The limestone cliffs of Krabi rose from the sea like something conjured from a dream. Katalin Kardos arrived on her bicycle near the end of the day, and for a moment she simply stopped. "Wow, I've made it here," she thought. It was a place she had pictured for years, and now she was looking at it with her own eyes after pedaling her way across thousands of kilometers of Southeast Asia. It was one of those moments when reality meets a long-held dream.
Katalin was forty years old when she returned from her six-month cycling journey through Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia. She had come home just the week before our conversation, with the adventure still raw and still close enough to touch. Nearly 7,800 kilometers on a bicycle, roughly half her nights spent in a tent, the other half in guesthouses. She had dreamed of traveling through Southeast Asia since she was a teenager, but life, as it does, kept offering reasons to wait.
She grew up in Hungary, moving to a village when she was six, where her parents introduced her to cycling and camping around the age of fourteen. They weren't extreme adventurers: day trips, the occasional multi-day ride, sleeping at a campsite instead of a hotel. But something was planted in those years. As an adult, Katalin worked in IT project management and built a life she genuinely enjoyed: a home she had carefully decorated, a stable career, a boyfriend who supported her. She valued security. Her family had taught her that. But alongside the security sat a persistent pull toward the world beyond her doorstep.
For about two years, the idea of a long journey grew from a whisper into a plan. When she finally walked up to her team leader and asked over lunch whether a six-month leave was possible, she had already decided what she would do if he said no. "I would probably have quit," she said plainly. "I had decided I would just move on and look for another job after." Her leader, it turned out, was a former backpacker himself. He told her about his own trip to South America when he was younger, gave his blessing, and asked only for enough lead time to find a replacement.
Katalin's original vision had been to cycle overland toward Iran and beyond, with no flights at all, in keeping with her deep commitment to sustainability. But political instability in the region pushed her back toward the dream that had lived longest in her imagination. She flew to Malaysia and resolved to do everything else by bicycle. By New Year's Day, just weeks into the trip, she knew the approach was working. "I'll do the rest of this on the bike," she told herself. And she did.
The journey wasn't without its challenges: blistering days of cycling under relentless sun, stretches of loneliness, the chaotic traffic of Vietnam. But there was no crisis point, no dark night where she questioned her decision. If anything, her lower moments came near the end, when the knowledge that it was almost over drained some of her motivation. What surprised her most was how little she needed. Everything she owned for six months fit on her bicycle. "I actually had too much," she admitted with a laugh.
What she carried home was bigger than any souvenir: a sharper understanding that you cannot do everything, and that choosing well matters more than doing more. She also brought back a quiet confidence, proof that if you want something deeply enough, the practical obstacles are almost always smaller than they appear.
Her advice to anyone nursing a similar dream is simple and hard-won. Plan carefully: your route, your budget. But hold those plans loosely. "Planning is very important," she said, "but you shouldn't be afraid to change your plans. This is your journey, and it's about you." Know your reason for going, because that reason will guide every decision on the road. Don't measure your adventure against what you see on social media. And if your employer says no, decide beforehand what that answer means to you.
There is one more thing she wants to add, almost as an afterthought. She knows it sounds like a cliche, but she means it: no one should be afraid that they are too old to start traveling the world. She did this journey at forty, while plenty of people go backpacking through Southeast Asia at eighteen. The experience at forty is different, she is sure of that, but it is not better or worse, only different. She didn't spend her nights in bars or at parties on this trip, and she doesn't feel she missed anything by skipping them.
Katalin is already sketching her next trip. The bicycle is waiting. The world, she now knows firsthand, is full of people who will smile at you, invite you to dinner on their New Year's Eve, and remind you that the things we chase are often already in someone else's hands. The only question left is the one she answered at forty: why stay home when the road is right there?
Top tips from Katalin
