On September 1, 2019, Marta Insausti, 58, began her trip around the world on a motorcycle. Their objectives were to raise funds for the Vicente Ferrer Foundation and for CRIS against cancer. A partner of both, she assures that “they are honest, they do titanic work and spend every last cent on very necessary projects.”

But also, Marta made that trip because, after finishing a tough treatment for grade III breast cancer, “I wanted challenges, to feel alive and to prove to myself that I could do it.”

When we speak, he has just arrived in New Orleans, the most populated city in the state of Louisiana, with his Royal Enfield motorcycle. It has more than 46,000 kilometers. On his journey he has passed through France, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India and Thailand.

From there he jumped to New Zealand, where he was unable to ride due to a problem with the shipping of his vehicle. From there he jumped to Chile. “With everything ready to continue, the pandemic caught me,” he says. After a two-year hiatus, he continued his adventure on March 1, 2022. He has little left to finish it.

Circumstances changed Marta Insausti’s life. The economic crisis made his partners decide to close their businesses, training schools that he built with a lot of work. That coincided with the divorce of the father of her children, Marta, 29, and Jesús, 26.

But the hardest thing was yet to come: She was diagnosed with breast cancer. “They told me it was quite serious. Overnight, as happens with these things, I found myself in the operating room, with chemo… In a requetetunnel,” she remembers.

A lifelong biker, she explains that, when she returned home exhausted after chemotherapy sessions, “I would go to bed, close my eyes and get on an imaginary motorcycle. She was going to take me through the mountains.

My aching body stayed in bed, but I totally escaped, I listened to the birds sing, I smelled the forest…”, he remembers and makes you shudder, “the motorcycle saved me.”

Therefore, seeing that, after closing his companies, his life remained like a blank page, decided to travel the world like a modern Willy Fogg on two wheels. “I told myself, this is not going to be any more difficult than running companies or raising children, and I left,” she says. “I needed air, to cleanse myself of all the filth, to feel alive and, above all, to show myself that I could do it,” she explains.

In addition, she decided to give a social objective to her adventure to help two organizations of which she is a member, the Vicente Ferrer Foundation and CRIS Against Cancer. “I know them both intimately, they do an impressive job,” she says.

To date, he has managed to raise around €10,000 for the first and just over €3,000 for the second. Their challenge is to reach 10,000 euros to finance the experimental therapies unit that the CRIS Foundation against Cancer has at the San Carlos Clinical Hospital in Madrid.

“I hope this report helps so that people are encouraged to help us, because research is life for cancer patients,” he says. At the moment, the foundation has just awarded her for her support. The award was collected by her daughter in Madrid.

“I felt very happy and honored. CRIS does everything in public hospitals, so that everyone can benefit from its advances and I think that is fundamental,” she points out.

“Iranian women thanked me”

In fact, she spent some exciting days with her daughter when they toured Iran together. “She is not a biker, but she wanted to see the country and we met in Tehran. She has become one of our favorites,” says Marta.

There, women are prohibited from riding motorcycles, but they had no problems, just many displays of encouragement. “We were a scandal. The Iranian women stopped us to tell us that they admired us and they thanked me for doing it, they said that we were a flag of freedom and that we are helping them a lot,” he remembers.

In the small hotels in the towns where they slept, women’s gatherings were always held. “They all spoke perfect English and we told each other’s lives. I remember a woman who showed us a video of her daughter singing, she did it so well that she could be triumphing in any country, but there women are prohibited from doing it,” she says. All in all, it is one of the destinations he most recommends going to.

Bikers in India

After Iran, she came to India to learn about the “De mujer a mujer” program of the Vicente Ferrer Foundation, a program that gives them training to set up their own businesses and empower them, and thus fight against the high rates of female suicide. the main cause of death among Indian women under 50 years of age, according to Global Burden Diseases, due to a social and economic situation that surpasses them.

