Leprechaun Mayhem
RIDING EAST
MOTORCYCLE EXPLORERS
NORMAN AND
MAGGIE MAGOWAN
FROM THE UK TOWARDS AUSTRALIA TAKING IN THE
DELIGHTS OF THE MIDDLE EAST
Ten years ago we (Norman and Maggie Magowan) set off
on our two yellow motorcycles on a life-changing, Pan-
American journey, to ride from Chile to Alaska. In 15-
months on the road we travelled over 35,500 miles,
produced a website www.panamericanadventure.com
and afterwards published two highly successful books in
the ‘Adventures in Yellow’ series. We also raised over
£10k for Cancer Research UK in the process. Over the
course of the trip we received a real-time / real-live
education about the lands we were travelling through,
from their history and traditions, their food and drink,
music and culture and gained immense confidence from
the kaleidoscope of interactions with the many thousands
of people we met along the way.
While considering that trip we also contemplated another
journey; a ‘Ride East’ towards Australia but abandoned
this at the time due to the situation in the Middle East and
the prohibitive costs of two ‘Carnet de Passage’ for our
relatively new bikes. However the dream-notion of that
great ‘Ride East’ never left us and by 2015, having saved
and planned over the intervening years, we were finally
in a position to realise the dream and once again take to
the road on the same pair of BMW F650GS.