car v/s bike
 

Hi all,
I have a question in my mind, and i would like to hear your opinion, so...
I 'm in planing a road trip, for maybe a year, i'm thinking that maybe traveling with a car (with consumption max 10L/100km), will be more budgeting, (sleep in it, cook), my bike has 7L/100km, i do like bikes, but also like to spend more time on road.
Please, i know the BIG deference, but just the saving money side i'm asking.

Thanks in advance, i'm all ears
Regards
George

Travelling by motorcycle puts you closer to both the environment and the people of the places you pass through. When you are in a car you are more insulated from smells, temperature and precipitation along with having less contact with local people when you stop.
I expect the additional cost of running a car can be made up by savings in the cost of accommodation if you camp in it.

Thank you for your reply,
I traveled by bike (camping) for some years, mostly for 20days holidays, so i can understand your point.
Just crossing my mind many scenarios, how i can do this last longer, IF thinks go o.k and start....

BIG thank you ALL of you guys - girls, that feed my senses off traveling with your travels, hope someday we will meet on the road.... bier

Each time i ride, i'm thinking off the day that i will start riding without return...........
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Regards
George

I think of it this way.... How miffed would u be if u came across one the best roads you'd ever seen and u r in a pug 206 instead of say your ducati.......as I was earlier this year in maroc.
That said I get ur query totally as unloading and loading a bike up for several weeks day after day can get on ur nerves, as does locking it up, cleaning the chain etc etc.
Whilst in the car it's just look under the bonnet if u remember and u can wear shorts and flip flops

Thank you for your answer
I'm just fine with camping, bike maintenance, also love it :funmeteryes:
It's my first attempt for long time, and my thoughts are a little messy, :blushing:
I'm just thinking some "if" , "maybe", to reduce the cost
Regards
George

A car you can share various distances, saves money. But depending the route largely.
Solo, for me bike. No doubt.

Have to agree with Mark. Nothing like the feeling the wind on your skin while on a bike. Keeps you very aware of your surroundings.

Since the OP was asking only about "the saving money side," I'll offer that for most trips not involving a lot of shipping costs, I've found cars cheaper. Specifically, that is, cars I can sleep in--usually some sort of minivan for me, but in the old days this used to include giant American station wagons. My current car gets half the fuel mileage of my current bike (25 US miles/gallon vs. 50 mpg), but obvious wear items like tires and brakes are cheaper and last far longer, even aside from the whole issue of camping vs. hotels.

Yeah, the bike is more fun....when it's not raining, snowing, hailing, blowing, dark, freezing, plagued with locusts, or in other respects inclement. Yeah, the bike brings you closer to the world itself, which is a decided advantage. Mostly.

Sometimes it's difficult to compare costs, since assuming good roads I can easily drive 600 miles/1000 km day after day, but I for all the obvious reasons I don't do that on a bike. This gives the illusion that the bike is far cheaper ("Hey, I only spent $25 on fuel today!"), but in actual dollars per mile it's very often not.

In my life, that is--proving that it's not all about saving money.

Mark

Big open highways, light traffic and open spaces is where a car/truck is nice. Taking loads of supplies and a guaranteed comfortable place to sleep is great.

Fun roads, small dirt tracks and lots of traffic is where biking comes into it's own.

I love the versatility of a bike. Go anywhere !!!

I love the comfort and ease of a van....

You are far less weather-dependent when you have a car, so are less likely to need to find accommodation to dry yourself / gear / stay warm / wait out sudden snowfall etc

I always wonder at this great freedom bikers talk about. I love the freedom of not having to squeeze my head into a helmet or wear thick, hot protective clothing.

How you interact with locals is really down to you.

Probably not popular opinions on a mostly biker forum! :D

EO

Having made a case for cars above, I'll say that there is nothing you can do in a moving car (well, almost nothing) which compares for thrills to motorcycling a fast, twisty mountain road, or squeezing on two wheels through goat trails from village to village with no idea where you'll end up. Not to mention riding up and down entry stairs at hotel lobbies, or bypassing long lines at tollbooths, border crossings, city traffic jams, and endless streams of slow-moving Colombian trucks in the mountains. There's your freedom.

