How Long?
 

So my missus and I are finally rid of all our offspring and we can start to plan a RTW trip.

Reading many blogs and reports here and over on ADVRider it seems that you can’t just up sticks and ride.

Visas and carnets are required.

So the big Q is how long does it take to plan the big one? We’re in the UK and ideally we’d like to travel east, keep going, all the Stans, Mongolia, Russia, Pakistan, Laos, Cambodia, Oz and New Zealand before shipping to the states (destiny not yet known) but for the first part I know there’s guides to be had in Laos and China at present, and I know things may change by the time we finally set off.

I’ve been reading up on the Carnet and this is taken from their website:

The applicant must also provide a security amount in the form of either a non-refundable insurance indemnity or a part-refundable deposit guarantee (a percentage of the deposit guarantee will be charged to cover administration and bank fees) to cover the temporary import of the vehicle against the duties and taxes applicable.

So am I correct in thinking as well as the 5/10/25 page carnet costs you have to pay a further fee? If so does anyone know how much? I’ve loooked on the website from the CARS and can’t find any info.

I know it’s early stages, but it’s a pipe dream we’ve had for a number of years now and it’s time to start planning.

Thanks

Gav

This depends on what bike you want to ride. For a 700 Euro Honda you have to work about a week...for a 20.000 Euro BMW your going to waste much more of your limited lifetime in an office paying the rates insted of traveling the world. Not talking about repairing it again and again.
Wild camping is free, food very cheap and while buying and selling used bikes on differnt continents (dont waste money for shipping) you dont lose much money but you should calculate one month work for petrol and one for flights and one for Visa and one or two for other stuff.

Crossing Chine is very expensive. Best to travel via India Thailand, Cambodia Laos etc and rent different bikes in all thise different countrys for just 4 dollars per day.

While earning the money for the trip you can sort out the carned. I payed 180 Euro + 3000 Euro deposit/bank garantee. At the same time you can apply for some visa but not for all of them as most of the visa expire 30 days later. Sell your stuff. 6 Months later you should have enouth cache to travel one year and be ready to go :)

Offroad Motorrad Weltreisen - das letzte Abenteuer

Bike we will travel on will be a ktm 1190

Do you actually mean planning or saving?

But just don't make things to complicated. You can see it with cars as well. 4x4's being loaded with a lot of expedition stuff, or complete trucks being built from scratch. While you could just buy something like a Subaru Forester and throw a mattress in the back and just go :)

Ta-rider makes some good points but it sounds like his style and yours maybe different.


Best advice I was given when I was in your position was to set a date and announce it to everyone. It's an amazing way to keep yourself focused.

Don't make the date to far in advance - saying I'm going to do it in 2 years time is putting it in never- never land and who knows what you'll have found to get in the way by then (or worse still illness or accident might get in the way). Even the most complicated trip should not take you more than six months to plan and organise even first time round - as you research you'll find these things are easier than you think.

Also be careful reading blogs - many are inspirational but many seem to focus on the difficulties and often forget the KISS principle.

Finally to echo one of the other replies above last year my girlfriend and I spent three months in NZ traveling around in a1500 dollar Subaru (Liberty not Forester) with the mattress in the back as suggested above - organised on a whim to meet an opportunity, it was fantastic fun traveling and reinforced simple is best (and we are both in the same age category as you - ie kids have left home)

Have fun planning, don't waste too much time on it and get going. You'll never regret it.

Sent from my Moto G (5S) Plus using Tapatalk

Thanks for the replies guys. I already have and own the bike. I’ve read so many reports regarding people planning meticulously taking up to three years, which somewhat surprises me. We like to do spontaneous stuff and go with the flow, but there’s so many things need planning as to when you’ll be entering certain countries and how long we would be there on a rtw trip.

Looking at carnets and visas we were ideally planning to ride west to east, uk to New Zealand to be more specific. After chatting to one of my pals who’s currently on a rtw trip he suggested doing the pan American highway due to not needing a carnet if I fly the bike into Santiago we could ride down south to Ushuaia and then head north up to the Dalton Highway. This is something that has been on the bucket list also for a number of years after watching a documentary some 11 years ago!

So we may do this first and then do the trans American trail before looking at the west to east trip.