French cyclist Morgan Monchaud and two friends — Brian Mathe and Siphay Vera — spent three years pedalling around the planet, covering 54,000km with essentially no budget for accommodation. Couches, barns and roadsides did the rest. The story is now told in a film charting the whole route, with occasional cameos from Bertrand Dolci, the only member of the team who arrived with serious cycling experience.

The stage-by-stage route reads like a bucket list on wheels. Starting from France, the crew were already eight months in when they reached Patagonia, riding north through South America and into the Amazon, where they spent 40 days pushing loaded bikes through mud and heat, navigating by a hand-drawn map. Meanwhile, a flashback shows another kind of journey entirely: Monchaud retracing his father's 1980 sailing expedition into the Drake Passage, reaching the Antarctic coast by boat.

The pattern repeats across the Americas. In Colombia they hitch a ride on a sailboat bound for Panama; in Arizona they pick up a fourth rider, Etienne Houles, whose job conveniently quit on him. Then comes the side-quest that gives the film its character — a DIY, GPS-free raft built in the spirit of Jack London and floated down the Yukon River all the way to Alaska.

Oceans being what they are, they fly to Oceania, cycle across Australia's outback despite a police officer warning them the next water station was 250km away, and help an elderly New Zealand couple clear fallen trees in exchange for a bed. The final stretch runs from Bangkok through Laos — where Vera reunites with family — into tropical forest and mountains, then on past visa headaches in China to Kazakhstan, a foraging detour with a shepherd family, and a return to Europe through Istanbul. Three years after leaving, they roll back into France.

Monchaud's take on it all is disarmingly simple: adventure is mostly an excuse to meet people. That's the real point for anyone toying with a long bike trip — you don't need a fat budget or an endurance pedigree. You need loose plans, a willingness to sleep somewhere odd, and the social nerve to ask. Slow travel by bike turns strangers into hosts, whether they're in Laos or the Yukon. Not everyone has three years to spare, but the film makes a decent case that the route can be chopped into stages — Patagonia to Colombia, Thailand to Laos, a French departure — each one a holiday in its own right.

For would-be bike-packers, the takeaways are practical: even relative novices can go far (three of the four weren't experienced cyclists), repairs and setbacks are part of the story, and the best bits rarely make the itinerary. Credit: ExplorersWeb.