Hey, at home I often go to great lengths to ride around in the woods on my mountain bike, to putter around in my kayak, or to ski backcountry in the mountains; there's more to life than efficiency and staying warm and dry.

Sez I, so far.

Mark

I like you reasoning, and definitely agree that there are times when travelling when a bike would be more fun.

However, if I look back at 250,000 kms of travel in my two 4x4s, my top three experiences are:

1) Driving over the Khyber Pass and spending two months crossing Afghanistan - this would have been damn dangerous on a bike as everyone would immediately have known I was a foreigner (I was driving a plain Hilux pickup in local dress).

2) Crossing Russia in midwinter on ice roads - with a stretch of around 800 km without fuel, temperatures at times below -40º C and thousands of kilometres of ice or frozen roads, this would have been impossible on a bike without a support crew.

3) Crossing the Gobi in the far south of Mongolia off-piste... maybe doable on a bike but very risky, as you wouldn't have the fuel capacity to turn back if you got badly lost.

So I would counter, that the very best things I have done, pretty much required a car.:D

EO

Interesting descriptions. I have to agree that each those trips would likely have sucked on a bike, each for different reasons. But each was carefully planned (I'm assuming), and was fully intended to be challenging. Planned difficulties are different from the ones which take you by surprise, and if in search of the latter it's often necessary to sidestep the planning, somehow.

My own best experiences have been without bike or four-wheeled vehicle. A train thru the minefields in Mozambique following the end of the war, which derailed (apparently no one does track maintenance when any errant step might cost you your legs), requiring days of hungry, sweaty walking thru remote villages before finally hopping a freight train to the nearest real town, eventually small cities. A rather nerve-racking nighttime journey through empty villages in Rwanda right after their genocide, and the drunken conversations with a few remaining Tutsis who offered us floor space with, for better or worse, the rats, followed by a day spent hitching rides from truckers and NGO workers through the refugee camps near the Rusumo Bridge. A trip upriver in PNG by dugout, first along the Sepic, then progressively smaller tributaries into places which has not seen white folks since, they said, the war--that's WWII, of course. Hitchhiking to, around and back from Alaska and the Yukon just before I turned 40, with attendant grizzly encounters, mosquito slugfests, and encounters with exotic local folk-- drunk, sober, drug-addled, and non-reality-compliant. A long walk with a couple of Tuaregs thru the Air Mountains and the edges of the Tenére, just prior to the dissolution of order which rendered such trips inadvisable.

Plus more like that. My motorbike journeys have sometimes presented difficulties, but they've mostly been disappointingly predictable, therefore not so life-altering. And although I complain about that, it's also the case that when faced with anything life-altering these days I tend to use my various plastic cards and stashes of US dollars to make whatever it is go away.

So that's what your post set me to thinking about: the distinctions between what experiences are most "fun," and what are "best." My funnest times, which sometimes involved cars, sometimes trucks, sometimes motorcycles, and sometimes none of the above, have mostly not been my best. My best times have often been no fun whatsoever while they were happening--should I tell the story about waking up to find a large rat licking my lips in a cheap Ethiopian hotel?

All of which ignores the OP's question, which was about relative costs. I hope they find some value in these digressions.

Mark

Well, I have an old MR2. I would love to have an overland trip in the MR2 so that you have a car to enjoy the roads. Ok it not like an all terrain car, although I could lift it.

But I had many times a road which would be awesome to drive in a sports car, not in a 4x4. So I understand what you are saying, although I think it would suck to on a loaded bike.

People say you can only bring your toothbrush in an MR2, but of course it has more space than on a bike, and it is easy to bring a small tent.

Downside of an MR2 as well as a bike is that I can't bring my family :P

Only 1 reply has answered the OPs question doh

Car is cheaper - a mid sized diesel car will have the same fuel economy as a big adventure bike, you can cut down on accommodation, bad weather is a big factor, you can have a picnic in a car in the cold/lashing rain etc when a restaurant is so tempting on a bike.

Secretly, I think you know all this already.