Without a doubt, the claim to the longest motorcycle adventure of all time belongs to Argentinian rider Emilio Scotto, who from 1985 to 1995 rode 456,729 miles, visiting 279 countries, islands, colonies and non-independent countries without returning home, circumnavigating the world not once, but twice. 

The adventures he encountered along the way read like a Hollywood blockbuster, and all were captured in his book “The Longest Ride.” Highlights include how the young rider, having left Argentina with just $306, survived five robberies, the first, in Brazil, leaving him with nothing but his passport just weeks into his journey. He was jailed six times, shot at twice and came out the other side of a major earthquake, two tornadoes, four hurricanes and a massive sandstorm that threw him from his bike in the Sahara desert. 

The crown jewel of his expedition is a Guinness World Record for “Longest Journey on a Motorcycle,” an honor he still holds 30 years later. And while Scotto enjoys this honor, he says it does little to illustrate the true magnificence of his travels, or the challenges that no longer exist in a connected world. 

Scotto was 30 years old when he quit his job and left Buenos Aires aboard a 1980 GL1100 Gold Wing Interstate that would come to be known as the Black Princess. Though he’d long dreamed of traveling the world, he set off with hardly a goodbye from his friends and family. “They thought I would return home the next day!” he laughs now, looking back at just how crazy his endeavor must have sounded at the time.

To say he left unprepared is putting it lightly, and he admits now he hadn’t even considered border crossings, regulations, political unrest or even language barriers. “I didn’t really have any idea what it meant to go around the world.” In fact, the only maps he’d really seen at the time had been in an Atlas he received as a child from his mother. “There weren’t paper maps in Argentina, even maps of Argentina,” he says of that era. 

When he first rode off he admits he was as overpacked as he was underprepared, describing how, as he approached his first border crossing, from Argentina into Uruguay, the guards broke out into laughter at the sight of his overloaded touring bike. Asked today if he’d still head out in the world knowing all the peril that awaited him, Scotto thinks about this for a minute and says a firm, “Yes. It was my destiny.” 

Crossing the Amazon, By Accident

As an example of his naivety, Scotto ascended the east coast of South America, not understanding there were no roads, or even paths, through the Amazon, the world’s most impenetrable jungle. When he learned of his error he refused to backtrack for thousands of miles to the Pan American Highway on the west coast of South America, instead rustling up a boat captain willing to take him and his bike up the Amazon River to Manaus, Brazil. 

It’s on this battered ship that one of the first of Scotto’s legendary stories takes place. Aside from himself, the boat was carrying a couple dozen nefarious characters. “As I watched and listened to them, it became clear that these people were outlaws, people living on the fringe of society.”

One night toward the end of the week’s long journey there was a card game. The leader of the criminals at first told him not to play, but later, forcefully invited him to take an empty seat. “On the table was money and gold as currency, plus weapons — guns and knives,” he remembers.

Although he was not trying to win, he was shocked when he won several hands in a row. Soon the players started saying he must be cheating and a gun was drawn. When Scotto tried to return the money they were even more incensed, saying he’d insulted them. He remembers one saying he might not make it to shore. Needless to say it was a long night for the traveler. 

When he was disembarking the next morning, the guys from the card game walked by, seeming to grin and wink his way, and when the leader passed, he handed Scotto a crumbled note that wished him well on the rest of his journey. “Do you understand now?” the man said. They had wanted to help fund Scotto’s journey, “By helping you we go with you.”

It was in similar ways that the universe continued to provide passage for Scotto. He says he always had a place to sleep and meals to eat, thanks not only to the kindness of people, but their curiosity. They were hungry for stories of his adventures at a time when it wasn’t easy to learn about the world. Scotto also took short jobs along the way, an opening always there when he needed one. 

Americas The Beautiful

In Nicaragua Scotto was shot at the first time by soldiers who mistook him for a CIA agent spying for the Contras, the group of rebels at the time trying to overthrow the country’s socialist government with the help of US funding. He had to work hard to convince them he was actually a tourist. In another country he was accused of being a hired assassin and imprisoned until he could sort it out.  

His favorite Honduras story is quite different. In the middle of nowhere he’d gotten a flat and removed the wheel. It was getting dark when some villagers offered to take the wheel and have it repaired. They returned after midnight, the tire fixed, and directed him to a place where he could spend the night. When Emilio tried to pay them, he was told. “It was a favor, you don’t pay for favors.”  

When Scotto reached the United States he was enchanted by the order and cleanliness. He loved America and went on to see all the sights, though he felt pulled most strongly by Hollywood, and Hollywood loved him right back, he says, remembering how Tom Cruise reserved the rights to his story, renewing them several times at a price of $25,000 each three months. During this back-and-forth Scotto learned a manager he’d hired had secretly stolen the rights to his story. 

Eventually he would win back the rights in court, but in the meantime, Scotto was headed to Europe and beyond, where his adventures would reach new heights. 

Europe, Behind the Iron Curtain and Into Africa

Scotto enjoyed his time in Western Europe, but found an extreme contrast to how people were living behind the Iron Curtain, in what was then the Union of Soviet Social Republics (USSR). Just the fact he was allowed into that part of the world, actually crossing through “Checkpoint Charlie,” the most infamous crossing point along the Berlin Wall, was a feat of determination. 

It was his Embassy in Poland, he says, which finally gave him a clandestine visa after he’d shown up for weeks, pleading for entry. “Poland hated being in the Soviet Union, of course,” he remarks, explaining how the officials seemed to get a kick out of it when they finally allowed him entry. And what Scotto found behind The Curtain was depressing, especially in the poorest, most oppressed countries, such as Romania, where he found people were too afraid to even speak with him. 

