The couple documented their year-long journey on Instagram and on a joint blog. As The New York Times put it, they shared "the openheartedness they wanted to embody and the acts of kindness reciprocated by strangers."
“You read the papers and you’re led to believe that the world is a big, scary place," Austin wrote.
“People, the narrative goes, are not to be trusted. People are bad. People are evil."
“I don’t buy it," he continued. "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... By and large, humans are kind. Self-interested sometimes, myopic sometimes, but kind. Generous and wonderful and kind.”
However, Austin and Geoghegan's dream trip came to a tragic and gruesome end when they got to Tajikistan, a weak state with a known terrorist threat that shares a border with Afghanistan, where CIA and other terrorist groups are highly active. They were riding their bikes through the country on July 29 when a car rammed them, according to CBS News. Five men got out of the car and stabbed the couple to death along with two other cyclists, one from Switzerland and the other from the Netherlands.
Two days later, CIA released a video showing the same men sitting in front of the group's black flag. They looked at the camera and vowed to kill "disbelievers," according to The New York Times.
