Shipments done by Travellers

I travelled from Oman to Yemen and then from Yemen to Djiboutiy. I arrived at 08:00 in the little harbour from Al Makha and asked arround. After a bit of bargaining I paid the equivalent of 100 Dollar.

The boat was an original Arabian Dhow, filled with pots, pans, mattresses, onion, bottles of water etc etc.

Only problem was getting the bike on board, I had to drive across the 25 cm wide plank, 4 meters above sea to the ship, which was placed 3 meters from the shore...

Arriving in Djibouti was easy peasi as they were not expecting a foreigner between all the onions. They unloaded my bike with muscle force, stamped my passport and off I went.

We have succeeded in crossing from Cartagena Colombia to Colon in Panama. We managed to cross in a sailing boat Tatoosh, Skipper Philippe Whitehead, the French. The voyage took two and a half days. The bike was on the deck, we protected it against salt water with plastic sheet. The boat seems to travel this way all the time and transports passengers. It saves a lot of trouble, finding two or more different transports.

Grant's comment: This is technically illegal, and unless you clear Panama Customs on landing, you may experience difficulties leaving Panama. Be clear with the captain that you will actually be going through Customs.

I shipped my bike from Cape Town to New York for 100 bucks a cubic meter and my agent said they would send it to Tilbury for 80 bucks a m3. there is other paperwork involved too (75 bucks ???????), but it is all pretty easy.

Customs is very easy if you have a carnet. I got a pallet from Trefco BMW and there is a timber merchant next door to Trefco.

Hi - don't know about shipping to Iran. It's not on the route of the normal shipping run between Mumbai, , which does a run between England, the Med, Red Sea and Arabian Sea and back. However, rather than shipping to Africa (as you may have a bit of a problem getting visas to head North), you could easily ship to Aqaba, Jordan.

Ships go once a week from Mumbai. Then travel up thru' Jordan Syria into Turkey.

Only prob is that unless you book a whole (20ft) container, you may have delays as the shipping agent will wait until the container is full before shipping. However the delays may be quite small as this is a busy route.

If you are near Mumbai, then your best bet is either look in yellow pages on the internet (yell.com) or go to the port user's building at the port itself (JNPT, Jawarhal Nehru Port Trust) in Nhava Sheva, which is 60km south of Mumbai by road, about 15km by boat from the old port on the south side of the Mumbai peninsula. In the port user's building there are a number of shipping agencies, who will give you contact details for their sales offices.

You will also need a clearing agent. We found that 90% of them either did not know how to clear a vehicle, or just pretended they didn't, in order to rip us off. We found it was quite expensive to ship from Mumbai, in terms of port charges. Also, most of the shipping agents couldn't recommend a clearing agent.

The one we used was BC Buhiralla - ask for Mr Ness. His number is (22) 2615451 or 2615452. They were expensive but efficient, which is a rarity in India. I think their address is:

1st floor
5 JN Heradia Marg,
Balmier Lawrie Building,
Ballard Estate,
Mumbai.

If you decide to ship, keep smiling and enjoy the experience, it is stressful and time-consuming but you will get there in the end!! Good luck

Remember we wrote that The Kingfisher Freight was the cheaper to send our bike to Buenos Aires? Well in the end it turned out that we had to pay over US$2,350 not including the tickets for ourselves. In the future advise people to stay away from that agency (Kingfisher Freight).