Feb. 1, 2026

Yalla Habibi: Embracing Adventure Across Continents

In this episode of the Throttle and Roast podcast, host Niels Meersschaert reviews FortNine’s documentary "Yalla Habibi," which chronicles an attempt to set a world record by circumnavigating the globe on two motorcycles in under 19 days. The journey covers over 13,000 miles, spanning North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, with only three team members and no chase crew. Facing fatigue, border challenges, and wildlife hazards, the team’s perseverance and self-sufficiency stand out. The film showcases FortNine’s signature high-quality storytelling, focusing on adventure and the spirit of motorcycling.

Yalla Habibi movie

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00:00 - Introduction

00:33 - FortNine overview

02:04 - Yalla Habibi

14:47 - Wrap up

WEBVTT

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Perseverance. Secret of all triumphs.

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Welcome to the Throttle and Roast podcast. I'm your host, Niels Meersschaert. In today's episode, I'll be looking at the just-released film from FortNine, which aims to circumnavigate the globe on motorcycles in record time. I'll cover a bit of the backstory on FortNine and then dive into the film, looking at what makes it just such a compelling watch.

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So, let's start with FortNine. What is FortNine? Well, it is a Canadian motorsports retailer. if you're not in Canada, you might think, okay, well, who cares? But what they've done is really cool because they actually have a YouTube channel isn't a salesy kind of a channel. It's not saying, oh, here's the latest products. Here's what you should buy. Instead, what they focus on is really beautiful storytelling.

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And the way in which they've produced some of these videos on YouTube is really beautifully done. It oftentimes a single take that they will do of a fairly complicated shot and ending in as the host is reading over the script. it's at such a high production level compared to the vast majority of YouTube channels that are out there. And certainly for a lot of motorcycle content where we have a lot of, let's say, a vlog, really. This just brings it to a whole other level. And I think that's the beauty of where FortNine comes in and people, even competitive retailers, like, for example, Revzilla has actually had on some of the hosts from FortNine onto their channel just to talk because they are just a wonderful part of the motorcycling community.

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And something that I really enjoy watching many of their videos that they put out. and what they have focused on in this case is really creating a documentary film.

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you've probably heard me talk about the Long Way Round series. These were, or the Long Way series specific, more generally. The Long Way series obviously started with the first more than 20 years ago at this point called Long Way Round. And this is where Ewan McGregor and Charlie Borman circumnavigated the seeing all these different locations, stopping in them, really understanding the culture.

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It was more of a travel log in a sense, but obviously there was still some tension. There was still managing to get across, traveling around here, getting through customs, all the other challenges that one has when making a round the globe trip.

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Well, what FortNine has done is in a sense, taking a similar concept in that they have a couple of motorcycles that are traveling around the globe. But with a couple of really big differences. And the first one is, is that if you remember with the Long Way series, yes, they had three motorcycles. So there were, the two main actors, Ewen and Charlie. And then they had camera on a third bike who was following along. They would actually stop, do some shots of maybe some drone footage or drive by footage. And it was really to create a story They also had a chase team. And this was the producers of the, of the Long Way series where the chase team was in a, in a car or multiple cars. And following along, they were able to provide any support that they needed.

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They were able to get ahead to border crossings, make sure everything was just simplified as they were going in. The big difference is in this film and the FortNine film, Yalla Habibi.

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They really wanted to focus on saying, Hey, we've got two bikes, three people. Now think about that. So one's riding pillion and we're going to just, it's just us. That's it. That is the entire team. So it really was a much more self-sufficient the other big thing is that the goal was not to do a travel log. I was not to say, Hey, let's really understand this environment. Let's not really explore all of these really exotic locales. It was our goal is to circumnavigate globe as quickly as we possibly can. And there had been some previous world records for how you could circumnavigate world on a motorcycle. there is some ambiguity as to how they actually measured it. Obviously it wasn't where, you know, with all the oceans in the way, you can't literally ride across the ocean, so there was some travel in between. But where most of these had calculated of ride time, not of total duration time.

