DID ANYONE REALLY KNOW THE BIKE WANDERER?

The YouTube star pedaled the globe inspiring thousands with his joyful bicycle adventures. Then his world unraveled.

- BILL DONAHUE

We all need to get away sometimes, and Iohan Gueorguiev got, arguably, more escape time than perhaps any other cyclist on earth. The endearing, soft-spoken star of his own wildly popular YouTube channel, See the World, Iohan spent most of six years—2014 to 2020—tracing a circuitous path south from the frozen hinterlands of the Canadian Arctic toward, but never quite reaching, the southern tip of Argentina.

Calling himself the Bike Wanderer, he slithered over ice roads in the Arctic on a fat bike whose frame bags were laden with camping and camera gear. He communed with bison in Wyoming, got frisked by cops at the Mexican border, crossed the Darién Gap with his bike in a kayak, and then moved on toward the salt plains of Bolivia.

If Iohan were even a little bit aggro about the whole thing—if he were inclined toward neon-bright spandex and chest-thumping Strava posts—he surely would have stirred some jealousy and spite among his nearly 100,000 YouTube followers. But no, Iohan was humble. He was sweet. In nearly every one of the 40 episodes he released, there’s a moment when he’s plaintively cooing to a stray animal. One episode, set in northern Argentina, opens with footage of an aggrieved, braying donkey trotting out of high grass onto a dusty red road, spoiling to charge. Iohan throws up his palm. “No, no, no, no,” he tells the donkey as we get our first look at the high red buttes surrounding him, and the wispy white clouds in the blue sky. “I come in peace!”