hello,

good choice to spend a part of your life travelling on a bike. you have found the right website to prepare your trip. dont forget that the most difficult day of your journey will be the first day, leaving home. I have met many people that prepared for years and never left.

I agree with all what is said from others travellers in this thread. here are a few of my advises.

- set a date when you are going to leave

- than go to the HU meeting together with your girlfriend/wife, than buy the bike (or bikes).

- take your time choosing the bike, it will be an important part of your trip. you will ride it around the world, so very important is that you (and only you !!) feel comfortable with the bike. dont underestimate the different costs of the different bikes and ask yourself how much you can do yourself on the bike. you will meet millions of people on your trip and they will look at the bike as well and judge your budget according to the bike model. e.g. you ride a 200cc farm bike your budget will be lower to them, if you would ride a big bmw or ktm.

- quit your job min. two month before you leave and learn everything about your bike that you can before leaving. do a complete service on the bike yourself, work very careful. service the bike allways yourself on the journey, and do it regularly.

- calculate your budget very careful

- never hurry, never ride at night, never pay a policeman or a border guard

enjoy the preparation and make your own decisions, because its going to be your trip

greetings from switzerland

mika (rtw 1999-2005 on a yamaha tenere)

Hi Mika,

Thanks for a warm wellcome. We're going to leave home on the 5th of May 2010 or thereabouts. About the bike - do you suggest that we should go to a HU Meeting before we buy it?Budget - is 30000 dollars enough for 2-3 years long RTW Trip? We're planning to do as much camping as we can.

Thanks a lot for help!
Andy.

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Why has no one suggested the Transalp??
Solid build quality, Proven engine, biggest support network in the world, and i'm pretty sure they have spoked wheels.
Your choice, but dont write them off. IMHO, better than a Suzuki.

If riding solo, I agree the Transalp (or Africa Twin) are great choices. Very reliable, and comfortable, too.

But if riding 2-up, I think The Weestrom is better than Transalp. Much sturdier frame, the Suzi carries more weight without starting to feel like its got a hinge in the middle (like both Transalp and Africa Twin do). Ever taken the tank off these, and compared - the difference is in fact huge.

The newest, 700cc Transalp gets close, but still doesnt quite match the DL on power and ability 2-up. All older 650/600-versions are far behind, especially on the highways the Weestrom will cruise effortlessly at 120-140 kms per hour, with all the luggage and everything, and thats when the Honda (especially 600/650) feels underpowered.

The Stroms cast wheels can take the abuse (that most of us can subject a bike to, I mean), and unlike spoked wheels, they wont require regular maintenance, spoke tensioning, etc., so unless you actually manage to bend or break them, and that´s rare, you dont have to worry about them at all.

You CAN do a RTW-trip 2-up on any of these bikes, its just that one´s got abilities, that are better suited for that purpose, than the others. Price is another thing to consider. All of them are very reliable, if properly maintained.

I dont think you can ride much ´off-road´ 2-up, and your RTW-trip luggage on it, on any bike. Your wife will most likely soon want to fly back home, if you try!!

Even bikes that are great for off-roading, would completely change with that much weight on board. And they would probably break subframes, etc, possibly even engines, ´cos they arent designed to pull such a load around the world.

Anther thing that brings me closer to the decision of buying a wee Thanks a lot!

hehehe...

You seem to know my wife very well...or maybe they're all made this way? (Big Kiss to all you wifes out there helping and supporting us all the way - you're the best!!)

The Offroad experience was always something that I was worried about. I dont have a lot of experience in that area, plus it gets really hard to choose a bike that would suit these somewhat two different categories of riding. Thanks a lot for the comments and help!

I'll think about buying a bike after the HU Meeting but then this would mean that I would have to get to the meeting using a car Not the best idea

See you all out there!
Andy

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How the roads are, depends a lot on your choice of route, and the time you´ve got.

But normally, you will ride on a road, not off the road. Sure it may be in bad condition, bumpy and full of potholes, so you need to be careful, and go quite slow......... but you dont have to be a Paris-Dakar racer to handle that, just be careful, and dont do anything stupid, and usually you´ll be fine.

Experience will naturally be a big help, but you also learn by doing. And you will get used to the load thats on the bike, and it helps you to handle the bike, even if what´s underneath the tyres is sometimes a little loose.

That said, I wouldnt start off on a trip like this, unless I had at least a few years of regular riding; you need to be able to handle the bike in some real terrible traffic, for example.

There were some real bad stretches of the road on our trip, and we just went real slow. Sometimes I asked her to walk, when there were some muddy river-crossings, steep hills, etc. But out of the 34 thousand kms, those really tricky places must´ve amounted to a total of 100-200 kms maximum (and you could probably take 50% off those, if we´d never taken any smaller byways). The rest was totally do-able, and I´d say more than half was actually quite good.

If you can - Yes.
It comes down to a personal; decission. What is right for me may be wrong for you. But you'll get lots more ideas at a HU meeting ..

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Regards Frank Warner
motorcycles BMW R80 G/S 1981, BMW K11LT 1993, BMW K75 G/S