Bike Travels
Over the last 5 years our travelling experience has always been limited to short term breaks (maximum 3 weeks).
In actual fact we can proudly say that we pioneered a new style of motorcycle travelling where we would leave the bike in the parking in some foraign airport on a Sunday to fly back home to work for the week and fly back the following Friday to carry on the journey where we had left it.
Since 2007 this model allowed us to venture around the whole continent (Europe), North Africa, the Middle East and Russia.
Our methodology came with 2 major advantages:
1) It was very affordable thanks to the fact that we could carry on working and thanks to Ryanair and their cheap flights.
2) Travelling was not too unsettling, since our "normal life" was waiting for us every Monday morning
However the same methodology came with 3 major issues:
1) The carbon footprint left by catching 2 planes a week was quite heavy
2) After 4 years travelling we run out of places to see within the 4 hours flight range
3) Maybe leaving a "normal life" behind for something special is not necessarely a bad idea
Leaving life behind
Leaving life behind to go travelling for a long period of time can be scary for many people.
When we talk to family, friends and colleagues we find ourselves answering a great varity of objections, questions and doubts: is it safe? is it tirying and uncomfortable? Can you speak the language? Don't you miss home? etc
Other people show great support and yet they say they could never do it because of family constraints (kids, parents etc)
But the biggest objections of all is the economic one. How can you afford it?
Let's start by saying something sad but true: if you won the birth lottery (i.e. you were born in a rich country) then you have greater chances to be able to make it. Not only citizens from rich countries enjoy better freedom of movements around the world (our passports should be re-branded passpartout) but also our savings carry a greater buying power in the destination countries were the average income is lower.
In fact we can expand this concept even further to talk briefly about what I call "international arbitrage".
$100 in London don't buy you much considering that this is what you will pay for the 15Km taxi drive from Heathrow to central town. The similar distance covered by a tuctuc in SriLanka will barely cost you $10.
Now, lets imagine you were able to mantain some/most of your income in the UK (or any other rich country in the world) but spend it in a poorer country. The effect of international arbitrage would make you richer.
Is this economic Utopia? Not quite. We believe we have achieved this by investing in properties. The rent of our flats should pay for most of the trip.
At the end of our journey I will publish some statistics of income at home vs expenditures abroad which will "hopefully" prove me right.
Planning the trip
How much planning do you need to leave for 6 month?
Well, as you might expect there is not straight answer to this question. Some people one day wake up, pack and go, other people plan for years (and maybe never leave?)
We are somewhere in between.
I have to say that I quite enjoy the planning side of the trip.
This one for example has been in my mind for almost two years.
Initially it was just a thought, primarely due to the need of carrying on exploring in spite of lack of destinations close to home. In my mind I had this vision of us, leaving London, travelling East using our old methodology (bike at the airport) as fas as we could (India) and then finishing it off with a final giant leap of 3 months to take us as far as Singapore and beyond......
I began to enquiry feasability by searching the net, reading other riders blogs/stories (http://www.horizonsunlimted.com/ is the bible) and checking with various embassies and consulates.
Before I knew it I was writing letters to a couple of equipment providers asking to endorse our trip and speak with the authorities to allow our entrance in China......
It didn't work. The road to East was shut.
Lonely bikers could not enter China nor Burma. (Well, that's not entirely true: I saw a couple of stories of people who managed to smuggle their bike into China hiding them into a lorry and a guy who after behing refused entrance 3 times one day got lucky and got in with no questions asked...If you are really interested to enter China legally there are also various companies that organise group tours)
From my part I was not prepared to take the risk of being refused entrance nor I wanted to join a group.
On top of that Afganistan and Iraq were obviously off limit and other nations in the region were becoming unstable (this was even before the 2011 spring revolution in the Middle East)
I was left with countries I had already seen up to Iran, then India, and the FarEast (Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam...) .Too scattered. It no longer made sense.
My eyes turned West. Why didn't I think about it before? We could do North, Central and South America!
I got excited again and printed 40 local maps from Google which I puzzled into a gigantic map of the Americas which eventually covered the whole corridor in my flat.