For the next adventure, Scotto was riding in Africa where he explored all of the continent’s 55 countries. It was this part of the journey he remembers as the most difficult. “It was a year without tarmac, of crossing rivers without bridges,” he says. And indeed, crossing the Sahara desert on a luxury touring motorcycle that weighed 800 pounds fully loaded sounds impossible, and at times it nearly was. For example, Scotto has often told the tale of a four hour-long sandstorm so brutal he was blown from his bike and forced to curl up in a ball, barely able to breathe. 

On the West Coast of Africa Scotto described in his book potholes 10 feet long and 4 feet wide that were filled with “supremely smelly, primeval soup, covered with a dry, brownish green scum.” In Africa’s jungles, which he described as casting every imaginable shade of green, he remembers being incessantly hot and covered in mosquito bites as he endured humidity that “irritated, exhausted and crushed.” 

In his book, Scotto sums up his time in Africa with these words: “I had encountered a million unexpected things — new lands, deadly situations, new rules, new beliefs, new realities, children starving, armies fighting, and human sacrifices.”  So primitive were some areas, he wrote about a time he was nearly poisoned and consumed by a tribe of cannibals who offered him a mysterious liquid to drink. Lucky for Scotto, a friend in Senegal had warned him about the cannibals, so he beat a hasty retreat, recalling how hands were clutching his shirt as he ran for his bike. 

“I emerged from Africa a bit scared but definitely battle-hardened,” he wrote. 

Onward To Asia And A Second Circumnavigation

Scotto also had many interesting experiences in Asia, the largest of the world’s continents, including in India, a country he remembers as one of the most warm and inviting, when he was joined by the girlfriend he’d left behind in Argentina, Monica Pinos, who flew to meet and marry Scotto in India, where they would ride two-up for several months, enjoying a one-of-a-kind, makeshift honeymoon. 

Once solo again, Scotto rode through Southeast Asia, Australia and many islands of the South Pacific, at least one of which had never before had a motorcycle touch its soil. 

Having made his way  around the world in one direction, Scotto had no plan to hang up his helmet, instead heading in the opposite direction so that he could visit any countries he had missed. Back in Asia he and the Black Princess visited Honda Japan where he was welcomed as a hero, while his Gold Wing massaged back to freshness by Honda’s factory mechanics, one of which had deemed its state “unrideable.” 

Wanting to explore the then-mysterious China he was told at its border he would need to pay $70,000 for an entry visa. Never one to turn away from a challenge, Scotto found an audience in the Beijing 2000 Olympics committee, who enlisted him to help promote the “goodwill” of the Olympics by allowing him not only entry into China, but the ability to travel “with no restrictions, no supervision, an arrangement simply unheard of,” he wrote. “More importantly, I could change money freely, just as if I were a Chinese citizen instead of a tourist—a privilege that gave me great leverage with the little money I had.” 

His time in China included riding alongside the Great Wall for 1,000 miles, and Scotto even managed to travel into Mongolia, where he claims he was the first outsider to tour the country in 75 years. And yes, that included navigating the Gobi desert on his Gold Wing. 

When he finally arrived at the border of the Soviet Union, he was surprised to learn that the Iron Curtain had fallen, which caused an interesting glitch. Despite its newfound independence, the country of Kazakhstan was still refusing entry to foreigners, and the country he was departing, China, could not guarantee his return back across the border, leaving Scotto to live for two days as an exile in a half mile-wide strip of land between the countries with no food or water.

With the help of a TV crew that arrived to interview him about his predicament, Scotto was allowed back into China and had to backtrack 4,000 miles to Beijing in order to secure a Kazakhstan visa from the Russian embassy. Once he finally regained entry into what had been the Soviet Union, he found it was in some ways even darker than before, “now ruled by thugs and gangsters.” 

The Long Road Home

When Emilio Scotto did finally wrap up the longest-ever journey on a motorcycle in 1995, he’d been on the road for 10 years, two months and 19 days and 11 passports.

The Gold Wing had consumed one replacement engine, 86 tires, 12 batteries and nine seats, not to mention an estimated 12,500 gallons of gas and 300 gallons of oil. 

Asked if he’d choose another motorcycle, knowing everything he knows now, he says he’d still pick a Gold Wing. Unsurprisingly the Honda was incredibly reliable. “I know Honda didn’t build this bike to go across Africa,” he says, “but it did.” To this day he still boasts of the Interstate’s luxury and the joy of listening to music along the way. He was always comfortable and entertained and that made it easier to continue. 

Some of you will remember reading “The Longest Ride,” which described hundreds of his incredible stories. The good news is he’s currently writing a new series of Spanish language books that explore his journey to the fullest, with the first editions already winning prestigious awards, including a Bronze award for best travel book at the 26th annual International Latino Book Awards, held on October 19, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. 

Scotto and his wife Monica also own a travel company, Emilio Scotto World Tours, which allows him to share his favorite parts of the planet with other riders. 

As for the Gold Wing, the Black Princess is living out its retirement on display at Don Laughlin’s Classic Car Museum in Laughlin, Nevada.

Photos courtesy Emilio Scotto.

Author: Jamie Elvidge

Jamie has been a motorcycle journalist for more than 30 years, testing the entire range of bikes for the major print magazines and specializing in adventure-travel related stories. To date she’s written and supplied photography for articles describing what it’s like to ride in all 50 states and 43 foreign countries, receiving two Lowell Thomas Society of American Travel Writer’s Awards along the way. Her most-challenging adventure yet has been riding in the 2018 GS Trophy in Mongolia as Team AusAmerica’s embedded journalist.