approximate cost to drive from England to New Zealand?
 

Hi folks,

i would love to overland from england across europe and russia, china far east to australia and new zealand.

approximately how much would this cost (excluding the base vehicle and conversion)? i would mostly be camping in the vehicle where allowable and plan to take about 9-12 months for the trip. obviously the vehicle would have to be shipped from malaysia to australia and then again from australia to new zealand.

i know this is a difficult question to answer and there are lots of variables to take into account but approximately am i looking at £10000-£20000 end of the scale or £30000-£40000 end of the scale?

thanks for your help chaps

cost Europe - Aus/NZ
 

Probably useful if you first check the route you intend to do. Shipping will no doubt be the highest costs.

You are going in a car I understand. China is no go unless you pay a lot. That is typically only done by organised groups (see elsewhere on this forum - often discussed topic).

Burma is also a problem. So the most used route is via India/Nepal and then ship to south East Asia.

I am currently in Ulaan Bataar, Mongolia, and am looking at air shipping my bike to Bangkok. That is expensive (quote we got was 3500 USD per bike excluding fees at Bangkok side). You could also continue to Vladivostok and then with a ferry to South Korea. From there it is only cheaper if you ship by boat. By air to Bangkok is actually also quite expensive (at least as far as we found: also around USD 3000).

I am driving from Amsterdam via Central Asia and Mongolia. If I now ship by air to Bangkok and then continue to Aus-NZ I would still be comfortably within the range of GBP 10k to 20k you mentioned. That excludes the bike but includes the visa, etc. However, I am now 9 weeks on the road and would in total take not more than 5 months.

Hope this helps.

Tijs

Including shipping its going to have cost us £30000 to drive from London to OZ in a year. However........ We had to ship a lot because we could not get into Pakistan and shipping into India is a nightmare. I have no doubt it can be done a lot cheaper if you free camp, don't ship as much, eat bake beans all the time etc...

We found that $100 a day is a good budget to go on. We have our expenses on our website if you are interested.

[url=http://trektooz.com/expenses]Expenses!

Dunno if this helps - overlandcruiser.net then goto overland travel tips

wow. 30k.

As above depends on route. We are planning 10months, Central Asia - Mongolia - Russia ship from Vlad to Aus. these countries do not require Carnet (well Aus does) so visa costs only.

Im budgeting £15k for this, which I hope is not to far off. otherwise Im going to be stuck! I have a spreadsheet at work which I could email tomorrow if you would like to see it. It has all our envisaged costs. Ive based it on the same principle as Morocco and other trips I have done and they have come in around 10-20% under, So I know I cannot be far off.

Main cost for us is going to be once we get to aus. I need to find out costs for vehicle import etc.

So after all that I would say its possible on 10-20k if you avoid China and stick to a northern route.

From bangkok it cost us around £2500 to ship in Perth. 1300 of that was clearing costs in Fremantle. However, if you have to get your car cleaned it can be up to $1000 extra!!

I'd have at least £2000 tucked away for repairs if I were you, Landy's always surprise.

Also the price of fuel in oz is around the £1 a litre mark and the cost of living is a lot higher than in the UK due to the exchange rate, something that we did not really factor in.

Simon
Trek to Oz

Thanks Simon.

I will probably be badgering you for costs/info etc when you settle down :)

Cheers,

G

thanks
 

thanks for the spreadsheet simon. that was really useful.
we have some serious planning to do. we aim to leave in 2013 but we're not doing it in a sensible landy. oh no, we're going in a black cab - to try and break the guinness world record for longest taxi fare

www.cocothecab.com

Some great info on your blog, but if you can remember / find where you wrote it down I'd be really interested to see a breakdown of the £1300 you paid to clear in Freemantle. It seems like a difficult thing to find out so any personal experiences would be welcome.

A good one for costs breakdown plus a really good read is "overlandwithkids" as its still pretty current

didn't search their site extensively, but it looks like they didn't make it to Aus.

Hi mister paul!

The cost for clearing the car in fremantle is the total amount we gave the agent and covered getting the container of the ship, transport in the wharf, inspections and so forth. Will have a route around for the email our agent sent us but you can email Craig at c.rowan@indianoceansa.com.au and he can give to a breakdown.

you can do it yourself for cheeper but heard its not worth the hassle!

hope this helps

simon

Thanks Simon.

How was the trip?

it always depends of course. We drove from the UK back to Australia about 10 years ago. Russia, into the *stans, into China, SE Asia and shipped the car from Singapore to Darwin.

China was expensive. I don't have up to date information but from memory that cost us about 5k to organise all the permits etc.

Id say our budget was 40-50k all up for 14 months travel. That included expensive hotels in Moscow, and a few weeks R&R at a decent resort in Thailand.

You could do it cheaper for sure - Id say 30-40 would be comfortable.