i have heard it said that it is a good idea to photo-copy travel docs, scan them and send them to your own web-based e-mail address. this way, should the worst happen and the originals are lost or stolen, you can at least retrieve copies for proof that they exist.

anyone done this?; had experience of it? any thoughts on insurance documents, etc?

simon h.
(zenbiker)

Hello Simon,

that's exactly what we did before leaving last year : we scanned the appropriate documents (Carnet front, back, one (empty) innerpage / passport plus the visas we had obtained before leaving / bikepapers etc.) in black-white jpeg format, and sent them to a specially-made e-mailaddress called "archive"-something. We used this archive address for our own newsletters as well.
You must observe resolution : not too high in order not to fill up your address straight away, but not too low either as to have a high enough printresolution in case you need them. We did 100% at 150 ppi, jpeg "normal". We used Yahoo = 6 Mb for free and that was enough.

In Yahoo Photo's (accesible from the e-mail address), it seems you can stock up to 30 Mb of photographs, so I guess that you could use this feature as well. Haven't used it yet, but worth testing (access and printing for instance).

We also left the same documents in normal copies at our "emergency address" at home, in case our family needed it here for whatever reason.

We never needed any of it, but we imagined for instance applying for an Indian visa in Shiraz (Iran) and needing a letter of recommendation from the Belgian Embassy in Tehran. They could've logged in on our address and viewed our credentials there. Or indeed if you lose any documents on the way.
Disadvantage is that it's much harder to do it along the way - scanning, resizing in Photoshop etc.). So you can't add new visas or the stamped Carnetpages. For this we used the old fashioned way : made copies every once and now again, putting those away from the originals on the other bike.

Your Carnet is the most vital document; any other document can be replaced. For the Carnet you need the added stamps to recover your bank guarantee one day...... We slept on them


Trui

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Iris and Trui
2 belgian women, often travelling on motorbikes (now on DR650SE's)
2nd overland from home to Northern India and back, April-October 2002

__________________
Iris and Trui
2 belgian women, often travelling on motorbikes (now on DR650SE\'s)
2nd overland from home to Northern India and back, April-October 2002

trui,

thanks for your reply - and such detail, too!

forgive my ignorance, but what is the carnet? what's it for? is it a consideration for belgian travellers but not british?

simon

neat idea!
the carnet is a temporary import document to prove to local authorities that you can "afford" to pay the import duty if you fail to re-export your vehicle. Ian and some countries charge 500% so for my bike at £2500, I need a carnet for £12,500. its even more valuable than your passport: without your passport, you might get arrested. without your carnet, you might lose 5 times the value of your vehicle!! I'll be sleeping on mine, too ;-)
Rich

cheers!

do i need a carnet for france and spain - travelling from england?!

zenbiker

Hi Zenbiker,
you do not need a carnet for any EU country if travelling on a british reg bike, just get in contact with your insurance company to see how long they cover you for outside the UK, bring reg doc,s with you and all nessary insurance doc,s aswell.
regards
jose

cheers, guys and gals. all useful info.

thanks.

zb

Just remember that on some email-accounts your mail will be deleted if you don't log in for a while. I think it's one month if you use Hotmail.
If your inbox gets "full" then mails you have read and "big" mail get deleted first..

You have to know how your account handles this.