Thanks for that mate, should get roughly £500pm from the house but still have a mortgage so not a huge amount left over to be honest. I'm looking a funding the trip from savings and am aiming to build on the £10k over the next year or so. In the mean time I should probably think about selling my Fireblade as its probably not the most suitable bike for getting across Mongolia!!

Sounds great Fern! So what route would that be? There's a lot of sea between New Zealand and the UK!!

Been there mate, get it sold, if its a bit older - or even if its not consider seeling it in parts, i did that to my GSXR K2 track bike and what was an £1800 track bike raised £4000 out of it as i sold it for parts, thats after the postage and giving a Mechanic £250 to come to my house take it to bits and label all the bits for me.

Its amazing where you can raise cash, i miss my blade:( But once out of europe i think you should be able to live on £200 - £250 a week. Good luck!!

It's an 2002 blade, probably won't be selling it until later next year, still love riding it and need something to get around on in the mean time (we're departing early 2013).

You're right about it being amazing where you can raise cash... these past few weeks I have been wandering around my house looking things with the only thought being "I wonder how much I can get for that on ebay?!"

Yep we ebayed things like Tv's and stuff sold the whole lot not problems, the big surprise was all the junk, we had lots of old mobiles, BT phones we colleced over the years, phone chargers, old clothes, DVD's Cd's and that kind of stuff, we did a carboot sale and raised just under £1000!! Find a good carboot and get stuck in, we posted pictures up of the trip with big signs say everything must go, also we put prices on lots of stuff but made it clear we where open to good offers, then at the end of the day just tried to sell everything we had, we went with a van full (we even sold the clothes holders) and came back with a small box!!

I would suggest buying the bike you want to do the trip on asap, for 2 reasons, 1 you get to change you mind if u hate it, and 2 you will get to know your bike better from a mechanical point of view. I still understand fireblades much better than my KTM. But if u are good with bikes then it might not be right for u, but i wish i had bought the KTM the year before!!

Hey Pal,

I'm in exactly the same boat as you...only 31yrs not 28. I'm writing this with 4days notice left at work...then thats it! Early next year i'm heading south across africa to kenya, and either carrying on down to cape town or turning back. Cant wait! Planning to do it on a tight budget however...probably some camping and cheap hotels/hostels on the way. At the moment am looking to ride to greece then cross to egypt. Bring it on....!
:mchappy:
Les

Sounds great Les! You're a few steps ahead in having handed in your notice at work but I'm not too far behind! Camping/cheap hotels is the way forward! Good luck

Thanks for that buddy, there are some definite advantages to getting the bike sooner rather than layter.... May have to give that some thought.

To give you some rough data for where I've been. I've been keeping tabs on everything I spend while travelling, I've been away 5 months now and covered about 12000km through Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand. I started off with AU$30k to travel with over 2 years, but I may have to shorten it to 1 year.

So far my biggest expenses have been food and accommodation at roughly $2000 each (this is all in AU$'s). Fuel is around $900, but I'm not moving every day, more like every 2-3 days I'll move less than 200km. I've been more into photography on this trip so that pattern of movement suits me, YMMV.

All of that I budgeted for and that's been fine, but it was the things I forgot to budget for that have thrown me off. Things like medication and medical expenses, replacing clothes, new tyres in Australia (why the hell are they so expensive!), phone costs, ferries, taxis. That has been an extra $2500 over that period.

Shipments are expensive, but once off costs. But in Singapore they hit me up for an extra $200 in insurance because they only issue it monthly now, little things like that I couldn't plan for.

Before I departed I blew a lot of money on dental work and vaccines and travel insurance. I had it in mind when I was trying to hit my savings target, but I never expected it to cost $5k!

So poor planning in summary :)

I have other money i had set aside for when I finish travelling for rent/food while finding a job and I may have to dip in to that.

Quote from Chris Scott's Adventure Motorcycling Handbook
 

"To cross Africa budget of US $7200 (at early 2005 exchange rates) plus the cost of your bike. Asia is much cheaper, you could probably ride from Europe to India and back for around $5400. To cross the length of the Americas costs at least as much as Africa (especially if you fly to fly your bike over from Europe), and a genuine RTW trip is going to set you back around $18,000, mostly in fuel and freighting your bike from one continent to the next. Many have achieved the above for less, some a lot more, but these estimates account for at least some of the unplanned expenses which most trips encounter." - Adventure Motorcycling Handbook. Chris Scott. 2005.

Seems that lots of what folks have said here is much more than Chris thinks. What do you think?

The figures above estimate a one-year RTW trip at $50 per day. I think there's a big difference between 2005 prices, including fuel, transport, food and lodging, and 2011 prices. Wonder what the new edition will say.

Considering we've had very little inflation (and closer to deflation in a lot of countries) since 2005, I really don't understand where you're coming from, mate!

I don't need to argue. Fuel, lodging, transport and food are all quite a bit more expensive where I live than they were 6 years ago. I also have the advantage of having spent much of the past three years on a bike in the Americas, Europe, Africa and a bit of Asia, and I seldom met riders doing it on as little as $50/day, although it's certainly possible.

You know what they say about opinions.

Mark

Ah friend, your tone saddens me. Trust, I want no argument. This thread is built of opinions. Hell, the HUBB is almost all opinions - and these opinions have deep value. I value yours - so much so that I'd like to learn from your experience: Where do you live? I would love to look up the stats and compare them with much of the world to understand where you're coming from!

Edit: I see now, Bellingham WA! I will look it up to learn what you mean!

Your original post stated that information on this thread indicated that costs may be higher than Chris scotts book.
You then asked for opinions and Markharf gave his. You clearly didn't like his opinion which is strange given he just backed up what you were surmising. What were you hoping to hear?

Your quoting from a book published 6 years ago and no doubt researched a year or two before that so looking at prices up to 8 years ago. If Markharf has experience on the road that this is not the case then I'm guessing he's closer to the mark than your dated quote.