We all dream of traveling to far-off places. Nikki Misurelli, however, doesn’t just dream of traveling the world; she does it. In total, she has biked over 17,000 miles across the world. Despite having had to sell all of her belongings, she says she wouldn’t trade the lifelong friends she has made or the experiences she has had for anything.
Misurelli got the idea to travel the world from her ex-boyfriend, after he told her about his own plan. She told The Independent that her boyfriend “wanted to motorcycle all the way from Alaska down to Argentina. I asked him if I could go with him but he said no, that it was a ‘guys only’ trip and ‘it was too dangerous and intense.’ He said, ‘You probably couldn’t handle it.’”
She added, “So we broke up and I went by myself.”
Since that conversation Misurelli has traveled the 12,000 miles from her home in Alaska to Panama. She has also spent time traveling over 5,500 miles in Italy, Spain, France, Gibraltar, Portugal, Austria, Slovenia, and Morocco, and hopes to move on to the Middle East or North Africa next.
Between traveling the world and maxing out her Facebook friend limit, Misurelli works part-time between trips. She said, “A lot of people just assume I’m rich, but it’s not true. I have no house and barely any possessions. I pulled all my retirement money and sold almost all of my belongings. It’s amazing how little we actually need in life.”
Misurelli even carries her own tent with her and just sleeps wherever she can. She told The Independent that she has even slept in a highway tunnel in Italy. “I did some camping in the mountains but it was really cold – it was pouring down and I wanted somewhere warm, with no wind or rain. I didn’t feel like socializing or finding an Airbnb, so I just decided to go for it.”
Her advice for other women is to get out there and travel. During her travels she has found that “bad things can happen anywhere in the world, but there are more good people than bad.” She says, “I want women around the world to get out there and get travelling. If you want something enough, you can make it work. That’s how I feel about travel.”
Featured Image by SurFeRGiRL30 on Flickr
Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)
