Noraly Schoenmaker (Itchy Boots) – Detailed Biography

Noraly Schoenmaker is a popular Dutch adventure rider and YouTuber.

She has over 3.3 million subscribers on her YouTube channel, Itchy Boots.

Introduction

Noraly Schoenmaker was born on 30 June 1987 in the Netherlands. She hails from Numansdorp, Nieuwerkerk.

She has a brother.

The young Noraly wanted to grow up to become a writer since she wrote her first words.

She used to type a lot on her typewriter and wrote a few little books as a child.

It all started at 17

Noraly loved solo travelling and in teenage, she used to travel by roller skates for around 20 kilometres and used to also ski solo.

She used to ride her ladies’ bicycle 15 kilometers through the countryside and also ride it through the grasslands.

At 17, Noraly cycled solo from Netherlands to Belgium, Luxembourg, through Germany and also took a bus to Switzerland to spend a summer working holiday working on a farm.

On her 18^th birthday, she booked a flight to Egypt and travelled solo. She has been constantly travelling since then.

At 23, Noraly backpacked around the world for two and a half years.

She had an urge for adventure and travelling abroad as she hailed from the small and boring Numansdorp village.

Education

After finishing her schooling, from Calvijn College Rotterdam, in 2005, Noraly studied BSc in Biogeology from Utrecht University and graduated in 2008.

Then, she studied for a MSc in System Earth Modeling and graduated in 2010 with honours from the same university.

Noraly travelled only a little during her BSc and MSc as she was busy with her studies.

Travel over PhD

After her MSc, Noraly started studying for a PhD in Organic Geochemistry from Utrecht University.

Her degree involved carrying out chemistry on rocks to reconstruct climate change of the past.

Noraly went to Australia to collect rocks and stayed in the outback for a couple of weeks and shipped the rocks back to the Netherlands.

As she didn’t take a break and had been studying continuously for many years for BSc, MSc and then PhD, she decided to take a short break in her first year of PhD and resume her PhD later.

Noraly decided to travel for three months before returning to the Netherlands for her PhD.

She travelled across Australia, New Zealand and India.

Noraly decided to quit her PhD, while in India, and travel further. So, she emailed this decision to her professor.

After travelling India for a little longer, she backpacked across Asia by travelling in buses and trains and staying in low-budget hostels.

Noraly ran out of money and was left with only €100, while travelling in Indonesia.

She booked a €80 ticket to Perth, Australia and started working as a waitress in Perth. The job paid well and she wanted to resume travelling after earning enough money.

Quitting job for travel

Noraly started working as a Graduate Exploration Geologist, in February 2011, at Breakaway Resources in Perth and did gold exploration in Cloncurry, Queensland.

As she earned well with the job, she decided to retire and travel.

So, after working in the job for seven months, Noraly quit the job and backpacked through Asia, Mexico, Central America, South America and East Africa for two and a half years before being broke.

Then, she returned to her home country, Netherlands and as she didn’t have money and house and was jobless, she slept on her friend’s couch for a few weeks.

At the time, Noraly got a job offer in Australia but she had to wait for a few months before joining.

In the meantime, she was offered a job at Van Oord. She chose this job as it would provide her an opportunity to work all round the world.

Noraly started working as an Engineering Geologist in January 2013 and worked in various countries like The Bahamas, Jamaica, Kuwait, Australia, Morocco, United Arab Emirates, Brazil, Indonesia and Dubai.

She used to travel on her leaves. She travelled to Greenland, Mongolia, Europe and travelled in Trans-Siberian Express in Russia.

At the time, even though blogging was popular, Noraly didn’t start a travel blog as she felt that not many would be interested in her story. Instead, she used to write about her journeys in small dairies.

Noraly got promoted to the position of Project Superintendent in 2015 and worked in Kazakhstan, Uruguay and Brazil. She lived in Rio de Janeiro and loved the city.

Tidbit– Eva zu Beck, a popular travel YouTuber, also travelled in the Trans-Siberian Express.

Travelling full-time

When Noraly found that her partner was cheating on her, she ended the relationship.

She sold the house, which they had together, as she couldn’t keep it on her own and became homeless.

As Noraly didn’t have a house in the Netherlands, she requested her supervisor to send her abroad for work but the supervisor insisted that she work in the Netherlands.

As she didn’t have financial obligations and a mortgage, she decided to quit her job and travel full-time. At the time, she also sold her Ducati Monster 796 motorcycle.

Noraly quit her job in July 2018, booked a one-way flight ticket to India and started backpacking there.

She chose to travel to India as she had been there before.

