From Thailand to India
 

Hi,

I'm currently in S-E Asia and in 2 months I'll come back to Bangkok in Thailand where I'll have to ship the bike to India, it seems impossible to go there on the road.

Any body shipped a bike by air from Thailand to India recently?

Or maybe is there a passenger boat going from Thailand to India on which we could put our motorcycle?

If you mean like a ferry boat, I don´t think there have been any for the last 30 years. Very few international ferries anywhere in that region. Ferries do go from Chennai (or somewhere in mainland India, I don´t remember) to the Andaman & Nicobar Islands, that are not so far away from Thailand, if you look at the map.

But how to get your bike there, that´s the hard part. You have to also keep in mind the strict customs regulations of India (carnet will be required – you probably are aware of this?)........ foreign motorbikes entering the country by some shrimp boats or something, might not make them happy at all! In fact I haven´t heard of anyone on a bike crossing the Bay of Bengal like that, but I´m not saying it´s never happened. Anything is possible in Asia!

Anyway, when you add in the known difficulties of going overland, you have the reasons, why people usually freight their vehicles across. As the distance is not so long, I´d probably go for airfreight; much quicker and more reliable, and not a big difference in costs. I went the other way (Chennai -> Bangkok) 4 years ago, and strangely enough the quotes for air- and seafreight were roughly the same. It made the decision very easy!!

The Himalaya/Burma difficulty is an ongoing problem for RTWs forcing China into play. The Andaman Island route is one I always ***** my ears to, not many successes, but if a few of us keep trying maybe the Indian Government will see this as the tourist cash cow it could be. If Burma's attitude changes it will be an opportunity lost for the Indians.
Good luck

p.s. Keep us informed if you have any news bier


excuse moi
Language Test - "I pricked a balloon"

Hmm... that seemed to work :)

About the Carnet we do have one so that shouldn't be a problem.

It looks like the best option so far is to fly into Nepal with the bike, then ride into India for a few months then come back to Nepal and ship the bike to Vladivostok to ride back to Europe.

Now start the fun part, finding a shipping company... :D

That should be do-able... but shipping the bike is a proverbial pain in the behind, even when everything works out like it should! Plus it costs some money, too, so I´d keep it to a minimum.

If you´re prepared to go to Vladivostok, then I guess you won´t be doing it in midwinter? There are two should I say "main" overland-routes from India to Europe, too, around the north and south side of Afghanistan.

Northern route necessitates to cross into China from North Pakistan, but only for a few days, so probably helps with the costs (it is still not cheap, and needs to be arranged months in advance!)... and it goes through some very high mountain areas, so not do-able in the winter.

But the southern route: Pakistan-Iran-Turkey-Europe, long as you have the carnet for Pakistan and possibly for Iran as well, should definitely be do-able. It is almost a year-round route even for bikes, except eastern Turkey and northern parts of Iran can get chilly (but winter over there is much shorter than on the Vladivostok-Europe route, for example!) Areas in Pakistan adjacent to Iran are a bit sketchy, and more or less the same goes for areas across the border on Iranian side, but you can go through in just a couple of days if you want. Some nationalities may have problems to get visas for these two countries, and you may have police escorts through some areas.

(ok this was more like route planning – sorry for going a bit off-topic!)