Then I bought travel guides for all the countries we would have covered in our trip, from the US, down to Argentina (I know this goes against common judgement but I find the Eyewitness guides far superior than Rough and Lonely Planets) and began to plant flags on my map in the attempt to define the "mother of all routes" that would touch all the locations we were interested in visiting.
Then it was about chosing the right season.
By travelling North to South for 8 months (that was the initial plan) we would have encountered all sort of different weathers and seasons, from deserts to tropical forests, from stormy summers to freezing winters.
Another small but very relevant detail was how to cross the Darien gap, 100 km of forest between Panama and Colombia with no roads and plenty of bad guys......
Once again I found my solution on the net. The stahlratte (www.stahlratte.org) is a vessle that can carry you and your bike accross the gap. Not only you solve the problem of crossing the gap, you also enjoy a 4/5 days cruise in the san blas archipelago......Nice!
Since they move around in various countries following the good weather you need to make sure you do not miss the last boat to Cartagena (around November time).
With that in mind I finally decided that I would have left the US in September (just in time to catch the last hurricanes).
I can safely say that up to that point Elena had "agreed in principle" to go travelling but did not spend any time in planning the details. As she says "I am not going to start planning until I am 100% sure we are going".
One thing is sure: as I presented my initial draft of the trip, she immediately felt uncomfortable with Central America. The fact that in those days the drug war exploded in Mexico certainly did not help.
After long negotiations I caved in and we agreed to stick to South America only.
At that point we decided to do the tour in reverse (from South to North).
In this instance the decision was effected by the shipping of the bike.
In plan A I was shipping the bike from London to the US. That was easy (and cheap).
However in plan B I was shipping the bike straight to South America, and since we have good friends in Buenos Ayres I thought they could have helped with the long winded paperwork necessary to get the bike through customs.
Clearly going to Tierra del Fuego in September can be freezing, therefore we agreed to push departure forward to December 2011 and travel all the way up to Colombia till June/July. (still 8 months)
It was Elena, that clearly was now becoming warmer to the idea that the trip might actually happen, who raised one more issue.
Being self employed generally carries disadvantages. One of the few advantages that we enjoy however is the holiday request procedure: Q "Paolo, I am considering going away for 8 months......." A. "well, let me think.....OK".
Elena on the other hand is employed. She has a contract that allows 6 months sabbatical. Naive as I am I thought we could easily attach the 2011 and 2012 holidays to make 8 months and ask to go whenever we were pleased.
No need to say it does not work exactly like that.
She made her move in March and asked for the sabbatical from December to July.
The answer was "we can give you 5 months sabbatical + 1 month holiday.......ah and you have to go as soon as possible as we need you back for the New Year. Can you leave in June?"
"We obviously pointed out that we wanted to go to see the pinguins, not to freeze like pinguins"
It was finally agreed August to end of January.
In order to take advantage of the best seasons for travelling we had to reverse the trip again (from North to South)
In a way I always wanted to leave August this year and here we were, booking our flight to Bogota for the 30th of July.
It is a strange emotion to book you flight. In your heart you know that is the point of non return.
The list
You might think that 4 months between booking your flight and leaving is enough to prepare for the trip.
Just to make sure I would not forget anything essential I have prepared a list of roughly 30 matters that require attention before boarding. The list has found is natural place next to the map.
Following in no specific order few items of my list. I thought I would publish it as it might give you few ideas:
1) Camera Canon Eos 500= I needed to step up for the occasion. So far all my pictures had been taken with my mobile phone.
I can also take pictures and make movies with my smart phone: Sony Experia (8 mega pixels)
2) Mini Laptop = a 10 inches mini laptop might take a bit of space in your pannier. However, considering it will replace all your paper maps and guides, will store all pictures and contact details, will allow you to skype home for free, book hotels in advance, listen to your favorite music, act as a phone, check your emails, update your blog etc I think it's worth taking.
3) Internet phone number = I recently found out I can take my work number with me everywhere in the world at no extra cost. To make or receive calls all I need is to be online. I like it!
All you need is a Virtual Private Network. I also use a calling program called Softphone
4) Scan guides and maps on your laptop = Unfortunately I found out you can buy your PDF maps and guides to store on your computer only after buying the paper versions.....silly me
5) Shipping bike = This is a good one. Last time I shipped my bike it took me over a week to get it cleared by customs. This can be a very frustrating experience. Burocracy is never fun, in particular in a foraign land. I remember being given the plate of my bike and thinking "that's nice, thank you, where is the rest of the bike?"
