Episode 178: Róisín Gallagher

From Baja Divide to Istanbul on a 17000km Adventure

Roisin Gallagher started this adventure with her partner. They loaded up their bikes in Mexico to ride the Baja Divide, one of the most demanding off-road routes on the continent, and had a plan to cycle around the world. After Baja they continued on through Mexico and into Central America. They’d been on the road for seven months when they made the hard decision to end their relationship. At that point, Roisin had every reason to call it done, book a flight home to family in Ireland, and figure out what came next. Most people would have done exactly that, but Roisin chose not to. Instead, she bought herself a one way ticket to Japan and kept on going solo.

Baja Divide. Starting off at the deep end

I got to sit down with her to chat about her adventures and hear what it’s like to have cycled over 17000kms through so many diverse countries, cultures and landscapes. We started off at the very beginning and the Baja Divide which is a tough off-road route on the Baja Peninsula. While Roisin had done some ‘credit card’ style bike adventuring in the past, this was next level. Think two hours of hike a bike to cover just 3kms next level! She jokes she was traumatised by the whole experience which included being debilitated with food poisoning.

But her experiences on Baja at the very start of the trip would hold her in good stead, adn she reflects back on those early days almost like her apprenticeship. When things have been hard in the Balkans, in Croatia, grinding up a mountain in the snow, she has been able to go back to Baja and remind herself she already survived the worst of it.

Costa Rica: The week that nearly broke her.

And then there was that week of riding the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica. Fresh after ending her long term relationship, Ro threw herself straight into the deep end with a super challenging route from Bikepacking.com

“Nothing will ever be as hard again, ever.”

The week in Costa Rica really pushed her to breaking point and happened at the point of ending the relationship in Central America and getting on the flight to Japan. Roisin jokes she felt that she said she almost needed to put herself through something and she certainly got more than she bargained for.

A tropical storm arrived on night two with lightning so intense her tent was flashing white all night and she could feel the rumbling through the ground beneath her. On day three she reached a river crossing where the flood tide had risen above her hip, with crocodile signs all along the banks. The water was running so high it was impossible to cross, but she also couldn’t backtrack because the tide had also come in behind her. She was stuck and so she just sat down, bought a coconut from a local who was selling them by the riverbank, and sat with him for seven hours until the water went down.

Immediately after this day, just when you think it coudln’t get worse, it did!. The monsoon got into her panniers while she stopped for a beer, and destroyed everything. Her phone died, her camera broke, the garmin, kindle, power bank adn also her dynamo hub. All gone in one hit! But while they broke Ro didn’t and she got herself onto the plane to Japan.

Japan: Three months that felt like a warm hug

Japan was the reset she needed, even if she didn’t know that going into it. Roisin had booked the flight without much research and arrived at the airport having to rebuild her bike through tears. She had no expectations beyond knowing the food in Japan would be worth it.

What she found was something she described as a warm hug of a country. Onsens, the public bathhouses where you pay two or three euros and spend the evening in hot pools and saunas, available almost everywhere, and she used them nearly every day. Restaurants where the entire kitchen staff came out onto the street to bow as she left. Drivers who practically veered off their lane to give her space, bowing from behind the wheel.

She also rode through bear country on the northern islands, saw four bears in a single day including two cubs up close on a remote off-road trail, and ended up being escorted down the mountain by a local in a van who was frantically translating warnings about more bears through a phone translator. Ro ended up sleeping in a small wooden hut on the mountain that night.

“You’re just gonna find, in Japan, random, lovely little wooden shelters, free campsites, public toilets everywhere. Everything was easy.”

She met a fellow cyclist named Alice through a Japan cycling WhatsApp group, and they rode the country north to south together on a beautifully flexible arrangement where either of them could peel off to an island for a few days and regroup later. That was perfect and exactly what Ro needed to help get her into her own groove.

South Korea, and then home

From Japan Roisin crossed to South Korea and rode the Four Rivers Route. By this point her Rohloff shifting cable on her bike had broken again, which would happe reliably every five weeks due to a 3D-printed part shaving through it. It meant Ro was essentially gearless on a loaded touring bike. The Four Rivers Route being flat was a relief and the cycling infrastructure was so perfect she didn’t need to think about a thing.

