Recommended Bikes for Budapest to Bamako rally??
 

I'm looking into purchasing a motorcycle to do the 2011 Budapest to Bamako rally.

The ride will consist of riding from Hungary to Spain in the winter, which I have heard can be cold. But I will be wearing fairly good gear, heated vest/grips. Then after that, the African stages are mostly off road.

What type of bike would work well, and cost preferably under 2000 euros?

For Yamaha, I have been looking at xt600, and xtz660. I like the look of the xtz660... how would they be?

For Kawasaki, the kle500 looks the best. Mostly because its cheap!! But are they worthy desert tourers? But their fuel tanks are small...

For Suzuki, the dr650.

For Honda, I have seen some nice transalps. But they are always high mileage, and don't look as offroad capable as the others. But the fairing would be nice in Europe!

So far I'm leaning towards an xtz660 or a kle 500. I am hoping to buy in Germany this coming fall.

I have driven KLE 500 for several thousand kilometers and, TMHO, I can tell you this:

1. with decent tires, it is quite capable off-road (been driving through some decent mud), but it is quite heavy compared to cross motorcycles and it can be hard to put it back on wheels after flipping somewhere in sand (180ish kg dry weight). On the other hand much better on road than cross motorcycles (been driven up to 100mph).
2. I've been told by people that driven it through desert that sometimes sand can get into carburetor, requiring cleaning that is quite simple to do on spot. Generally, KLE 500 is easy to repair on spot and usually nothings get broken if maintained properly.
3. Fuel tank is small. With on road driving i could not make more than 300km with one tank (190 miles)!

Hope this helps.