There are 2 schools of thoughts on the subject. It is better to ship by plane or by boat? Plane apparently is safer and quicker, however its much more expensive. I have been quoted £2000 to ship to Bogota by Plane and only £750 to ship to Cartagena by boat. In the end I think I will go for the boat. I am told the bike should get to destination on the 2nd of August. Frankly my decision has been influenced not only by the price but by the location too. Cartagena is a town that cannot be missed. However if the bike was delivered in Bogota i would have to drive over 1000 km back north to visit it.
Most importantly in the event of a delay I would rather wait for the bike for 1 week in Cartagena than 2 days in Bogota.
6) Redirect post = To someone you trust they can open it for you and check it. Over the years I have helped many clients who dammaged their own credit file because they missed even a small payment while they were abroad.
7) Rent flat = as I mentionned before this is the golden rule that pays for the trip. Even if you do not go away as long as 6 months agencies can let your flat for shorter lets.
8) Bills = Sorting out all bills before leaving goes hand in hand with letting the flat. (Gas, Electricity, Water, Council tax, TV Licence, Phone TV and Broadband, parking permit, MOT, road tax, bike insurance, service charge and ground rent)
9) Mobile = this is a tricky one. Having a moble phone while you are travelling abroad is essential. However roaming costs are huge. You can opt to get a sim card in the country where you are travelling. If you decide to stick with your home provider and home number make sure you de-activate your voicemail facility and leave a message suggesting people that need to contact you to text you instead.
Third alternative is to use a global sim card
Personally I have opted to use my land line via the net (see point 3) and carry my mobile for emergencies only
10) Vehicles Storage = That is cars and motorcycles. If you have friends that can take care of these that is your best solution (make sure taxes, insurances and permits are paid). Motorcycles can well be parked for free in underground parkings or airports....if you are lucky you will still find them in 6 months time waiting for you, although the battery might be flat.
11) Home Contents Storage/Disposal = Ah! This is a good one. As I was mentionning earlier, sometimes "leaving your normal life behind" is not necessarely a bad idea. Leaving everything behind is a cleansing excercice. It helps us to define what is relevant from what is unnecessary. Every year we accumulate stuff in our houses, offices, garages, sheds, lives. The truth is that we don't need most of this stuff.
Over the last 2 years I have moved offices twice. In both instances I took nothing with me and in both istances I got confirmation that the stuff I was previously keeping on my desk, draws, filing cabinets etc was irrelevent. just a burden.
Same story for my previous home move. When it came to empty the shed (8 sq meters) 99% of the stuff inside went to the skip.
Why are we so reluctant to throw away things that we don't need? And most importantly why do we fill our lives with such things?
Going back to the purpose of this blog, we need to remind ourselves that our collective actions can truly determine the survival or distruction of our planet.
There are 7 billions of us and every year the population grows by 80 millions. The planet does not have enough resources/energy to produce all this "stuff" for 7 billion people. most importantly the planet can not absorbe the disposal of all this "stuff".
Cleansing before leaving will help us to visualise the junk we have accumulated over the years and help us to reflect upon it. The trip will demonstrate that we can live and travel light. Once back hopefully we will carry on "living light".
As per the little essential things that require storage I guess I will stick them in the attic.
12) Travel Insurance
13) Maps = I have downloaded a program on my mobile called mapdroyd. it is almost as good as Google map and most importantly works offline (no roaming costs)!!!
14) Money = When it comes to travelling one of the best bank account/debit card around is the Nationwide one. The charge to withdraw money abroad is £1. However if you plan to make a purchase using a credit card then your best option is the Abbey Zero card.
Finally for £12 a month First Direct also offer a bank account that provides you with free travel insurance and free cash withdrawal abroad.
15) Documents and dummy wallet = No need to say that you want to keep scanned copies of all your documents on the computer. Some suggest to have paper copies of documents such as driving licence and carnet to hand over to the authorities in place of the originals (just in case). Either way always make sure you carry a dummy wallet to hand over if you are unlucky enough to be robbed.
