A conversation with
Anne-France Dautheville
Anne-France Dautheville is the first woman to have traveled the world alone on a motorcycle. She has crisscrossed the planet in search of intoxicating sensations and encounters. She has nourished her soul with landscapes, plants, and discoveries to bring back incredible stories that she knows how to tell better than anyone.
Hello Anne-France, if you had to describe yourself in one sentence?
I think we'll call each other next year!
Is the taste for travel a family virus?
Yes. It started at the dawn of time, in the North of Denmark with the Vikings on my dad's side. And so that the family wouldn't be too crazy, my mom was Alsatian, so on the contrary, it was well established. But at home, the Viking virus probably won out, which is why I left, and I rode a motorbike the way you ride a boat: lengthwise. When we were little, my dad took us on vacation. We went for trips in the car around France. And as soon as I could read, around 5 years old, he gave me an Atlas. I saw a river called the Amazon, and I said I was going to go up the Amazon. Then I read Jack London and dreamed of going to the land of gold prospectors, then I read Robinson Crusoe and wanted to go to a desert island. As long as it was somewhere else, I had to go!
Can you tell us about your professional background?
I studied literature because I wanted to write. Then at 21, I worked in advertising, in an American agency, and I found myself as a typist in the Media department. After three weeks, I went to see the staff representative to say, "I've just learned there's a creative department, I'd like to work there." They told me I had to pass tests. Which I did. After which they told me I had no imagination and that it would be better to stay a typist because one day I could become a secretary. So I preferred to leave. I had a pretty good career as a creative designer in advertising in Paris. And then one day I asked myself why I was doing all that. I wasn't happy anymore. I threw everything away, got on a motorbike, and it was a rebirth.
« I threw everything away, got on a motorcycle, and it was a rebirth. »
Who introduced you to motorcycling?
Me. I was working at the Havas agency, and my apartment was at the top of Boulevard Saint-Germain. And in May '68 there was no more public transport, I got fed up, so I went to rue Montmartre to buy the only thing I could drive: a 50cc Honda. I got on it, the first two minutes I thought I'd made the stupidest mistake of my life, the third, someone was looking at my bike a bit too much and I wanted to rip their head off it was so great. I got my license the following year and that was the beginning of my life.
Can you tell us about the feeling of freedom you get on two wheels?
It's funny, I don't experience it like that at all. It's certainly a reality, but for me, it's mostly the joy of the distance you swallow. Your whole body describes what's around you. Your nose fills with smells. You pass by a river and strangely, there's almost a smell of water, you see. The path is a little rutted, it makes particular vibrations in your arms, you feel the wind pressing on your shoulders. You chat with everything you can't see. And that's absolutely magical. And what's more, there's this joy of seeing. How beautiful a landscape is when you pass through it. On foot, it's less passionate.
« We talk to everything we can't see. And that's absolutely magical. »
You don't need to be on a motorcycle to feel freedom?
I was lucky enough to come from a generation that had the right to choose its life. So, the question of freedom didn't arise. For my parents, perhaps it would have arisen because society was much more ritualized, because women didn't have contraception, because we didn't have the right to assert who we were. We had to be consistent with a group. I come from the first generation that had the right to everything.
In May 1968, you decided to go traveling by motorcycle (by "moped," Anne-France tells us, editor's note). What did it mean to be a woman riding a motorcycle in the 1970s?
So in the 70s, the image of the biker was a wildly erotic object, if we believe Brigitte Bardot and the Harley Davidson that did things to her kidneys. It didn't work for me, so I think I had a form of frigidity! For Édith Piaf, it was "wearing motorcycle pants and boots, and on the pale skin you could read "Maman je t'aime"... It was the image of the thug who terrorized everyone. As for me, I got hit on quite a bit, but it must be said that in '68 we were discovering shorts. So I went to Carnaby Street in London to buy little shorts. I don't remember the name of this little fashion house that was great... I rode my motorcycle in Paris with my little shorts, Rosy lace tights, and one day an old lady attacked me with an umbrella, telling me it was a scandal and a shame.
And then, the story I love to tell is that one day, at a red light in the middle of the night, I was coming home from a party and a car cut me off. So I cut him off again and leaned over to insult the guy who rolled down his window, looked at me and said "Hey guys, a transvestite!!!". So yes, there was a lot of aggression towards women who drove motorcycles at the time. Truck drivers and taxis also tried to run us off the road. I once went up Michelangelo Street with a driver who was trying every way he could to screw me over. At one point, I had to go onto the sidewalk to avoid him. He tried to corner me against the cars and I finally managed to lose him by taking the wrong turn. We were people who were causing a nuisance.
Has it become an almost feminist act for you?
I'm not an activist, I'm happy. From the moment I left my job, family, and homeland, I decided to be happy in life.
And do what you wanted to do.
Exactly, and I belong to a society that allows me to do so. That's what freedom is, really: having a choice over your life, or at least the illusion of choice.
Fear, is that a word that is not part of your vocabulary?
Yes, I was afraid of snakes for a long time. I was afraid of crowds sometimes. Mass hysteria sessions scare me a lot. Human stupidity, sometimes too. You have to be able to leave.
And going to the other side of the world alone didn't scare you?
No. I was always afraid before leaving because I was traveling at my own expense. For various reasons, I didn't really get the money from my first books, which were bestsellers, so I was always more or less broke. Bourgeoisly broke, of course, but broke nonetheless. The terror was that I wouldn't be able to travel the way I wanted.