In India he met Vaishali, or Vai, president of a women’s biker club in Visakhapatnam, a port city on the country’s eastern coast. “A biker I met in Chennai contacted us to organize a talk for me about the trip and he has become a great friend,” she explains, “we are both the same age, we have had breast cancer and we are bikers. We have a lot in common, even though we come from such different cultures. “We love each other a lot and we talk on WhatsApp.”

From Asia he went to Oceania, and from there to Chile, to tour America. The pandemic stopped his trip for two years, but on March 1, 2022 he returned to the road. The goal was to reach New York. While he was very fit in 2019, the second time around not so much.

“I practically left the confinement on the road and it is being harder, of course,” admits this woman who exudes joy and who claims to enjoy “a lot” watching motorcycle races. “I love Marc Márquez to death, I like him because he is very crazy and never gives up anything for lost, he never throws in the towel,” highlights the moto GP champion.

Biker against stereotypes

Of his engagement with the two wheels, he recognizes that “It’s hard to explain, I think you have to be a biker to understand it. In Madrid, when I went to work, I went down to the garage with my jarred meals from work and, as soon as I got on the motorcycle, I felt happy… Without starting, eh. And on the road, I thought, how lucky I am. While people were in the subway or in a traffic jam, I felt the heat, the cold, the rain… Life. I feel that the motorcycle is the key to your freedom.”

Talking to Marta, You might think that the world of motorcycles is not masculinized. But she answers with her usual honesty and clarity: “What’s up, it’s a total macho world,” she says. That’s why, in rebellion, she decided to call herself ‘The Biker’ on social media.

“I wanted to dismantle the masculine ideal of the woman on a motorcycle, who has to be with huge tits, corseted in leather and, of course, in a package, like a sexual object. Well no, I thought, you’re going to freak out, the biker is a woman over 50 years old, with white hair, with children and she doesn’t give that profile at all.

The border of fear

Although he has not had any bad experience in all his trips, Marta remembers a moment when she almost felt terrified. When she was in Mexico, she discovered that to cross the border she needed a visa, but they wouldn’t give her an appointment for two months. Some Mexican bikers, who had taken her to eat and drink mezcal from her, convinced her to go without it.

“’Híjole, gringos love epic adventures like yours, I’m sure they’ll let you in,’ they told me,” he remembers. “I would never have done it, but I stood there. Of course, I was so scared that I even got diarrhea.”, he confesses. The American officials, in fact, took photos with her and her motorcycle, and congratulated her on her feat.

But, when one of them found out that he had been in Iran, considered a ‘bad’ country, things went wrong. “I wanted to die, I explained to him that I had to cross it no matter what to get to India. For a while, she hesitated. I already looked like the last season of Orange is the new black, the series I’m watching. But in the end, she put the seal on me and wished me a good trip.”

He also remembers what he calls “Paco Martínez Soria moments,” like in Houston, when he couldn’t figure out the highways or parking spaces. “I had to move the bike five times, until a Salvadoran boy explained to me how things were going,” he confesses, “I felt super stupid.”

And how much he fell in love with Guatemala, another country that he highly recommends visiting. “It has everything to make a great trip, you will not believe the landscapes of the nature of the Mayan culture and how they continue to live from religious syncretism that is taken to its ultimate consequences there, with incense, bonfires and shamans, all together,” he explains.

A celebration of life

Already in the final stretch of her trip around the world, she admits to being “super excited” and still having “no idea what I am going to do when I return. Many days, I ride the motorcycle thinking about what to do with my life and, honestly, I don’t come to any conclusion.

I am a normal person who is making a dream come true, someone who really wants to live and help wherever I go, to the small extent that I can. With that I am satisfied.”

Of this epic adventure, pure celebration of life, It takes “having discovered that we need very little to live very happily.”. “I’ve had two backpacks for months and I haven’t needed anything else.” Talking to her is a constant high, share her joy.

We agreed that he will send me his photos tomorrow, although, he says laughing, “I don’t know, because in New Orleans there seems to be a lot of going on, it might take a couple more days.” In fact, he tells me, last night he went out to dinner, listen to music and have a couple of beers and he was late. “This city has a lot of danger,” he says. And you, Marta, much more. Have a good trip, always, mate.

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