It started as a blog

Noraly started her Itchy Boots blog in 2018, by combining her passions of travelling and writing. She started sharing her backpacking experiences in India and became a travel blogger.

She was travelling and running her blog with her savings and wanted to make a living and cover her travel expenses with her blog.

At the time, Noraly also travelled around Bangladesh and travelled by public transport.

Even before starting Itchy Boots, she had travelled to around 70 countries either backpacking or for work.

Noraly initially wanted to name her blog Itchy Feet, thanks to her being a wanderlust.

But as the itchyfeet.com domain was already taken, she chose itchyboots.com. Thanks to her surname, Schoenmaker, she chose the word “boots” in Itchy Boots.

Noraly tried to monetize her blog with advertisements but as she didn’t receive a decent number of visitors, she didn’t make any money.

She realized that people usually search on search engines like Google for top things to do in popular places and so, she started writing such articles instead of sharing her travel experiences. This made her lose interest in blogging.

Also, she felt it difficult to write in English as it wasn’t her first language.

Royal Enfield changes it all

Noraly was thinking of travelling to the remote Zanskar Valley in Ladakh mountains but felt it difficult to reach using public transport.

While walking past a bike rental in Manali, she saw many Royal Enfield motorcycles and realized that she can easily visit the valley on a motorcycle.

As the rent was just €15 per day and Noraly already had a motorcycle license, she decided to rent a motorcycle.

She rented a Royal Enfield Himalayan motorcycle for three weeks, experienced off-roading on a motorcycle for the first time and became addicted to the freedom and convenience of motorcycle touring. Also, it was the first time she rode an adventure bike.

When Noraly returned the motorcycle after three weeks, she was disappointed with the thought that she had to backpack by public transport again. As she loved the Royal Enfield motorcycle, she decided to buy one.

She purchased a Royal Enfield Himalayan motorcycle in Delhi and named it Basanti.

When Noraly rode to the Zanskar Valley, she wanted to share this experience on her blog but later felt that she can better show her motorcycle travels through videos. Also, as her blog wasn’t performing well, she decided to start a YouTube channel.

She started her Itchy Boots YouTube channel in November 2018. As she never made a video before, she spent a few weeks watching YouTube tutorials to learn the process of making videos and editing them.

Noraly learnt storytelling by watching one of the Casey Neistat videos.

It was her first time watching YouTube as she never watched YouTube before.

She bought a GoPro Hero 7, mounted it on her helmet and started filming with it. Eventually, she upgraded to the latest versions of GoPros and also started using drones and a 360-degree camera.

Currently, Noraly films with four different cameras and a drone.

It took her just a month to get monetized on YouTube.

Noraly worked on her blog for a while but as her YouTube channel gained momentum and she loved video production more than writing, she abandoned her blog and started focusing on her channel.

In the beginning, her filming, storytelling, video editing and audio weren’t perfect but eventually, she improved in all aspects as she published hundreds of videos and this helped her to succeed on YouTube.

Currently, Noraly is a full-time YouTuber and has over 3.3 million subscribers on her channel.

As she started her YouTube channel in English rather than in Dutch, to attract a  large audience, she is more popular in the US than in her home country.

Noraly edits her videos with Final Cut Pro on her MacBook Pro. She carries Garmin inReach while travelling.

She offers Itchy Boots Academy courses and merchandise.

Noraly films and edits the videos all by herself and doesn’t have a film crew. She also manages her social media and logistics.

Constantly travelling around the world and shipping her motorcycles to different countries is expensive and she funds this with her YouTube channel.

Currently, Noraly has travelled to over 120 countries.

Purpose

Previously, when she backpacked for two and a half years around the world as a full-time tourist, she initially enjoyed backpacking and started following backpacker trails. But eventually, she grew bored of travelling.

Noraly rekindled her passion for travel after starting her YouTube channel as she found a purpose in researching the places and sharing them with people.

When she rode through Iran and showed the country and its people, many people appreciated her for showing that the people of Iran were indeed good, which is usually not shown by the mainstream media.

And at the moment, Noraly felt a strong sense of purpose and decided to continue travelling, show other countries, reduce the fear of the unknown and make a difference.

Malaysia & beyond

She wanted to go on a long trip after buying Basanti.

As it was an Indian registered motorcycle, Noraly decided not to ride to Pakistan. She felt riding to China to be difficult and expensive.

So, she rode all the way from India to Malaysia and covered 10,000 kilometers. This trip only strengthened her love for travel.

Then, Noraly shipped her Royal Enfield from Malaysia to Oman and continued riding in Central Asia and traversed through 25 countries in her 36,000-kilometre, eight-month long trip.

