London to civilisation. From planning to execution

[Jtw000]

And so it begins.

(Planning, not the trip...)

So... the plan is to ride from London to Thailand. 7000 miles through the Middle East passing through two war zones (3 if the Americans get their visa before I get mine) and several countries that use mud as tarmac. Sounds easy, right?
Well first I need a huge pile of expensive paperwork, a bike capable of taking a beating, various bits of kit, a ton of cash and some kind of map. Paperwork is my least favourite part of life, throwing money at bikes is probably next although riding them is fun. I’ve recently just got back from Europe where I tested the bike I chose by riding it round for a month, covering 6000 miles 2 up. She did well but there needs to be changes. I figured I’d start this blog thing now to detail my progress with visas and bike modifications which might be interesting for anyone else who’s decided to torture themselves in a similar way.
I’ll go into details of what I’ve done, what I learned from the last trip and what I’m doing to fix the problems that showed up. I’ll talk rubbish at times too so you’ve been fairly warned. Please feel free to ask questions or offer suggestions, bribes, , etc.

Why?

When I was at school I wanted to be a long distance lorry driver. I really liked the idea of travelling around, seeing a bit of the world, having time to think and making some decent money. However when I was at career counselling it was determined that I was of the wrong mental aptitude for such a lowly pursuit and I should follow a different path. I did and now have a series of qualifications that allow me to work in various positions I hate for companies that are generally morally reprehensible for a third of the money I would have earned as a lorry driver. In short, I’ve had enough of the rat race. It’s designed to create stress and I decided I don’t really like stress as much as I like riding motorcycles. So I figured it was either drive myself slowly mad doing things I absolutely hate or buy a bike and get the hell out of the system for a while.
I’m a lifelong biker. I bought a scooter for £50 when i was 16. It came in three cardboard boxes and I put them together into a bike. To be honest, I wasn’t a fan and after that I went on to cars. By the time I was 20 I was back to bikes and have had just about every kind since then, singles, twins, triples, fours, 2-strokes, 4-strokes, big ones, fast ones, heavy ones and crap ones. Mostly crap ones... As I’ve matured I’ve leant from sportbikes into adventure bikes. It was either do that or lose my licence so a few years ago I got into the off-road thing with a bit of green-laning and gone on to abuse a whole different class of 2 wheeled machine in a whole different way. Since then I’ve had a few and finally decided I want to use it to travel which is something I’ve always wanted to do anyway.
Thailand sounds cool to me. It’s probably the best standard of living for the money you’re going to get on this planet right now so I fancied heading there. I met a girl who happened to be from Thailand and after she went back I went out there a few times. She’s back in London now and heading back soon. I figured I will ride out to Thailand over roughly 3 months and meet her there when she gets back. When I get there I’ll start a small business doing something fun with bikes, maybe import-export, making adventure parts or even tour guide. I don’t know...
The trip is going to take me through some interesting places. The first two weeks my brother is coming with me. We’ll just spend it messing about on fire-roads and being a minor irritation to the local police around Spain/Portugal and France via the Pyrenees. After that I’m heading overland to Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and India. Getting from India to Thailand I’ve not figured out. I’ll sort something out when I get there.
When is however long it takes for my Visas and Carnet to get sorted out... Watch this space.