The Pluralist reports that a young American couple was killed in last month in Tajikistan by Islamic-State terrorists.
According to The Pluralist, CBS News reported, Austin and Geoghegan, who were on a world bike trip, tragically lost their lives on July 29 when they, along with two other bicyclists – one from Switzerland and the other from the Netherlands – were hit by a car and then stabbed to death.
Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghean, both 29, were embarking on a world bicycle trip when they decided to bike in an area that The Pluralist reported, has high volumes of terrorist activity.
The idealistic couple quit their desk jobs last year in pursuit of adventure and to help other people plan their own adventures.
Austin said on his and Geoghean’s joint blog, “I’ve grown tired of spending the best hours of my day in front of a glowing rectangle, of coloring the best years of my life in swaths of grey and beige,” Austin continued saying, “I’ve missed too many sunsets while my back was turned. Too many thunderstorms went unwatched, too many gentle breezes unnoticed.”
After writing this, the couple prepared to go abroad and began documenting their trip on their Instagram accounts and their blog. The adventure seeking couple voiced that they wanted to bike this route to show that people are not evil as the “narrative” suggests.
Austin wrote in a blog post called “#22, Douar Sidi Mohamed Chelh, Morocco – Ceuta, Spain,” “You watch the news and you read the papers and you’re led to believe that the world is a big, scary place. People, the narrative goes, are not to be trusted. People are bad. People are evil. People are axe murderers and monsters and worse.”
Austin Continued saying, “I don’t buy it. Evil is a make-believe concept we’ve invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans holding values and beliefs and perspectives different than our own.”
On July 25, Austin shared on Instagram that the couple had just reached the one-year mark of their journey. Sadly, their journey ended only a few days later.
While many are calling the couple naïve for entering this area, The Washington Post reports that expert on the area, Paul Stronski, rejects this idea. Stronski said, “Central Asia generally is fairly safe.”
Photo Courtesy: Unsplash/Oziel Gómez
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