Cross-Asia With A Rider Named Emma, A Vespa Named Grettle, A Dog Named Molly

[advrider]

Show up at your nearest adventure motorcycle rally, and you’ll see hairy-chested riders clustered around their machines, loudly pointing out the virtues of fully-adjustable long-travel suspension, the latest dual-compound tires, fog lamps, crash bars and so on. But the truth is, you don’t need any of that stuff to have an adventure. See above, for proof, with Emma Trenchard’s riding cross-Asia from the UK to Mongolia on a Vespa. Not just any Vespa, either. Emma took a Vespa AT4, a four-stroke 150 that is hardly the acme of modern step-through design—the model debuted about 20 years ago.

But that did not stop her from taking the scooter across Europe and Asia alone! And then she rode back, and took what might be an even harder route, mostly through Russia. Check out her footage above (more towards the end of the clip). En route to Mongolia, Emma rode through southern Europe, then the ‘Stans. Not necessarily easy, but the sort of thing you can likely figure out, if you bring along a jerry can or three and you’re willing to camp.

Her return journey took her through Siberia, though, and you can see the snowy roads in a few short scenes. I’d like to know more about that part of the adventure, but the marketeers at Vespa (who put this clip together) did not see fit to show more, alas.

You can read a bit more about her trip here at Vespa Magazine, and let us leave with this quote from Emma herself:

“If you think about all the ‘What ifs,’ and the stuff that could go wrong, you’d never ever go on a trip like that.

Truer words have never been spoken. Well. Maybe they have. But she’s right!

Vezi sursa