Hello all,

After some lurking it’s time to make myself known 33-yo Dutchman currently living in Norway. Have been riding bikes since 2006, an eclectic range from Honda Pacific Coast to Hayabusa! I will start a RTW trip in fall 2016, using as many years as I need to complete the journey. At a slow pace, I reckon this might be two to three years at least.

I’ve been toying with the idea of a RTW trip for over a decade now (don’t you just hate how life gets in the way?), first in a campervan/RV, but that quickly became a motorcycle after a lot of online reading. Or maybe it was this quote from “Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance”? The one about being a spectator vs. being a participant when comparing being inside a steel box with glass and being on a motorbike. It was in any case long before I saw Long Way Round (and Down).

My idea was to follow roughly the same path as Peter and Leonie from "Amsterdam to Anywhere", but looking at the situation in Northern Africa that might prove difficult right now. An alternative might be to head for Asia first, but this depends on the situation and costs involved in crossing China.

Since I’ll be exploring Europe first, the above questions won’t be an issue before well into 2017, and hopefully by that time the situation in Syria and Egypt has quieted down [/wishfull thinking mode off]

So that’s it in a nutshell! Will be following the developments here on the forum until D-day (and beyond!)