Overland to Oz
 

The wife and I are emigrating to Australia nextyear and I've had this plan of ridng the bike there (she wants to do the boring plane thing). Thing is, I've had a look and although we can get as far as the Chinese border, I believe they're not letting tourists in on bikes.

The alternative is to go the other way, to the south, but Burma is completely closed off now I believe. So does anyone know of any route for us to do the job.

Might involve a ferry or 2 but any advice is welcome. Thanks.

You might want to use the search function first, theres tons of info about all these on this magnificent site!

Just a few quick ones:

- You can go Turkey-Iran-Pakistan-India (need a carnet, do another search on that) and right now Pakistan looks a bit dangerous, but hope it gets better.

- You should be able to go China, but need huge paperwork and lots of money to do that (as opposed you only need the carnet to go to India, Im talking about the ´extra´ costs here, that pile on top of everything else like food, fuel, accommodation, etc.). Getting into China will probably be one thing, and crossing its entire length another thing.

- There are alternative routes thru the Stans to Xinjiang Province in China, and on to Pakistan via the Karakoram Highway.

- You 100% cannot go to Burma with your vehicle.

- If you go to India, youll probably need to arrange freighting the bike onwards from there. Can be done from Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, for example. Or Nepal.

- Thailand, Malaysia pretty easy and nice holiday, then need to decide if you´ll ship for example from Singapore or Kuala Lumpur to Australia, or if you go to Indonesia. Probably need to arrange freight Malaysia>Indonesia, and need carnet for Indonesia.

- The Perkins Shipping cargo line from Singapore stops at Dili (East Timor) and weather and political situation permitting, you should be able to island-hop all the way there. That ship goes to Darwin. Or you can airfreight from Bali, for example, to Perth, or wherever you like in Oz (but this is expensive).

- In general, there are no ferryboats in that area, except for very short distances, and no international lines whatsoever, today people fly. So usually you need to put the bike in freight (by air or by sea). Inside Indonesia, there are more ferryboats, but no-one seems to know where the hell they will go to, and especially when.