Hi all,

Planning on heading out to Asia Jan 2010. Going to spend a few months relaxing visiting friends in Thailand and Indonesia before getting to India in March 2010.

The plan is to get 2 motorcycles locally for myself and my girlfriend and to tour india region (prob including nepal) for about a year or so.

Background - both of us have extensive experience in asia having overlanded (not by bike - public transport) throughout singapore malaysia, indonesia, thailand, laos, camboida, china several times previously. (although extensive periods have been spent fishing, camping and errr, not doing a lot, on remote islands!). and we have traveled round australia for a month in a camper including crossing the nullabor which was pretty cool.

This will be out first experience motorcycle touring and we currently do not have a huge amount of biking experience although i have ridden some basic off road bits in Thailand and the south pacific islands.

So, background over, questions.

We figured a year was probably a reasonable amount of prep time, what I would like, if anyone would be kind enough to reply, is some input - suggestions, things to do in advance, any comments etc.

I have spent two weeks reading online, i have some idea of out options regarding bikes and the various pros and cons. I am currently thinking Bullets, probably new ones from a dealer. Although i don't have a great deal of mechanical know how, I am an engineer and learn fast. I am also considering if it is worth purchasing a Bullet over here and getting to now it before going. Also I am looking to learn the basics, and maybe not so basics, on troubleshooting/maintaining it myself. Suggestions on how to go about this would also be welcome.

for reference i am based in South London near clapham (before anyone suggests a great enfield garage the other side of the world etc!)

Fortunately for us the financial side of things will not be a major issue as we have pretty good earning power and not a lot of expenses.

Thanks to everyone here for making this such a great site, such a trove of information, I feel far more confident just knowing i can ask stupid questions here and get informative answers!

Cheers

Dan