ITCHY BOOTS

HOW NORALY BECAME AN ICON OF WOMEN’S ADVENTURE TRAVEL

- Egle Gerulaityte

The world knows Noraly Schoenmaker, a 32-year-old Dutch traveler and adventurer, as “Itchy Boots.” This is the name of her insanely successful YouTube channel, which now boasts nearly half a million subscribers and allows Noraly to travel full time. However, Noraly wasn’t always a social media star. After getting a degree in geochemistry, she left her home country to work in Australia. There, Noraly started working in gold mining, accumulated some savings, and set off on a two-year backpacking trip around the world.

Then, she did another five-year stint as an international contractor, her job taking her from Brazil to the Bahamas, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, and beyond. Eventually, Noraly found herself traveling in India, where she decided to rent a motorcycle.

“I did about 3,000 kilometers across the Himalayas on a Royal Enfield and I loved traveling by bike so much I decided to buy one,” Noraly recalls. After purchasing a Royal Enfield Himalayan, which she promptly named “Basanti,” Noraly rode to Malaysia, then shipped the bike to Oman, rode through Central Asia and back to Europe. At that point, the fearless adventurista already knew she wanted to keep on traveling and began making plans for the next leg: the Americas.

There was just one tiny issue... it was impossible to register Basanti in the Netherlands, so Noraly had to leave the bike there and purchase another Royal Enfield, this one named “Dhanno,” which she shipped to Patagonia and then rode to Peru. The bike is currently awaiting her return, as Noraly is back in the Netherlands waiting out the CV19 crisis.

As she’s regrouping and attempting to determine when to resume her journey, we caught up with Noraly to chat about bikes, travels, and ways to live a nomadic life.