Kinga “On Her Bike” Tanajewska on Why She Never Came Home
6/30/2025
Featured, On Her Bike, Rtw, RTW Travel
Back in 2017, Kinga “On Her Bike” Tanajewska did what most of us only dream about during particularly soul-crushing Monday morning meetings: she said “see ya” to her engineering career in Australia, threw her leg over her BMW F800 GS, and rode off into the sunset with a vague plan to see the world.
Eight years later, she’s still out there.
And she’s nowhere near done.
When Life Gives You Lemons, Ride to Another Continent
Originally from Poland, Kinga had moved to Australia chasing career goals. She’d always been into bikes back home – “everything and anything from naked bikes to choppers” – but Australia awakened something different. Something that whispered “what if you just… kept going?”
Her first taste came with the “Tour de Oz,” a cross-country ride around Australia on her new F800GS. But 2015 changed everything, and not in the Instagram-worthy way most adventure stories begin.
A head-on collision with a car wrote off her beloved GS and left Kinga dealing with broken bones, PTSD, and a recovery that felt endless. Then, as if the universe decided she hadn’t suffered enough, her marriage fell apart, and work became unbearable.
So she did what any reasonable person would do: she said “not today, Satan” to a creeping depression, collected the insurance payout, bought another bike, and rode off to circumnavigate the planet.
“The hardest thing of all was to start; leaving everything you know behind, just hitting that road, that’s the most difficult part. I wasn’t sure I could do it, I worried about my bike breaking down somewhere remote, I worried what would happen at border crossings, and so on. My prep took months, and I was riddled with doubt and anxiety,” Kinga admits.
But as she shipped her bike from Australia to South Korea and boarded a plane to join her GS in Asia, things started to change.
The Plan That Wasn’t a Plan
Kinga’s original “plan” was beautifully simple: ride as far as she could for as long as her money lasted. She figured maybe two years, tops.
That was nearly a decade ago.
“I didn’t have a plan to be traveling for seven or eight years. To be honest, I didn’t really have a plan at all except to chase my dream and ride as far as I could for as long as I could,” she laughs.
But somewhere between crossing Asia, meandering through Europe, circumnavigating Africa, and traversing North America, something shifted. Her YouTube channel took off, sponsorships materialized, and what started as an escape became a lifestyle.
“Times have changed – creating content can actually earn you money now, and being a digital nomad is a thing”, Kinga shares. “Life on the road has become my new normal. Once upon a time, I used to be able to tell the difference between Wednesdays and Sundays, work 12-hour days, and all that, but life on the road is addictive. I make my own choices, I discover something new every day, I rely on myself to sort things out, I don’t depend on anyone, and I don’t have a boss. I can’t imagine living any other way now”.
But while the plan that wasn’t a plan has evolved along with Kinga’s YouTube success, she’s still the same traveler riding slowly, wild-camping as often as she can, documenting the reality of long-term motorcycle travel, and being a genuinely kind human.
“Although taking that leap to actually leave everything behind and go is hard, the rest of it sort of falls into place as you go along. Once you hit that road, once you get going, things begin to work out and feel more and more natural with every mile. You realize that all the anxieties you had aren’t real, and that this whole overlanding thing is in fact…surprisingly easy. Then again, maybe a lot of it is down to your mindset. If you’re positive toward people and the world, you get positivity back. Bike breaks down? You will find help or a mechanic, you’re not lost at sea. Something else happens – you just figure it out as you go along”, Kinga smiles. And admits that creating some drama would probably be good for her YouTube views, but, according to her, it just wouldn’t feel natural.
And maybe that’s the draw of her videos – no fake scandals or exaggerations, just one badass lady enjoying the hell out of her bike, the world, and the people she meets.
The Wisdom of Eight Years on the Road
After eight years of continuous travel, Kinga has developed her own kind of road wisdom that can’t be learned from books or tutorials. She’s figured out the rhythm that works for her, and more importantly, she’s learned to trust her instincts.
“Look, I get it, we’re all different people with different worldviews and backgrounds, so it’s different for everyone. But for me, my biggest discovery was that the majority of the world is safe, and the majority of people are good. I’m very in tune with my instincts – if I get a bad feeling about a place or something feels off, I just get out of there. I developed a sense about people, I can read people’s energy, so maybe that’s why nothing seriously dramatic ever happened in those eight years. Or maybe it’s also about how you react to things – you can get very upset about shitty weather or border bureaucracy or technical problems, or you can just say, okay, let’s fix it and move on.”
As Kinga celebrates her eight years of two-wheeled nomadic life, she says she’s becoming more empathic… and happier, in a consistent, joyful way.
“Over those years on the road, I’ve become more compassionate. I’ve also learned to be a lot more grateful to be able to have these experiences, to live this life, to discover all these places. I’ve slowed down a lot, I engage with locals more, I’m in no rush… I’m just eager to soak it all in,” Kinga muses.
The Road Still Calls
Currently threading her way through Central America toward South America, Kinga shows no signs of slowing down. “I’m down to my last continent, yes, but knowing me, I’ll spend at least three years exploring South America,” she grins.
In a world obsessed with five-year plans and retirement goals, Kinga is still all about something increasingly rare: the courage to follow your gut, even when it leads you eight years and six continents away from everything you thought you wanted.
The road is still calling. And she’s still answering, one mile at a time.