to do this journey, and make this happen, what was the whole planning process like, where did you begin? I had that one moment when I decided! The idea grew on me, but then there was this one moment of decision when the whole thing went from just being a dream or a fantasy to a project that was going to happen, even though starting was still a year of. Looking back at my planning process, I laugh a lot because I was super naive and of course, I didn't know what I was getting myself into, which on one hand was quite good I think because I would never have had the guts to go for it (she laughs). I didn’t have any sponsors, any organization, or anyone helping me. It was just me trying to Google. I didn't own a bike when I decided to ride a bicycle around the world, so that was one problem. And I'm quite broke (back then), so I need to get money to buy a bike and a tent, and bags to put that tent inside. There was a whole really basic map exploring. And you said you didn't have any sponsors that help you financially with this? Trustworthy Magazine
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