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So I think the, closest record that they had was about 19 days and eight hours was what the actual ride time was. But of course that occurred over three months. So it was a much longer period of time that was actually the travel. They basically ignored the, "Hey, let's get across the border or let's do a travel from wherever we're going to the leg." And here they tried to do with Yala Habibi is really say, "We want to try complete this entire thing, including all of the transits in less than 19 days and eight hours." And for this, they partnered with Ducati.

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And Ducati provided them with two Multistratas carrying the three people. Now, as I mentioned that you did have one of these people riding as a pillion. So if you've ever seen some of the FortNine videos, you've probably seen Ryan Kluftinger. He's well-known as the long-time host of FortNine's channel and often called himself Ryan F9.

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Now another host that has been coming into the channel in recent years is Connor Bondlow.

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it's great because he brings another perspective to riding and it allows them to sort of divide and conquer a little bit of who's in front of the camera, who's behind, etc. Now, there is a third person in the production of these more often than not has really been behind the scenes.

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But in this film, they really became another part of the characters of the film. And that's Edwin El Bainou. He's been a cameraman and director for most of the FortNine YouTube videos. really just brings an incredible eye to the films that they have done in the past and especially to this documentary film. But he is one of the on-screen characters as well.

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And he's the one who was riding pillion. This way, he could focus on shooting even when they're riding on the bike. So he'd just have a camera pointing off to the side. And they really were able to create much more of a dynamic viewpoint. mind you, this also makes it a little bit challenging. You're riding pillion for all of these miles.

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Now, I've mentioned a couple times of the title Yala Habibi.

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you might hear that name and say,"What the hell does Yala Habibi mean?" Well, it's actually Arabic for, "Come on my love," or, "Let's go dear." It's a fairly playful tease, almost an affectionate nudge to encourage someone to keep going. So it is that, hey, if you're in the spirit of just continuing to push on this journey, there is a bit of that, "Hey, let's keep going. Let's keep going. Come on." it's a wonderful way to succinctly capture the essence of what they were trying to do with this documentary. And more specifically, with this record-breaking attempt. Now, as I mentioned, FortNine is Canadian motorsports company. So they from Hope, British Columbia.

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It's a couple hours east of Vancouver. And the two were heading out to the US with Ryan and Connor each piloting their own bike. And Edwin riding pillion on the back behind Ryan.

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they stopped multiple times as they led over to Miami, Florida, where they dropped off the bikes.

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And then they flew to Lisbon, Spain, to pick up the next set of bikes. And this is more of practical consideration, because being able to manage all of just necessity for any sort of customs if you're trying to move the same bike across all these countries around the globe it was a lot easier for them to pick up the bikes relatively local and then transition as they go forward. from Lisbon, Spain, they then rode to Istanbul in Turkey, where they caught a flight to Mumbai in India. And then from Mumbai, they rode to Kolkata, India, and then flew on to Bangkok, Thailand. From Bangkok, they rode down to Singapore and then caught a flight to Perth, Australia. Went across the entire continent of Australia, ending up in Sydney. as they were going through, they're of course riding along the Australian Outback where there's a whole lot of most people, when they hear Australia, they think of kangaroos, and there was definitely quite a lot of in the film. And the big challenge I'd say for what the the two bikes faced They were actually riding at night. And they would suddenly have these kangaroos just dart out across the road. So, if you have grown up riding in the United States, you're probably used to the...

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..old adage of deer "running out from the woods and getting in your way." Well, in the Outback, they had to deal with this with kangaroos. So it was a real big challenge for them of trying to avoid that, and of course they're trying to make a lot of hours. There's not a lot of places to stop, so they were really riding through the middle of the night Perserverance was the real word that comes to my mind of what this film really entailed. The And the last leg, of course, was flying from Sydney to Anchorage, Alaska, where they picked up the last pair of bikes and then continued along their return to Hope, British Columbia. So you may hear all of this and say, "Oh okay, that's cool. They hopped around the world. They did all of this stuff. That's cool." But the big thing, and this is what makes people want to watch a film, and why I really am very impressed with what the team has put together with this particular documentary, is there's a lot of tension that's part of it. for many riders, you know that, as you're going on a trip, especially an extended trip, fatigue is a big aspect of what goes on. So when you're putting long days on the bike, you're getting tired as you're riding along, it gets a little harder to focus. Well, with this team, they were really trying to beat a record and traverse the entire world in less than 19 days. So the way that they were managing to do this is they had to essentially with 12, 14-hour days of ride time just to be able to average around the globe.

