I’m still following Usfan, the long-distance cyclist from Morocco. His YouTube channel is called “Let’s Go Cycling.”
https://www.youtube.com/@letsgocycling-o6l
Usfan’s journey began in Morocco and he started with a big trip through West Africa passing through Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, and ending in Cameroon. I’m not sure how long that trip was or if he cycled the entire way.
From Africa, he flew to Vietnam and travelled through Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. But he didn’t start recording his experiences on video until just over a year ago in Thailand. That’s when he started his YouTube channel. I don’t think there is any kind of record online about his trip before that.
I didn’t start following his cycling journey closely until he was in Malaysia and then took the ferry from Malaysia to Sumatra and then cycled through Indonesia before taking the ferry to the Philippines. That ferry took him to a southern port on the island of Mindanao, and then he rode all the way north to Manila and then to the northern mountains of Luzon.
I’ve talked a lot about his videos and his trip in various podcasts on the Behind-the-Scenes channel. But I’ve fallen behind lately, and there are a bunch of recent videos that I haven’t talked about at all:
V78 – cycling in the Philippines one of the most beautiful rides ever.
V79 – Unbelievable! They Hosted Me in Their Home After My Bike Broke Down
V80 – Unbelievable Filipino Hospitality
V81 – Starting a New Adventure in a New Country 😃
His latest video – posted just a day ago – is V81 and is about riding back to Manila. And in Manila, he packed up his bicycle and gear and got on a flight to his newest country.
In videos 78, 79, and 80 it was clear that cycling through the mountains of northern Luzon was quite an accomplishment. I’ve been there myself (though not on a bicycle), and I remember the roads being very steep and the terrain very mountainous. Of course, the roads were a lot rougher back when I was there in the 90s. They’ve been upgraded and paved since then, but it would still be a tough ride on a fully loaded touring bicycle. The reward is that it’s a gorgeous area with ancient rice terraces. People travel from all over the world just to see the famous rice terraces around Banaue. And the people in this region consist of a variety of indigenous tribal groups, such as the Ifugao.
Usfan’s cycling style and his video shooting and editing style hasn’t changed much. He still opens nearly every video with shots of him waking up in his tent and making a morning cup of coffee on his little burner that he attaches directly to a vertical gas cannister. He has to be very careful to keep it balanced, particularly when he cooks on a big frying pan. He makes his coffee in a small clay teapot.
He still has a very casual attitude toward audio, and I often have trouble hearing what he or the people around him are saying. And I guess that isn’t a big problem because he doesn’t really talk much. His videos are more about the vibe, the scenery, and rhythm of a cycling day. There is very little narration. I continue to examine his videos like Sherlock Holmes. In these videos, I had to type in the name of various business and the names on buildings to figure out which town he was even in.
Thinking back over these videos, I remember a highlight for me was a time when he forgot his phone. He was camping at the side of the road among a bunch of near-abandoned vehicles, and then he broke camp in the morning and rode away. He went downhill for a long time on a steep, winding road. And then realized he had forgotten his phone, and he had to go all the way back. To be honest, the first time I watched this sequence, I didn’t even know what was going on. He did say, almost as an aside, that he forgot his phone and had to go back, but I didn’t even hear him the first time. The audio was too low. I figured it out and pieced together the story only later on. Luckily, the phone was still where he had left it.
Another highlight was Usfan setting up camp in the dark at the side of the road and waking up to discover that he had pitched his tent directly underneath a steep cliff where it was obvious large rocks and boulders routinely came loose and came crashing down. He had essentially put his tent in the direct line of fire of rock slides. He continues to spend a lot of nights in his tent, and he cooks full meals over his little stove in a frying pan using food that he buys from local shops. He carries quite a bit of useful kitchen and cooking gear in his pannier bags, including a protective plastic shell for 6 eggs and other plastic containers to store extra food. I continue to be astonished that he can ride his bicycle all day, shoot video, set up camp, AND cook and a full meal and do the cleanup afterwards. That’s a lot to fit into those hours. And it’s so much work especially when you consider that it isn’t hard to get a filling and inexpensive meal of chicken adobo in nearby villages and at roadside restaurants. In Asia in general, it can often be MORE expensive to cook your own meals than buy a prepared meal from a restaurant. Perhaps he just likes cooking. I guess I’m more lazy when it comes to food.
Videos 79 and 80 focus on some nights that he spent in the home of a local family. He found that his bicycle was unrideable because of a worn out tire. And he arranged for a local person to purchase a tire for him on a trip into town and return with it. And as he waited, he was invited up into the hills to visit some Ifugao villages and take part in some social events, such as a big birthday party with karaoke and games and a big feast and other celebrations.
Usfan continues to lean heavily into using some kind of AI image generator to make his thumbnail images. I haven’t seen people complaining about that in his video comments. I thought there would be at least some discussion, because I’ve seen other YouTubers come under fire for creating fake images with AI. And some of his thumbnails are quite fake. He inserts fake waterfalls and fake mountain ranges to make the scenery look much more dramatic. And he tells the AI to make him look happy in the thumbnail picture and give him a big smile. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him smile like that in any of his actual videos. It always feels odd to me when I see him look so happy with such a big smile in the thumbnail when that doesn’t seem to be his true vibe at all.
And there was one thumbnail in particular that feels a bit odd. In the video, he paid to have his picture taken with a group of Ifugao people in their traditional clothing. And the thumbnail shows him sitting with this group, everyone giving a big peace sign, and he’s holding a large camera high up in the air. I watched the portion of the video where this happened, and he wasn’t smiling like that and he certainly wasn’t holding a big camera up in the air. And in this AI-generated image, he doesn’t even look like himself. There’s something off about the whole image, but his viewers don’t seem to mind. Looking at it more closely, I just noticed that the AI-generated image of his bicycle is quite wonky, too. It’s like two separate bicycles have been jammed into one, each facing in the opposite direction.
And the last and latest video, V81, is all about cycling back to Manila from the city of Santiago and then getting his bicycle and gear ready for a flight to his new country. I won’t spoil which country he flies to because he keeps it as a surprise in this video. I know from experience that boxing up a bicycle and all your gear and tools is a major project. And it’s not easy to then get your heavy bicycle box and bag to the airport and onto an airplane. It’s not cheap either. And then doing the reverse in your new country – getting from the airport to a new hotel and putting your bicycle back together – is equally exhausting. But Usfan makes it look easy. He doesn’t dwell on the work or the logistics. He just films little clips here and there to tell the story and it gives the impression that he just breezes through the flight with no issues at all. I end up wondering what it was actually like in real life. My brain instantly goes to the immense amount of work going on in the background – not just the physical work but also getting the visa for the new country and doing the dozen other things required to go change countries.
I’m looking forward to Usfan’s videos from his new country. I’m curious if the nature of this country means that he will be camping out less or will his daily rhythm remain the same? I also wonder how far behind he is in the editing and posting of the videos. He never mentions time and his videos are generally a month or two or three old. So he might not even be in this new country anymore. He could have moved on already.