Kenneth Glad
Late one night outside Moscow, two exhausted travelers stood beside a muddy motorway wondering if they would have to sleep in the snow again. Hours later, a stranger was cooking dinner for them in her apartment.
Amalie Fie Flamming, 26, and Thea Tolberg Møller, 24, arrived in Japan after almost 100 days of hitchhiking from Denmark.
The journey covered 16,900 kilometers through 19 countries. Along the way, 139 strangers picked them up and carried them closer to their destination.
The women documented the trip on Instagram, where more than 47,000 people followed their progress.
According to TV 2 Denmark, they also helped raise around €7,600 for UNICEF during the trip.
Nights in Russia
One of the toughest stretches came in Russia. The women said several low-cost hostels refused them because they could not process foreign passports.
That left them stranded near a motorway outside Moscow in freezing slush after more than 40 days on the road.
At a gas station in the middle of nowhere, they found a family willing to drive them toward Nizhny Novgorod. But they still had nowhere to stay and only limited cash because their bank cards were not working in Russia.
Eventually, they connected with a local woman through an app. Even though the travelers arrived close to midnight, the woman prepared beds for them and made food after the rest of her family had gone to sleep.
“When things got really tough and we were thinking, ‘This is awful. This completely sucks,’ things somehow always turned around in the end,” Flamming said in an interview with the Danish broadcaster.
Not always comfortable
The women said many people warned them before they left, insisting the trip was too dangerous for two young women traveling alone.
The outlet writes that they did face difficult moments during the journey. In Turkey, they told of an overnight stop where two truck drivers became overly persistent and ignored repeated refusals.
Møller said that experiences like that fortunately were rare compared with the kindness they received throughout the trip.
The Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs advises against all travel to Russia because of security risks linked to the war in Ukraine.
According to TV 2, the pair were also detained for several hours while crossing into Mongolia and questioned about Ukraine and LGBTQ+ issues.
Why they went
The travelers said they wanted to challenge the idea that adventure travel is mainly for men.
Flamming told TV 2 that reactions to their trip would likely have been very different if two men had attempted the same journey.
Møller argued that women should not feel forced to avoid ambitious travel simply because the risks may be different.
By the time they reached Japan, the strongest memory was not the border checks or the freezing nights. It was how often complete strangers decided to help them continue moving forward.
Sources: TV 2
