How much would you budget?
 

As above for a 4 month trip, starting in the UK and riding to UB, Mongolia and back? Not including the bike, gear and spares etc, just the cost of day to day living and fuel.

I was hoping around £40 a day (£5000 total budget) would suffice if I spent most the time camping. It would be an economical bike (70+mpg) to minimise fuel costs.

Cheers, Dave

Your prob about right, i would put some extra aside for unseen circumstances, accident, or problems with the bike. You need to get out of europe quick but once you hit Ukraine its cheap, im not sure about east of there but i would imagine it would be the same a Georgia and Ukraine and there was 2 of us but £50 a day was about were we where at.

Russia and Mongolia costs
 

I'm just about to cross into Europe having come across from Vladivostok, Russia via Mongolia over the last three months on a KLR650. My expenditure so far has averaged $74 (Australian) a day. That has covered insurance at borders, fuel, tyres (2 F and 1 R) and oil, food, accomodation, museum entry fees and the like. I've free camped about 30 days of the 90 days and ate at cheap truck stops when on the road. In cities I've used a mix of hostels and hotels and visited most of the sights.

So overall I reckon your budget should be fine outside Europe.

To help with planning I would reckon on:

• $1 litre fuel in Russia and $1.50 in Mongolia (where it is mostly 80 octane so your consumption goes up 20%).
• Hotels: Russia - average $50-60 (but vary between 20 in small towns to 120 in cities). Mongolia $20 -$40 (includes Ger camps).
• Food: You can always find somewhere to get a reasonably filling meal for $6-$10 - even in the big cities.

Hope this helps

We went from Germany to Mongolia this past summer on 30 Euro a day on average, but that was wild camping most nights (and only wild camping in Mongolia outside of UB) and eating at cafes rather than resturants once we hit the Ukraine. Before the Ukraine we mostly self catered. Russia was 25 Euro per day per person (with insurance factored in) and Mongolia was 12.50 (including our time in UB which was the most expensive time we had there). That also included new tires in Russia.

What we did not factor in was pre departure costs like Visas, which for me as a Canadian wanting a multiple entry business visa was 500 Euro for Russia. Ouch. :-( But the German paid 250. And if you want a single entry it is cheaper again. We also couch surfed in Russian cities, and I do not think we did a single museum. We were on BMW F 650s.