And you left surrounded by men, then you continued the journey alone. What did you like about traveling alone?
The first trip I took after leaving advertising was in 1972. It was the first Orion raid, from Paris to Isfahan, and I was the only woman riding a motorcycle. I learned two things during that trip: one, I was made to travel alone and two, you have to be able to pick up your motorcycle when it falls. It was so heavy that when it broke, I had to be helped to right it, and that can be dangerous. There are regions where you shouldn't stay alone, stuck when night falls because of banditry. A traveler told me, "As for houses, there are no windows to the outside, that means the night is dangerous."
When I returned to France, I decided to go back around the world. I found an extraordinary mechanic who lent me a motorcycle, and I went to Alaska, then to Japan, and finally to India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. At that time, the image of the Muslim world was very damaged in France because of the Algerian War and 19th-century racism, and I remember that at the French embassy, I was told that I had little chance of surviving in Afghanistan. I arrived first in Pakistan. One day, I was tinkering with my carburetor at a gas station and someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was the owner of the gas station who brought me a bottle of Fanta because it was hot. I wanted to pay for it, and he told me it was a gift. This kindness impressed me. Then I reached the Afghan border. There were lots of people, truck drivers who were there, they all let me pass, tapped me on the shoulder and told me I was brave. I was surprised, that wasn't what I'd been told...
« I learned two things on this trip: one, I was made to travel alone and two, you have to be able to pick up your motorcycle when it falls. »
Is this the country that has left the biggest impression on you?
There are three countries I loved: Afghanistan, Peru, and Australia. Australia was in 1974. I went on a motorbike to the center of the country, into the desert, then I went up north to meet an Aboriginal community. It was fantastic.
What do you remember from all these trips?
I'm an Aries with a Scorpio ascendant. So I do things intuitively, stupidly, sometimes I understand later. But what I do with it is when I stop, when I come back, when I write my books, that's when I break things down, I accumulate information in my heart, in my head, in my memory. A life consists of constantly reformulating what we have experienced and perhaps broadening our vision of things.
When you traveled, you lived in harmony with nature. Is that what made you want to write about plants and the botanical world?
Yes, certainly. And since I was broke, I lived in an abandoned house that the owner had lent me above a train station. I had two small rooms, one on top of the other, absolutely tiny, and an enormous garden of at least 6,000 square meters. And I had planted two or three flowers in front of the entrance to my house. I knew nothing about plants. But I thought it was pretty. The following year, I had created color harmonies. The owner of the local newspaper came to my house for dinner with his girlfriend, and they saw my garden taking shape little by little. They then asked me to do a page for the monthly supplement of their newspaper.
I wondered what I was going to tell people who live in the countryside. I went looking for what they didn't know, that is, the stories that plants could tell. And that's how I began to understand the logic of plants. I went looking for more and more information about their history, about how they work. As a result, I learned a lot about the botanical world, and that's how it all began... Later, I decided to write books about plants and I created a Garden Dictionary in which, for each plant, I told where it came from. A story attached to it, which could be a legend, scientific research, or how it works. All the questions that plants ask me when I look at them. I explain how they are grown or I give secrets... For example, when you take a cutting, you spit in your hand, you put your cutting in there, you put it in the ground, and there is in the saliva everything you need for it to take root. Period. There you go, I had a great time.
We've prepared some little gifts for you. These are plants and candles that we've chosen based on what we know about you. There's The Rockstar, The Traveler. Can you tell us what they mean to you?
I immediately think of the song Rockstar du Moyen-Âge , by Francis Cabrel. A magnificent song. I really like this music because Cabrel's way of speaking smells of the sun. He has this madness of playing with words, this passage from one universe to another which is completely natural. And basically, that's a bit like what travel is about: you're looking for lots of notions which aren't necessarily in agreement with each other, but if you add them together, instead of confronting them, it creates something as harmonious as Cabrel's music. This song touches me a lot and I find that the green plant is raising its arms enthusiastically to say "Rockstar du Moyen-Âge, you continue my boy."
As for the Traveler ... You know, when I traveled through Turkey, every time I went to a restaurant to eat, there was a young man who sat down at my table, said hello, and didn't eat or drink, and refused to be invited. Well, it was a way of telling everyone, "This woman is respectable, you see, there's someone with her." Also, on March 9th, my book, "My Tour of South America in 1981 on a 250 Panda ," will be released. It's a book I wrote in 1983. It's South America 40 years ago. From what I read in the newspapers, it hasn't changed much, and I loved that trip. When I arrived at gas stations, everyone came up to me, like everywhere else, and they said, "Mamita, de donde vienes?" ", that is to say "Little mother, where are you from?". I am French. "Oh a French girl! Una francesa! All French women are love dolls!" While I was covered in grease and had a motorcycle carrying piles of luggage... That was South America. It was great. And the music? You cannot imagine the beauty of South American music and the poetry of these countries, it is superb.
Finally, the Adventurer ... The adventurer, we think she has courage. We think she stands up, that she defies fate. You bet! We get on a motorcycle and then we ride! Period! Let's stop. Someone raising their children is much more of an adventure than traveling the world on a motorcycle, I think.
And what makes you tick today?
I no longer ride motorcycles due to medical problems and a car accident that really damaged me. But when you get older, you have to look at what you have, especially not what you've known. I'm lucky to be getting older.
