Hi! I’m Sofia Saldanha, a Brazilian architecture student in Portugal who decided to
travel from Porto to Munich by bike and train.

I had never thought about doing bikepacking until I received an email from my university
about the SET Journey Contest. In the examples, they mentioned bikes as one of the
low-emission options we could use, and I asked myself, “Why not?”. There were many
reasons not to do it, actually - especially safety concerns, since I would be a woman with no
experience in bikepacking travelling alone. But after struggling a lot with fear and insecurities,
and because I wanted to overcome them instead of letting those reasons stop me, I decided
to go - and it turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life.

It was 25 days of cycling, covering a total of 1127 km from Porto, in Portugal, to
Saint-Jean-de-Luz, in France. Then I caught a ride with a group of Germans I met at a
hostel; we travelled together in their vans for three days to Bourdeaux, and that’s where the
train journey began: Bordeaux to Paris, Paris to Stuttgart and - finally - Stuttgart to Munich,
my new home for the fews next months! It was a 31-day adventure that changed my life -
and the best part is that by travelling this way, I reduced my CO2 emissions by 78,95%
compared to the flying footprint from Porto to Munich.

Bikepacking alone taught me a lot about myself, about my capacities and limits. It gave me
time to think about life and to deal with things that I hadn't had time before. It gave me the
opportunity to freely explore the places around me. I feel more confident about myself and
my decisions. And I truly believe this was an amazing process to go through before my
Erasmus - it gave me the opportunity to start this new chapter of my life in the way I wanted:
with confidence, presence, calm, motivation, and in a deeper connection with myself.