She concluded this trip in the Netherlands. By that time, she had around 150,000 subscribers on YouTube and she started earning from her channel but wasn’t able to make a living from it.

Noraly wanted to ride from Patagonia to Alaska but as Basanti was an Indian registered motorcycle, she bought her second Royal Enfield Himalayan, Dhanno, in the Netherlands.

She rode from Patagonia until Peru, where she got stuck in Lampa, a small Peruvian town, due to the COVID.

So, Noraly paused her adventure and after 14 days, she left Peru for the Netherlands. She had to abandon Dhanno in Peru.

While in her home country, she bought a second-hand Honda CB 500 X, Ronin and rode around Scandinavia and Iceland. She felt this motorcycle was too heavy.

Then she bought a second-hand Honda CRF250L, named it Savannah and rode through South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe for five months.

Noraly tried her first rally on Savannah but broke its subframe in half and donated the bike to a private motorcycle museum in Knysna, South Africa.

She then decided to resume her journey to Alaska.

Thanks to her good experiences with CRF250L, she bought a brand-new Honda CRF300 Rally in the Netherlands and christened it Alaska.

Noraly rode to the Hook of Holland and caught a ferry to the UK. As the borders of Peru weren’t open, she shipped Alaska to Ecuador.

And from there, she travelled across Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Belize, Mexico, United States and Canada.

Then, Noraly entered Alaska through the Top of the World Highway and concluded her trip by reaching the Arctic Ocean.

In this three-year, solo journey, which started in October 2019 and ended in August 2022, she rode 65,000 kilometers through 18 countries.

Then, she started riding in Africa but she had an accident and retired the bike.

So, Noraly bought a Yamaha XT600z Ténéré and christened it Frankie. She chose this bike for being lightweight. It’s a 1987 motorcycle and it’s the year she was born.

Love of motorcycles

While backpacking in El Salvador in 2011, Noraly borrowed a local’s dirt bike and rode it for around 30 minutes. It was her first experience riding a bike.

Her father used to ride motorcycles long ago but had to stop after he had an accident in which he broke his arm.

Her brother was an avid motorcycle rider.

Noraly fell in love with motorcycles, at 28, when she tried out one for two hours and got her motorbike license after doing a two-week course.

She bought a second-hand Ducati Monster 796 motorcycle, in 2015, the same day she received her license. It was the first bike that she bought and owned.

Prior to buying this bike, Noraly also tried a Yamaha MT-07 but it couldn’t scare and thrill her like the Ducati Monster did. She enjoyed road riding her Ducati.

Later, she bought many motorcycles like a couple of Royal Enfield Himalayans, a Honda CB500X, Honda CRF250L, Honda CRF300L Rally and Yamaha XT600z.

Noraly nicknamed her motorcycles as Basanti, Dhanno, Ronin, Savannah, Alaska and Frankie and rode them for more than hundred thousand kilometres solo around the world.

She loves travelling solo as she is an introvert and it gives her the much-needed alone time.

Noraly is currently riding a vintage 1987 Yamaha XT600z.

Thanks to riding motorcycles, she has been able to travel to remote and non-touristy places and connect and interact with the locals. She had been able to travel off the beaten tracks, back roads, remote deserts and small villages.

Noraly gets an adrenaline rush by riding to dangerous foreign countries with language barriers.

She loves riding in deserts and mountains but not in the cities.

Free Ride & Beyond Fear

Noraly published her Dutch book, Keerpunt: alles achterlaten en jezelf opnieuw uitvinden op een motortocht van 36.000 km, on 11 June 2024.

And on 3 June 2025, she published its English translation, Free Ride: Heartbreak, Courage, and the 20,000-Mile Motorcycle Journey that Changed My Life.

This New York Times bestseller and Sunday Times bestseller book is about her personal journey and her first journey from India to the Netherlands.

Noraly’s second book, Beyond Fear, will be published on 4 May 2027, both in Dutch and English and it will be on her journey from Patagonia to Alaska.

Tidbits

• Noraly’s favourite countries are Iran, Mexico and Argentina. She also likes Southern Africa and the deserts and diversity of Saudi Arabia’s landscapes. Guatemala is her favourite country in Central America.
• She loves languages and knows Dutch, German, Portuguese, French, Russian and Spanish. She had seven languages in high school.
• Noraly rode through the desert in South Africa for the Kalahari Rally in 2021.
• She likes the Andes Mountain range in South America and the Pamir Highway in Central Asia and is a fan of Lyndon Poskitt.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Noraly Schoenmaker?

Share with me in the comment section below.