Route woes

Richard & Jude’s post
With Lobo and Linda back in the UK along with Dave and Leah and Jude and I here in Sydney the WhatsApp group chat was going at a real pace. Everybody putting forward suggestions, questions and answering some of the many questions we all have but there are still so many to answer. 

The route is starting to get a little more achievable although some countries are still closed to visitors like China, Azerbaijan and the border between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. We have been chatting with Jah (named after the Rastafarian God which tickled Colin) from Ride China in relation to our chaperoned tour through China and Tibet and now have a fun packed 20 days itinerary albeit we cannot get into the country yet. 

Lawrence has been looking into whether it’s best to buy a bike in Australia or to ship his out from the UK. Dave and Leah are seeing if they can start with us in Sydney or if they have to join us in Thailand due to their adventure tour business commitments to take a group ride in Vietnam. 

We are all trying to come up with a name for the adventure. something around the trip being done with pillion passengers as this seems unusual. 

Colin, who won’t be able to join us for all of the journey, but is hoping to meet us in Turkey in his lovely camper van and finish the journey, is putting together a couple of possibilities for good causes we are looking to raise money for along the way. He has lots of experience in this area and we are all hopeful something good can come out of this trip for others less fortunate than ourselves. 

We have all been discussing what gear and equipment we need to take. What spares for the bike and any modifications are required. What type of panniers are best: Soft or Hard? What do we do about tyre changes and servicing the bikes along the way. Do we need any training courses? 

The route out of Australia still seems to be a problem. I have spoken to shipping companies, airlines, logistics companies about the route from Darwin to East Timor but it looks like the shipping schedule is very unreliable with potential delays running into many weeks. Not only that but traveling through the islands of Indonesia on the ferries adds more uncertainty again with potential delays of weeks for some of the ferries if we miss one or it’s full. 

Lawrence and Linda have set up an operations room in their dining room complete with world map and multi time zone clock. We have all been bingeing on YouTube videos of other adventure bike riders and soaking up all the information from them that we can. Jude, who already speaks 4 languages including Russian which should be useful in the Stans, has started to learn Indonesian. 

“The Thing” is moving but there are still many things to do

Richard and Jude