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They had set flights where they were leaving from each of these legs that I just went through.

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And they had to make it to the airport to get that flight. So that was their hard next step.

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Now, they could take whatever time they wanted in between, but they still had a long journey between each of these legs that they had to accomplish by a certain particular time and date.

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while it was probably an average, about 12 to 14 hours a day of riding, some of the flights, of course, let's think of, for example, flying from Singapore to Perth or Miami to Lisbon.

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They're in a plane for 8, 10 hours, so they're not riding that time. That allowed them to get a little bit of rest, a little bit of this. But for a long part of it, they were sometimes doing 24, 36-hour days of riding because they just really couldn't stop. And so what you started to see in the film was just a tremendous amount of sleep deprivation. And that exhaustion, that trying as best as you can to stay focused on what's happening, was really a lot of the tension that was happening in the film. Now, the other one of the challenges they ran into, of course, was border crossings. These bikes that were provided from Ducati, and fundamentally, they were press bikes that they were using. as you're trying to get across each of the borders, while it's effectively a rental, is, you know, do you have the legal right to be able to move the bike into there? There was all of these different challenges of just getting across the border.

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And in some cases, they were spending hours at a border just trying to get through all the paperwork, getting all the approvals, et cetera. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking down for them to get to their next flight, to get to the next leg. And the big thing, I think, and this is where I put in a large juxtaposition to the Long Way series, there was no chase crew.

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There was no support crew. It was these three people was the entirety of the film. They had to ride the roads. They had to do all of the videotaping. They had to prep all of the equipment, charge the batteries on the cameras, et cetera, just to be able to capture everything they could within that moment. And also, self-manage, how do we do the border crossings? They don't have really a whole lot of extra-street crew that's helping them out. Now, they did have some fixers who would meet them, let's say, at the airport or at a border crossing to try to help smooth it over a little bit, but that was fairly minimal. Most of the rest of the time, they were having to go and then say, "Hey, you know, we're getting a little tired. Let's find a place to sleep. Let's find a place to stay, and go through the entire journey." Now, I don't want to give away too much, but I will suffice it to say that they did manage to make it back to Hope, British Columbia, and they did set a new record. But I'll leave it to the listener to watch and see just by how much. the way that it's seen in this video.

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Now, the film is available for purchase, and then you can basically stream it the website.

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I'll add a link into the show notes for where you can actually go ahead and do that, and you can actually watch a preview too, if you just want to kind of get a sense of what does it look like? It's not very expensive. I think it's about $10 US, you are contributing to helping this team continue to make some amazing content. amazing content.

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I'll also add a link in the show notes to their YouTube channel, which if you've never seen, I really would encourage you to take a look at. They make some amazing content, and the proceeds from the film obviously will cover the costs for producing the film, but also allow the team to continue to make this great content. And what I really appreciate with them is it's storytelling first.

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It's selling a product. this is really it's about the essence of why we love motorcycling, why we just love and embrace so many different facets of what this activity is like. And I think Fortnite does a phenomenal job of capturing it.

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So let's wrap up. We have three people, two motorcycles, and more than 13,000 miles ridden in less than 19 days.

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That's nearly an iron butt every single day for more than two weeks. Yala Habibi is another one of those great films about the journey of motorcycling and the challenges we face as riders.

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And it's available for purchase for, as I said, about $10. And this goes to support the great work that FortNine does with productions on YouTube. So my question for you this week is, what has been your longest journey on a motorcycle? Share your thoughts through the text the show link in the show notes, or leave a voicemail at throttleandroast.com slash voicemail. Thanks for listening.

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I'll talk to you next week.