Did Anyone Really Know the Bike Wanderer?

Anyone who has ever straddled a bicycle has felt it—the delight that comes with riding away from the drab moorings of everyday life, the joy of motion, the splendor of rolling past trees and rivers and lakes. We all need to get away sometimes, and Iohan Gueorguiev got, arguably, more escape time than perhaps any other cyclist on earth. The endearing, soft-spoken star of his own wildly popular YouTube channel, See the World, Iohan spent most of six years—2014 to 2020—tracing a circuitous path south from the frozen hinterlands of the Canadian Arctic toward, but never quite reaching, the southern tip of Argentina. Calling himself the Bike Wanderer, he slithered over ice roads in the Arctic on a fat bike whose frame bags were laden with camping and camera gear. He communed with bison in Wyoming, got frisked by cops at the Mexican border, crossed the Darién Gap with his bike in a kayak, and then moved on toward the salt plains of Bolivia. If Iohan were even a little bit aggro about the whole thing—if he were inclined toward neon-bright spandex and chest-thumping Strava posts—he surely would have stirred some jealousy and spite among his nearly 100,000 YouTube followers. But no, Iohan was humble. He was sweet. In nearly every one of the 40 episodes he released, there’s a moment when he’s plaintively cooing to a stray animal. One, set in northern Argentina, opens with footage of an aggrieved, braying donkey trotting out of high grass onto a dusty red road, spoiling to charge. Iohan throws up his palm. “No, no, no, no,” he tells the donkey as we get our first look at the high red buttes surrounding him, and the wispy white clouds in the blue sky. “I come in peace!” Iohan taught himself cinematography after studying the documentaries of German filmmaker Werner Herzog. His work is expert, involving strategically placed tripods, a thoroughly loved Mavic Mini drone, a GoPro 7, and a Sony superzoom bridge camera. His narration is understated and wry, so that when he finds himself chatting to an indifferent beef cow in rural Colombia, he tries to sell the animal on meat eating, saying, “Everybody loves burgers.” But even in their funniest moments, his films never dissolve into lark, for Iohan was at bottom a mystic intent on showing us that life is huge, the possibilities endless. When he visited the Puna de Atacama, an arid high plateau in Argentina, he stayed up all night to track the arc of the stars across the dark night sky. He shot with such care that as you watch the time-lapse sequence you can almost feel the cold stillness of the dry land in your bones. Iohan kept a detailed blog, and a mantra he taped to his handlebar bag distills its essence. “See the world,” it reads. “Follow a map to its edges and keep going. Forgo the plans and trust my instincts. Let curiosity be my guide.” He appeared to be simple and pure. His fans, most of whom were cubicle rats resigned to making do with the odd weekend gravel ride, regarded him as almost holy, his life a validation that freedom and happiness really can be found in shucking all responsibility and plans to just live in the moment. “Perhaps if more people did what Iohan did, this would be a better world,” muses Jeffrey D. McPartland in a recent Facebook comment. To the faithful, the Bike Wanderer was leading an optimal life. The reality was very different. Iohan’s story is a testament to the need for balance—for a mix of bland routine and wild adventure. It’s also an allegory about the pain of celebrity, loved by thousands but known by almost nobody. [View in Browser]( [Bicycling]( [SHOP]( [EXCLUSIVE]( [SUBSCRIBE]( [Did Anyone Really Know the Bike Wanderer?]( [Did Anyone Really Know the Bike Wanderer?]( Anyone who has ever straddled a bicycle has felt it—the delight that comes with riding away from the drab moorings of everyday life, the joy of motion, the splendor of rolling past trees and rivers and lakes. We all need to get away sometimes, and Iohan Gueorguiev got, arguably, more escape time than perhaps any other cyclist on earth. The endearing, soft-spoken star of his own wildly popular YouTube channel, See the World, Iohan spent most of six years—2014 to 2020—tracing a circuitous path south from the frozen hinterlands of the Canadian Arctic toward, but never quite reaching, the southern tip of Argentina. Calling himself the Bike Wanderer, he slithered over ice roads in the Arctic on a fat bike whose frame bags were laden with camping and camera gear. He communed with bison in Wyoming, got frisked by cops at the Mexican border, crossed the Darién Gap with his bike in a kayak, and then moved on toward the salt plains of Bolivia. If Iohan were even a little bit aggro about the whole thing—if he were inclined toward neon-bright spandex and chest-thumping Strava posts—he surely would have stirred some jealousy and spite among his nearly 100,000 YouTube followers. But no, Iohan was humble. He was sweet. In nearly every one of the 40 episodes he released, there’s a moment when he’s plaintively cooing to a stray animal. One, set in northern Argentina, opens with footage of an aggrieved, braying donkey trotting out of high grass onto a dusty red road, spoiling to charge. Iohan throws up his palm. “No, no, no, no,” he tells the donkey as we get our first look at the high red buttes surrounding him, and the wispy white clouds in the blue sky. “I come in peace!” Iohan taught himself cinematography after studying the documentaries of German filmmaker Werner Herzog. His work is expert, involving strategically placed tripods, a thoroughly loved Mavic Mini drone, a GoPro 7, and a Sony superzoom bridge camera. His narration is understated and wry, so that when he finds himself chatting to an indifferent beef cow in rural Colombia, he tries to sell the animal on meat eating, saying, “Everybody loves burgers.” But even in their funniest moments, his films never dissolve into lark, for Iohan was at bottom a mystic intent on showing us that life is huge, the possibilities endless. When he visited the Puna de Atacama, an arid high plateau in Argentina, he stayed up all night to track the arc of the stars across the dark night sky. He shot with such care that as you watch the time-lapse sequence you can almost feel the cold stillness of the dry land in your bones. Iohan kept a detailed blog, and a mantra he taped to his handlebar bag distills its essence. “See the world,” it reads. “Follow a map to its edges and keep going. Forgo the plans and trust my instincts. Let curiosity be my guide.” He appeared to be simple and pure. His fans, most of whom were cubicle rats resigned to making do with the odd weekend gravel ride, regarded him as almost holy, his life a validation that freedom and happiness really can be found in shucking all responsibility and plans to just live in the moment. “Perhaps if more people did what Iohan did, this would be a better world,” muses Jeffrey D. McPartland in a recent Facebook comment. To the faithful, the Bike Wanderer was leading an optimal life. The reality was very different. Iohan’s story is a testament to the need for balance—for a mix of bland routine and wild adventure. 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