Hello everyone,


we are a Dutch-German couple and we are planning to do a motorcycle trip to Mongolia in the summer of 2015. It is the first time for us to do a very big trip.

Unfortunately, we only have limited time (~7 weeks, from beginning of July until end of August) and decided, that the entire trip to Mongolia and back would be too many kilometers in that time and that rushing so much would not very enjoyable for us. This is especially, because at the moment we favor the southern route through turkey and iran, which means more kilometers.

We looked at different opportunities to save time, namely taking the plane back and shipping the bikes or even leave (=sell) them in Mongolia or taking the bikes on the train for our way back, and we even thought about rushing on the shortest way through russia to Mongolia and then back, which we concluded, would not be very desirable. Also we already sent lots of e-mails to shipping companies, travelling agencies, the Mongolian embassy, etc. to get a clear image about our opportunities.

Unfortunately, we are a little bit confused, because it is hard to really weight the pros and cons of the different possibilities to handle our "time issue", which is why we would like to ask other travellers about their experiences.

It appears to be difficult to pre-arrange stuff like taking our bikes as luggage on the train. So our main question is, if it would be possible and perhaps easier to arrange a train ride on the spot in Ulaan Bataar or Ulaan-Ude to for example Moskau, when we want to return to the Netherlands, instead of now going crazy about a perfect planning.

We would be very thankful if someone has experience with how easily this kind of stuff can be arranged on the spot and if this is a somewhat reliable plan. Also all other kind of input about how we could arrange everything would help us .


Kind Regards,
Saskia