Let the preparations begin!

Richard & Jude’s post
So. Here we are on our boat with Lawrence and Linda in Hobart Tasmania. After a few glasses of wine the decision has been made that we are all actually going to embark on this mad adventure so it was time to start trying to work out exactly what we need to all do to make it a reality. The more we discussed it the more questions we had unanswered. 

We looked at Google maps to try and work out the possible routes and initially thought this route looked viable. Sydney to Darwin then ship the bikes by sea to Indonesia then ride through Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, China, India, Nepal, back to China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Greece then through the rest of Europe to the UK. Easy right? 

Getting the bikes out of Australia seems to be harder than before Covid due to more irregular and longer shipping times being reported to East Timor. Months could be lost waiting for the bikes to turn up. Finding out that you need a full time guide with their own vehicle for the two China legs is very costly and the China border was still closed and not sure when it would open again. What are the alternatives? Skipping China would mean Airfreighting the bikes to Nepal from Bangkok and then going through Pakistan, which is not recommended. After much research and emailing various to all sorts of people we decided that we would have to skip India and Nepal and go North of the Himalayas through China and Tibet. The route through China was still closed due to Covid restrictions but was expected to open in a few months time. We researched for a suitable mandatory guide through China and found one that seemed to tick all the boxes. Emails were sent backwards and forwards with lots of questions. 

We have mutual friends from our childhood that we keep in touch with regularly and we invited them to be part of this adventure. They are still deciding. Lawrence and Linda have been on organized adventure rides in Africa and Vietnam and have become friends with the organizers, David and Leah from RAMS Adventures. We agreed to see if they wanted to join us. 

We all started watching YouTube videos of other people who had embarked on similar adventures on motorcycles. We learnt more and had yet more questions still to be answered. 

It was time for Lawrence and Linda to head back to the UK. We are all full of excitement and eager to continue the planning. David and Leah came back to Lawrence and confirmed that they would like to join us. Great! 

We set up a WhatsApp group and a shared document to collate all of the information and would remotely work towards a departure date sometime in mid 2024. As Lawrence said: It’s now “A Thing