People Say It's Easier Because I'm a Man. Meet McKenzie Barney.

I have bikepacked a lot, across four continents, and wherever I go, people ask me how I do it. Then, more often than not, comes the same line: “Well, you’re a man, so it’s easy for you. It would be so much harder for us women.”

I tell them that women ride around the world too. Plenty of them are out there right now, doing exactly what I do, and more.

Sometimes they simply don’t believe me.

So let me introduce you to McKenzie Barney.

Meet the proof

McKenzie didn’t start out as a cyclist. When we first wrote to each other in 2017, she was a filmmaker and a hiker. She had trekked in Nepal, she was filming a wildlife series in Costa Rica for Nat Geo, and she was planning months of slow, solo travel in Patagonia.

In January 2019 she wrote to me from Vietnam, in the middle of her first bike tour. She described welcoming people and huge landscapes: everything she had hoped a first tour would be.

That first tour became four years of cycling around the world.

She isn’t superhuman, and you don’t have to be either. Travelling by bike asks for less than people imagine: a bike, a bit of planning, and the decision to start. McKenzie is the proof.

How I know her

McKenzie and I are connected by Te Araroa, the long trail that runs the length of New Zealand. I walked and ran it. McKenzie walked the same trail, and it became the documentary Comfort Theory New Zealand.

We share another love, too: Bedrock sandals. A pair of them carried me the length of New Zealand, and McKenzie loves hers just as much. Sandal people have a way of finding each other.

Later I went back to ride a tandem from Cape Reinga to Bluff. In a South Island town I crossed paths with a Kiwi named James, who was walking Te Araroa solo. He turned out to be McKenzie’s partner.

I have followed her journey ever since: a message every year or two, always from somewhere new.

See it for yourself

McKenzie filmed the whole adventure herself, and it became Cycling the World, an award-winning documentary: five continents, 28 countries and 29,000 kilometres, through Africa, South America, Europe, Southeast Asia, New Zealand and Australia.

It’s more than a bikepacking film. It’s about living the life you dream of, one pedal stroke at a time. Grab a cup of coffee and watch it. Then share it with someone who needs a nudge.

Now she’s written it all down

McKenzie has just published The Women’s Bikepacking Guide, an 80-page digital guide for women who want to travel far by bicycle. It answers the practical questions that stop people before they start:

• Route planning: how to choose a route, set realistic daily distances, find campsites and navigate with confidence.
• Bike, gear and packing: what to ride, what to carry and how to carry it.
• Everything else on the road: wild camping, food and cooking, repairs, safety, budgeting and international travel, and documenting your journey.

It’s four years of hard-won experience, written down for the woman who is ready to try. Read it, and you start with answers instead of doubts.

Start with one night

Travelling by bike isn’t an extreme sport. You don’t need to be an athlete, and you don’t need to leave your life behind to circle the globe.

Your first trip can be one night. Ride across your county. Then try your state. The world will still be there when you want more of it.

Every long journey I know of, mine and McKenzie’s included, began the same way: with one push of the pedal.

The next time someone tells me it’s easier for a man

I won’t argue. I’ll send them this guide.

McKenzie is launching it herself, through her own website. A guide like this travels the way she does: from one person to the next. So here is my ask:

• Get the guide at WomensBikepackingGuide.com.
• Watch her film, Cycling the World, and pass it on.
• Share the guide with one woman who has ever told you, “I could never do that.”
• Follow McKenzie on her website, on YouTube and on Instagram at @mckenziebarney.

And if that woman is you: read the guide, pick a weekend, and go. Explore the world by bicycle, even if your world starts at the edge of your own town.

Congratulations, McKenzie. You are the answer I have been giving people for years, and now they can read it for themselves.