A reverse migration: cycling across Europe taught me what it truly means to belong
Seeking meaning and connection in her life, Sahir Permall embarked on a 3,000-mile bike trip across borders towards her ancestral roots in Pakistan
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The sky suddenly turned black and thunder cracked above me. I was cycling alone on the outskirts of Belgrade, Serbia, halfway through a two-month journey from Glasgow to Istanbul, and I realised my lights had stopped working. Rain poured down in sheets and I was convinced lightning would strike the metal frame any second. It was day 48 of this solo trip and, for a moment, I thought I was going to die.
There was no hard shoulder, nowhere to hide, and nothing to do but keep pedalling until I reached the next town five miles away.
That night reminded me how exposed and vulnerable I really was. When I swapped the safety bubble of sedentary life for one on the road in spring 2024, I stripped away an invisible layer of protection against the chaos of the universe. Life felt more raw, more emotionally heightened.
Perhaps my grandfather felt something similar when he left his wife and two young daughters in Pakistan to change his luck as an economic migrant in 1960s Britain. He had left the fertile plains of culturally conservative, rural Punjab in a plane and landed in cold, alien, industrial London. My grandfather slowly migrated north and his remaining family in Pakistan moved with him, finally settling in Glasgow, where I was born.
Exactly 60 years on from his momentous journey, at a crossroads in my own life — an unemployed, recently divorced third-generation immigrant and mother-of-two in my mid-30s — I was seeking my own fresh start. This ride became my own reverse migration — part one of a journey towards my ancestral roots in South Asia, which I will complete in stages over the coming years.
I wanted to truly feel the magnitude of the cultural distance my grandfather travelled, hoping that, as my wheels turned week after week, the journey would offer important insights into questions that I and millions of others grapple with daily: about who we are and how to navigate great change in our lives.
Like many children of immigrants, I’ve spent much of my life feeling caught between cultures, unsure where I really belong. As I grew up in my grandparents’ traditional Pakistani household, Urdu was my first language and desi beats the rhythm of my childhood. But my connection to this culture has frayed over the years as I moved away from home and married outside of my culture.
I didn’t know what to expect from this 3,000-mile journey — in fact, I hadn’t even trained enough for it. But I found that from a 10mph view of the world in passing, you notice the progress of the sun across the sky, the exact direction of the wind and every change in gradient beneath your wheels. Dust sticks to you. Legions of insects splatter against your T-shirt. You become part of the landscape, connected to and affected by everything around you. The sense of larger forces at work was visceral as I headed into the unknown each day with a quiet Bismillah.
The people I met along the way were part of that unknown. I wasn’t sure how I’d be received, a visible outsider on a loaded bike. But I needn’t have worried. People waved, smiled and beeped their horns in encouragement. One man ran after me with a gift of cucumbers and Bulgarian herbed salt. Others welcomed me into their homes, cooked for me and shared their stories. Each act of kindness touched me deeply and taught me that the things that connect us — generosity, decency, compassion — are the same everywhere.
As I pedalled through open borders across Europe, I watched landscapes and cultures gently shift. Yoghurt went from something sweet you eat with a spoon to something salty you drink. Paprika began to flavour food, a prelude to the spicier foods to come. Skin darkened as I moved further south and east. Austrian churches, with their green domes, were a vestige of old empires and hinted at the impressive mosques to come in Turkey.
When I finally reached Istanbul and heard the call to prayer, I overheard a British tourist comment that he found it creepy. It was foreign to him, its meaning indecipherable. For me, the sound was familiar, comforting. It spoke to me as much as bagpipes playing Flower of Scotland. And at that moment, something shifted. I felt as much an insider in Istanbul as in Glasgow. I began to realise that, just as borders between countries don’t reflect the fluid reality of overlapping cultures, so my multiple identities don’t need clear boundaries. I could be at home in all of them simultaneously; I could be at home in the world.
This year, I intend to continue my reverse migration, pedalling my way closer to Pakistan, to a place that is both familiar and foreign. Each turn of the pedals brings me a little closer — not just to distant lands, but to understanding what it truly means to belong.
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