Horizons Unlimited - The HUBB - Shipping from India to Belgium: our story

Last august our motorbike trip from Belgium to India ended in Delhi. I'm posting our experience here as it was hard for us to find up to date information about shipping India to Europe, let alone Belgium.

Given all the negative reports about shipping by sea, we tried to ship our two bikes -an F800GS and F650GS- home by plane. We visited several agents to get this organised, including one that was recommended to us by Lufthansa. They all told us the bikes would be on a plane in no time! Of course, as this was India, this didn't quite happen. Airlines are very strict about sending 'dangerous goods' (including motorbikes) nowadays, and the agents turned out to lack experience or loose interest in re-exporting our motorbikes pretty quickly. So after a few days we were still stuck in Delhi and didn't even have a quote yet.

After wasting five days, we asked the HU community in Delhi for advice and were referred to Mr. Lalli Singh. We visited Lalli in his Royal Enfield workshop, were warmly welcomed by Lalli and his staff, and got a quote that same day. Unfortunately, flying turned out to be three times more expensive than shipping by sea, and more difficult and time consuming to clear them through customs, so we decided to ship by sea after all.

Lalli guessed the paperwork would take about a week (Independence Day fell in that week), and indeed, after a week the bikes had been crated, cleared through customs and were on a truck to Mumbai. We got our stamped carnets back and were ready to leave the country ourselves, very satisfied about Lalli's services so I can really recommend him.

Back in Belgium, five weeks later we got an email from the Antwerp agent that our crates had arrived. Getting them re-imported took two more weeks (Belgian customs turned out to be slower than Indian customs, ouch) and the dreaded port charges were indeed quite high (see below).
TIP: if you're sending more than one bike ask your agent to put them on ONE bill of lading, the port charges will be lower as there's a fixed charge per party! We didn't realise this and got a separate bill of lading for each bike from Lalli.

Break-up of shipping cost:
- about 450 EUR per bike for Lalli's services (clearing, crating, truck transport and shipping)
- Antwerp port charges + clearing: 460 EUR per bike
- Antwerp warehouse rent: 60 EUR per bike

Total cost to ship from Delhi to Antwerp: 970 EUR per bike.

Note that you have to either pick up the crates in the port, or have them delivered to your door at additional cost. Unpacking and reassembling the bike in the port incurs extra 'stuffing' costs, and you will have to dispose of the crate somehow.

Conclusion: shipping by sea worked out quite well for us and didn't take too long. Not cheap, but still quite a lot cheaper than flying.

I hope this is useful to someone!