An update on our round-the-world motorcycle trip: Dave is working in Seattle, WA for a few weeks helping to build a house while I’m staying in Vancouver B.C. We’ve been off the bikes for over three weeks and it doesn’t look like we’ll be back on them for another month or so.
We’re both working on the tiring tasks of trip planning for the next leg. This second half is leaps and bounds tougher to plan than riding through the Americas, where we just left our front doors and rode wherever we wanted whenever we wanted.
This next leg, which will take us through Africa, Europe, Russia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia, requires many documents with precise dates attached. We are finding it very difficult to plan out a year’s worth of riding by dates. For Africa, we need carnet de passages. This is a sort of ‘passport’ for our bikes and ensures we are not trying to sell them overseas. Each carnet comes with a big price tag for each country. We have to guess at which countries we want to visit because the carnet is needed well in advance of when we fly there. We cannot decide we’d like to visit another country once there because we won’t have a carnet for that country. It really takes the spontaneity out of it all đ As well, we have to front the market value of our bikes initially, which the carnet issuing company keeps until we return… when we sure hope they refund our deposit.
The next obstacle is acquiring travel visas for Russia and Kazakhstan, although I have heard Canadians may not need visas in Kaz after Jan 1, 2017. (This has beed confirmed by Visa Services of Canada but not the Kaz embassy itself. Hey Kazakhstan, pleeeeease pick up your phone!)
Each visa takes about three weeks to send away for and have returned. They cost a few hundred dollars. We’ve been told we must apply for them from within our own country, which means we can’t go anywhere until we have our passports back from the embassies. If we don’t need a visa for Kaz, REJOICE. We’ll be able to get back on the road three weeks earlier.
The Russian visa is another thing entirely; we need an invitation letter to enter Russia and if applying for a tourist visa, they will only give us 30 days to travel through this immense country. Definitely not enough time to ride across Russia. I’m working on a work-around at the moment.
We’re hoping to be back on our bikes before Christmas. In the meantime, you can catch up on what we’ve been doing this past year all throughout our website.
XO
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Just catching up on your travels, nice nice you nutter bars:)
ahh so much detailed work! but it’s going to be fabulous once you get there!!
It will be well deserved đ
We have been enjoying reading about your travels. Pete got an F800 2014 from a friend, but broke his fibula riding it the first day…no fault of the bike, just a weird circumstance. Now he is in a “boot” until it heals, for another 2 weeks or so. Meanwhile, shopping on line for things to make it “his” bike.
We’ve been worrying a bit about your travel in Africa. I’ve heard so much firsthand about the dangers there and understand what you are up against. Maybe you should look up the top 10 safest countries (I googled it a few days ago) and perhaps somehow just travel those countries, shipping bikes via train to the next spot or something?? Good friends were robbed at gunpoint in Kenya a few months ago, losing camera, ipad and some gear and such. They were at a remote safari camp, not a well traveled area.
If you need some AZ sunshine, come on down! We always love visitors, have great accommodations and of course good riding!
Thanks Judy, I’d love to get some of that AZ sunshine right now after spending weeks in rainy Vancouver đ We’re being pretty selective with the countries we want to visit in Africa, but thanks for the tip, will check that out. Really sorry to hear about Pete’s leg! Give him our best.