Insurance and Storage
 

Hi

I am an American planning on buying a KLR 650 and shipping it to Europe using Stefan Knopf. My goal is to eventually ride all continents starting with Asia once Covid settles down. I have travelled extensively overland using public transportation and on sailboats and now want to fill in some of the gaps of places I haven't been on a motorcycle.

Rough outline of itinerary: Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Crimea, Abkhazia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, ferry/cargo ship to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakstan, Mongolia, (also considering going through Xinjiang but I've heard thats now unpleasant, eastern Russia (Sakhalin I. - though not sure if you can drive there from Mongolia!) to Japan via Hokkaido.

Here are my questions:

1) As an american can I insure the bike in these countries? Stefan said his company covers some of these but not all. Any other recommendations for insurance?

2) Storage - I have two relatively yong children. What I am thinking is I ride for a month to month and a half at a time and then fly back to the East Coast of the US for a week or two to see my kids (so they don't forget me) and work a few shifts (I am an ER doctor). Does this sound like a reasonable idea? Any thoughts on where I can store the bike while I travel home? I've also heard that some contries will not let you leave the bike while you fly home. Does anyone know which countries these are?

3) Travel Insurance - Can anyone recomend a good company that will cover evacuation and medical costs and not exclude motorcyclists? FYI companies like Global Rescue are not ideal since they exclude you once you have received medical care other than them initially. i.e. if you are unconscious and brought to a local hospital and then they are contacted they will no longer evacuate you since they weren't contacted initially.

Thanks you for your suggestions!

Nick

Hi Nick and welcome,

1) You should be able to get third party insurance on arrival at most borders, there are still a few countries where it is not available and you just have to be bloody careful when riding in them. I am not sure if it is an actual offence to not have insurance in these places but if you have an accident involving someone else you could end up paying up out of your pocket, it is a risk others have taken and I don't think there is an alternative apart from not going there.

2) Sounds expensive but if you have the money with careful planning it should not be a problem, even some countries that require a carnet or write it in your passport do allow you to leave it there as long as it is arranged properly through customs.

3) Hopefully someone will be along to advise you on this, it is different for every nationality so you will probably need advise from an American with first hand knowledge, even some of the companies that insure different nationalities have different policies depending on where you are from so the advice you recieve from a non-American might not be applicable.

Hopefully others will be along with some more information but yes your trip seems entirely posible to me. Did you ask a question about insurance on advrider?

Thanks Mark!

Does anyone know specifically which cuntries that I listed don't have any insurance coverage available. Seems a bit sketchy to ride without insurance - something at this stage of my life I'd probably rather not do.

As per the bike insurance, most euopean insurances eill provide you with a green card covering most of Europe - Knopf will be able to assist. For all other countries you typically buy when you enter.

Medical and Evacuation insurance for Europeans with global coverage is no problem if you don’t stay for several months as you seem to plan. Often they are called just travel insurance. There must be similar in the US.

Take care

OP, your questions are pretty basic, and all of us have asked the same questions. That means they've also been answered many times on this forum and others. There's a certain reluctance to invest a lot of time in answering inquiries in the absence of indications someone's first done a bit of research on their own.

In the end, trusting answers you get here (or again, elsewhere) without verifying them independently will get you into trouble anyway. Times change, procedures change, even governments change drastically--c.f., two of your destinations, Abkhazia and Crimea. Plus: we respondents make mistakes...or at least, I do.

The search box on this site gets routinely disrespected, but it actually works fairly well. Insert any obvious search terms and you'll start collecting answers--"green card insurance," "travel insurance for Americans," or "insure motorcycle in Russia."

At any moment not subject to COVID precautions there are probably thousands of US citizens riding motorcycles around Europe and Asia, and sometimes it seems like they're all blogging constantly. Some are quite obsessive about describing where they bought insurance and which border crossings are easiest/fastest/cheapest/most scenic/most fun. Read a few blogs, and take notes.

Last, when asking questions it's usually more productive to be very specific rather than general or scattershot. "Where can I buy insurance in the following 20 countries?" is usually less productive than "Can I buy insurance entering Turkey from Bulgaria?"

Hope that's helpful.

Mark

PS: Travel insurance from DAN covers US citizens cheaply and comprehensively. Read the fine print.

Thanks for all great respectful feedback. I'm still in the early stages of planning this trip and I guess it seemed easier to throw out the question to a large audience regarding which countries may not provide any insurance along this route as opposed to asking about or researching each of many different countries when most of them will provide coverage. Obviously I would do this if I didn't get a response. Basically I want to make sure that there are no countries that would be show stoppers and preclude me from completing this trip - insurance wise.

These include China - which sounds prohibitively difficult to bring a vehicle into. Also looks like you cannot drive from Russia into Crimea if you are not Ukrainian - so would probably take the route through Turkey.

Thanks again!

Nick

Just noting that your original post said nothing about entering Crimea from Russia.

When you say "...it seemed easier to throw out the question to a large audience..." you're not taking into account the simple fact that there are far more people "throwing out the question" than there are experienced folks willing to answer at length. Add to this the less obvious fact that most of these trips don't ever happen per the early questions and vague plans, and that a great many questioners never even bother checking back to thank those who respond or contribute to the knowledge base which contributed to their trips.

I sound needlessly dour today, which isn't my intent. I'm just hoping to be informative about how this is most likely going to work best for you (and those who follow).

best,

Mark

We can provide coverage either directly or through partners for the requested countries.
We can provide logistics for the needed land/sea freight.
We can provide storage for your motorcycle here in Croatia, Europe.

Basically we provide one stop shop service for such over landing travellers. We are insurance broker that creates specific insurance products for such over landing niche markets.

Travel insurance, two that we suggest are Global rescue and Medjet.

Let me know if you have any more questions.

BR
Dooby

Dooby handled our 3rd party insurance last year, and provides a great service :D. He was most helpful when we asked for documentation required by our travel insurance here in Australia.

Salty.