Leaving Saudi on 2 wheels?
 

Hallo All,

Firstly, I want to congratulate HU. This is a superb site and quite a goldmine of info.

Thank you for keeping it running!

I want to leaving Saudi Arabia and want to use this opporunity to tour the rest of the year on my bike.

The bike is registered in Saudi and I will have to get export plates before I can leave the country.

I'm South African and will eventually have to ship the bike (1100GS) there.

If this prooves too much of a mission, I have 2 alternatives.

1) Ship the GS to SA and ship my R1100S to my starting country.

2) Ship the GS to SA and buy a bike in my starting country, do the tour and sell it when I leave.

At the moment I have no preconceived ideas of what to do and are open to advice.

The only thing to take into account is that my final destination might have to be London, if I get the job...

Any suggestions/advice/help?

Thanks

Paul Burger

paul
assuming you can get the exit plates and wish to drive away then you have a couple of choices:

1. drive north to jordan and syria and turkey... then turn left to europe or right to iran and pakistan/ india etc.

or

2. drive to yemen, ship the bike and yourself to djibouti and ethiopia, then north to sudan and egypt etc or south to kenya and eventually rsa.

if you want to ship somewhere else... well... where do you want to go?

cheers
chris

Hi, Paul,
Good to see a new post in the Middle East section - it was looking a bit sad.

It is currently extremely difficult for UAE bikers to get the necessary 3-day transit visa across Saudi to get into Jordan & Syria (and then onto Turkey and Europe).

Since you're in the fortunate position of already being in Saudi, why not ride straight out into Jordan and then to wherever takes your fancy. Then you don't have to spend money on shipping, at least not until you want to get the bike back 'home'.

Iran is also worth visiting.

Also worth considering... the delights of the UAE, followed by a ferry to Iran and then northwards. NB Iranian carnet deposit can be offputting!

Regards,
Stephano

Hi Stephano/Chris,

I think my first problem is whether I will be able to ride the bike for almost a year on export plates and then if I do need carnet who will issue it as the bike will not theoretically registered anywhere.

Once I get this solved I can start planning. Do you know where I can find out about this. Do you know of anyone that has exported their vehicles from here before?

Thanks

Paul

paul
interesting dilemma http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/ubb/smile.gif useful comments i can contribute are:

*as the bike was built in germany, it requires no payment of import tax to enter the european union. whereever you might wish to register it, value added tax (and other e.g. luxury taxes may be due??!!)

*you don't need a carnet for jordan and turkey. you *should* still be able to get through syria without a carnet (pls check!!??)

*to get a carnet in germany, you must be resident in germany. search the hubb regarding this purpose. i recall spain might be possible??

*why not remotely register it in rsa and get your carnet there?

HTH

ChrisB

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the info.

It looks that I'll have to spend the next week in the Diplomatic Quarter to get to the bottom of all the paperwork (carnet/etc). The SA Embassy was not of much use but hopefully they'll be bale to help with the remote registration.

If everything works out I would love to ride through Romania and Hungary too.

As it would be my first long-term bike tour I' prefer to do it in Europe. I have a lot of friends in a lot of countries where I can regroup for a few days, whereas, if I choose south America it might be too big a bite to swollow.

I'll let you know what I find out.

Cheers

Paul

paul
IMVVHO, south america is the best place on the planet, especially for biking. even better you don't need a carnet on any of the LAND borders (nor in central or north america, if you're a brit like me)... lots of people ship into buenos aires, where you might need a carnet (airport only????.... pls search the hubb for the latest info). you can definitely get it into valpariso docks, near santiago de chile without a carnet.

it would be great fun giving a latino customs man an saudi document written in arabic http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/ubb/smile.gif better would be to manufacture your own south african or british vehicle reg doc. as they are so laid back and don't know what the real one looked like... no probs. it never took more than 20 minutes to get a temporary import doc.

when i was there, i exclusively submitted colour photocopies (of original docs...), so no probs. i would however have to deny it, if accused of knowing how to use picture/text manipulation packages http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/ubb/smile.gif i bought a bike in ushuaia and finding a decent colour printer on a saturday evening can be a problem though http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/ubb/wink.gif

why am i writing this in the middle east forum?

good luck
ChrisB

I'm trying to exit Saudi on a bike also but I have been told that you cannot get export plates for a motorcycle. Did you eventually manage to get the export plates and if yes, how?

