Preparations - only 5 more weeks in London

5 weeks before we leave London... and still a gazillion of things have to be done before we can start our motorbike trip. We're planning to leave on May 1 and return some time in October. Starting point will be Poland and from there we're planning to go to: Slovakia - Hungaria - Romania - Ukraine - Russia - Kazachstan - Uzbekistan - Tadjikistan - Kyrgyzstan - Kazachstan - Russia - Mongolia - Russia - Estonia - Latvia - Lithunia - Poland - Germany. Looks like a nice little round trip on the world map - about 25.000km :)

From what I have heard so far the roads in Kazachstan, the other Stans and Mongolia are rather dirt tracks than roads. So it'll be an interesting experiment with Marcin not having ridden a motorbike for the last ten years and me having no offroad experience.

Two years ago I was thinking about which motorbike to buy for such a trip, and in the end I decided to get a BMW F650GS Dakar. But since going on just one motorbike is no option we're going on the BMW Eurasian Twins - two Dakars. Which has the advantage of reducing the amount of tools and spare parts we need to take. After several phone calls to Touratech and BMW and endless talk to people who know something about motorbikes and many who think they know something about motorbikes we decided not to change much on the bikes. We'll leave the catalyzers where they are and will simply destroy them with leaded petrol in Mongolia. And worry about it afterwards, if we fail to get the bikes through the next emissions check. A foldable gearshift, extended sidestand, a cigar lighter plug thing for charging batteries and a few minor modifications should do.

Our largest worry for now are the visas. With the help of an agency we hopefully get them in time, but we haven't heard back from them yet.

Other main things that remain to be done are getting some vaccinations and medical insurance, deciding which tools and spare parts to take and which tyres to use and getting some more equipment including motorbike clothing and doing those few little changes on the bikes.

So that's it for now - in the next posting I can hopefully report on some colourful visas in our passports...