Hi Folks.

I am just beginning an RTW trip on a Royal Enfield Himalayan.

My plan is to travel in the warmer months (April - October in Northern Hemisphere) and lay up somewhere for the colder months. My reasons for this are twofold, firstly I am 58 years old and having been riding bikes continuously since the age of 17 mostly in my home country of Scotland, I have had my fill of riding in cold rain. Secondly, laying up gives me a change to recharge my bank account to facilitate further travel.

I sold up everything to do this and as I am now retired and have nothing to return to Scotland for, I can take my time, so the trip will probably take somewhere between 5 and 10 years to complete.

I was intending to write a blog primarily for my own purpose of documenting my travels, however I have the notion that depending on the content, other bikers might want to read some of what I have to say but this is where it gets a little tricky. While I m contributing to other forums like the Royal Enfield Owners forum, these contributions are more about how the bike performs on my trip, a sort of ongoing long term review of the bike.

Now I am seeking opinions as to what to populate my blog with. Should it be only about the travel with lots of pictures? Should the blog be the place for the ongoing bike review? Should I include a detailed guides of how I carried out repairs etc. Should it be about how I went about crossing borders, the paperwork, problems and solutions? Should it be all of these or something else? Should I make videos, if so what about?

I have watched a lot of travellers video blogs on YouTube and while they are initially enthralling I have come to realise that their content is driven by their use of this platform as a way of funding their travels through donations from viewers. Now while this is their choice and I respect them for that, this is not I route that I want to go down. I personally feel that travels such as that which I have now undertaken should inspire other bikers to travel on their bikes, as Ted Simon's did for me, rather than use my story as a way to get them to pay me for what I am doing. As I said before, this is not to criticise or demean any other bikers for using this method for funding their travel, it is just that I personally feel that for me to do it would be wrong and it would contradict the personal rationale behind why I sold up and opted to ride around the world on my bike rather than stay at home.

So as you can see there are lots of different directions that I could go with it but there is little point in deviating away from solely documenting my travels if it is of no use to anyone else. Therefore it would be good to have you send me your opinions on this matter. Let me know what is important to you in a story or blog as this could help me shape it in to something that my fellow bikers could find both entertaining and valuable.