Agree with Stephano, at last a new post!
Anyway, by all means try to include Syria on your route, it was my absolute favourite in the Middle East and I sincerely recommend you passing through. Don't miss Palmyra out in the desert. It's beautiful riding in rolling desert landscape with very friendly bedouins at the petrol stations. Then cut back to Aleppo and head for Europe through Turkey. I'd also recommend you to cruise the Alps in Austria and Switzerland, the scenary is stunning.

I've been going through Syria for trips to Europe and back four times now. I haven't been to Palmyra yet though, so I'll definitely try to do that this last time. Weather will be the deciding factor though, it was -5 between Damascus and Homs a couple of weeks ago. As long as there's not ice I'll be ok down to below zero with my Widder vest even on an exposed bike like a Blackbird.

I've always done the coastal route on my way up since it's always such a nice thing to see the mediterrean after being stuck in Riyad for months and riding through a couple of thousand kms of dry desert. Also there's nice things to see on that route, like Krak des Chevaliers and a few other castles. On the way back I've always been in too much of a hurry to do much sightseeing. I'm quite sure I'll skip Aleppo this time since Syria is always quite easily doable within a one-month vacation from Finland and I can't think of any must see things there. So far I've concentrated on doing places that are more difficult to do from Europe. For some of the pictures with finnish explanations check out <http://www.nixu.fi/~dagge/loma-2001/>. Those pics are from a trip back in 2001 when a colleague of mine masochistically anough joined me as a pillion and we went to Mada'in Saleh in Saudi, a bit of diving in Hurghada in Egypt, up through Jordan and Syria where we checked out Krak des Chevaliers and pretty much beelining from there to Germany to drop him off. In the end of the page there's a link to more pictures as 'Kaikki kuvat'.

Hm, the link didn't come through for some reason. Anyway, try http://www.nixu.com/~dagge/loma-2001/

Hi Dagge,
nice pictures, how did you like the Petra-look-alike-place in saudi compared to Petra? I didn't have time to go there when I rode through Saudi but I wanted to. Anyway, defenitely take the eastern route over Palmyra. The road is dead boring up to Palmyra, it's when you head north it gets interesting. There is a place called Rusafa (I think) which LP described as a "stunning walled city". We decided that that would be a nice place to spend the night. Upon arrival we however realised that it was a deserted ancient city, so we had to press on to Palmyra. Rusafa was great because it is in the middle of nowhere, the ruins are magnificent, and you'll be virtually alone there.
On our trip we hooked up with some Kurdish students in Aleppo and hanging out with them in the kurdish quarters in Aleppo is on my highlight list for the middle east. Mail me if you want contact details to these kurdish guys I know!
Erik

I'm ashamed to admit that I haven't been to Petra yet... Mada'in Saleh was sort of ok, but I believe Petra is much more impressive. The problem in getting to Mada'in Saleh is that you need a letter from the Ministry of Archaeology to be admitted to the area. That is if you are a foreigner, Saudis get in without papers and consequently there's all sorts of picnic trash all over the place and some of the tombs have been used as toilets. Not nice.

If I had been on a dirt bike or even a dual-sport I would have followed the base of the Hijaz railway to some trains blown up by one of the earliers bikers in the area, Arabia Lawrence, but I didn't think that would have been such a good idea on a fully loaded Blackbird 2-up. I wouldn't recommend Mada'in Saleh for a streetbike either, especially if you're unfamiliar with soft sand.

Anyhow, I think I'll have to skip Aleppo this time, and I'd like to leave something unvisited so I'll have an excuse to ride back down later.