After South Korea, Ro decided to return back to Ireland for Christmas and stayed there for three months where it literally rained every single day. She thought about getting a job and also whether she shoudl stay home and settle down again. But deep down she knew she wasn’t ready for the adventure to be over with and so it was that in March 2026, Roisin flew to Munich and started again. This time she had a much looser plan and a deliberately smaller scope, telling herself she’d just get to Istanbul, and then review things from there. Leaving in March also meant it was still very much winter in the Alps, but that didn’t matter, she was just stoked to be riding again.

Cycling through the Balkans on the Transdinarica route

Roisin found the Transdinarica route through Claire Watt’s Instagram posts from Claire’s own tour, and followed it south through the Balkans without doing much research into the region beforehand. It turned out to be one of the highlights of the entire trip. Montenegro’s Durmitor National Park stopped her in her tracks, a landscape she had never even looked up a photo of before she arrived. There were snow-covered mountains, picturesque lakes and given the time of year she had it all to herself. Something Ro is a big believer in is the magic that happens when you discover unexpected places, and this was very much the case for every day.

In Croatia, she was caught by the bora, an infamous wind so violent it literally closes roads. She happened to be in an area wehre the wind was known to be the worst and it reached speeds that physically prevented any movement for days. A bar owner saw her with her bike and took her in. He told her his son had died years ago when the bora lifted his car and threw it into the sea. Then this man simply gave her a house to use for five days and looked after her until the wind dropped. The kindness of strangers is a constant theme on this podcast and here is another great example of it.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, three older men who had all been through the war invited her to stay on their land. They drank rakia together until 3am, one of them woke her at that hour to offer eggs and more rakia, and in the morning they sent her off with a full cooked breakfast including homemade sausages. Hearing Ro share that story I really get the insight into how energising she finds these random and strange encounters. It is the essence of why she travels in this manny, stuff happens to you that is slightly weird and an absolute highlight. Both of those things can be true.

Getting into Istanbul on a sushi truck

Istanbul is renowned for being a sketchy city to cycle into. Roisin did not take the ferry option that many cyclists use to bypass the worst of the motorway approach to the city. Initially she tried to cycle it, in the rain, into a headwind, with no hard shoulder, with trucks close enough to brush her. After 20 kilometres she pulled into a petrol station and asked everyone she could find whether they were heading to Istanbul and had room for a bike. Nobody could fit it.

The petrol station staff told her to camp there and try again in the morning. She drank chai with about ten blokes and had a fine time before trying again te next morning. Twenty more kilometres down the motorway she stopped at another petrol station and spotted a man with a sushi delivery van. She clocked the space in the back. She said “Istanbul?” He said “kinda.” She said “kinda sounds good, can I come?” The bike went in with the sushi. He got her part of the way there and she rode the last stretch. It was an ordeal and she and arrived in the city shaken, and relieved. Her advice to others is avoid cycling the roads into Istanbul at all costs! “

Wild camping, and doing it scared

Roisin didn’t pretend to find wildcamping easy and I really appreciate her honesty. She describes herself as a nervous camper, who still does it anyway. She’s also developed her own system which include wearing earplugs that filter out the leaf-rustle sounds her brain interprets as threats. She also refuses to camp in forests as she finds them too eerily quiet. Like all things it’s a balance, but she is slowly getting more accustomed to being comfortable camping solo.

Ro believes the reward is worth the nerves and waking up to a sunrise over the sea all to herself is a true gift. Ro is also the type of person who will stop the day early because she’s found a beach and a perfect spot to stay on longer. It’s the extra bit of freedom she’s leant in on now that she’s found her groove with bikepacking. And she is all for skipping sections she doesn’t find interesting, taking the detours and hitching rides with strangers. It’s a hundred percent about the experiences for Ro, and as she heads on from Istanbul, on a route determined by the cuisine ahead, I can only imagine that she’s going to continue to have a blast.

The spaces in Between

I always ask my guests to finish the sentence: the best thing about taking a bike adventure is…

Roisin’s answer ran for several minutes and covered cartel zones and Mexican villages with no clean water, a fisherman in Japan, a woman fermenting seaweed in a small town in Korea, the old men with the rakia, the reality of seeing landfill burning outside the pretty Pueblo Magicos, all the things that are difficult and all the things that are beautiful. She said it’s not the big cities and not the bucket list highlights. For her why she loves bike travel is because it takes you to the places in between. You also get to see the good and the bad and the ugly, knowing you only get any of it because you’re on a bike.

You can follow Ro’s future adventures via her instagram account @ontheroadwithro

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