Dear All,

A first post from a new guest..
I am currently driving buses all over europe and so dont get time to do much inet research.
I have driven trucks around South America, ridden an Enfield for a couple of years in India, I have been around Asia and from egypt to italy via the middle east, on a pushbike.
I am currently considering riding from uk to cape town, or possibly the opposite.
Will chop in my firestorm for a transalp or tenere, my question to you is..What do you think the approximate cost would be? Just a ball park figure for carnet/visas/fuel/ferries..and possibly return the bike by ship.
I realise its a ridiculously vague question..no planned route or anything..I just wonder if it is doable on 2 grand (excluding bike) or if I would need considerably more..any suggestions on when to leave or which way to go..links etc would be great..
Am honestly not being lazy, but so little time with driving ozzie backpackers about..will be back in uk mid october and would like to start a bit of dreaming!
Many thanks for any advice,
sincerley,
Matthew

Short answer- I don't think you can on two grand. For a start it would cost several hundred to ship your bike back from South Africa. And I would guess you should bank on somewhere between £500 and £1000 a month to travel. And unless you want to miss everything and just ride it should take you a few months to do this sort of trip.

For what it's worth I would do a shorter trip (shorter in mileage not time) if you are limited to £2000.

Another issue is which route to take. Have no idea how easy it is to get down the west side at the moment but east means Egypt and that means a huge carnet. Your bike will be charged at 800%, look into this many people are shocked when they find out how expensive it is to go through Egypt as a UK rider.

You could buy a bike in south Africa and "do" southern Africa for 2000 perhaps????

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Africa is quite expensive and even 5 years ago when I was there £2,000 would not take you very far. If you want to motorcycle I would suggest north west Africa, Morocco and perhaps a little further for a few weeks or if you want to be further south then consider backpacking or cycling to make your money go anywhere.

Hi, someone who knows agreed with me that to fly out to Thailand or perhaps Malaysia and buy a C90 or similar small bike/scooter could be done for £2,000 for flight out and all costs to back here. Lindsay.

Thankyou all very much for the responses..
Perhaps my query was a little unclear.
I was trying to get a drift of the fuel and visa costs only..and possibly shipment back to UK. I gather that baksheesh and crazy fuel costs can add up!!

Not too sure what an 800% carnet is? Some sort of deposit reimbursed when you dont sell the bike in Egypt ?(I used to live in Dahab as a divemaster but only had my trusty pushy).

I lived in India for 4 years so am pretty used to finding a cheap way!! Am also T total and veggie which helps costs..
Thanks for the SEAsia tip but I used to live in Chiang Rai (Thailand) teaching Burmese refugee kids and I ran a little cbr400 all over the Area (great twisty roads up north)..and later cycled through Laos/Viet/Cam/Malaysia and right down to Singapore (took 2 years to do it!! the knees limited me to 100ks a day cause of previous motox racing).

Funnily enough I left San Sebastian this morning (just arrived in Tours)and had a couple of South Africans (Joburg) on the bus. They reckon a bike and papers will be buyable without a local address but crossing borders could be an issue? Or necessitate bribes.

Thanks to all for what is a great web site..couldnt contain myself!! just handed in my notice!!

Matthew

hay if you go the west coast the carnet de passage is a lot less than the 800 percent

i will be taking a bedford mk with passengers in january via the west down to capetown (or as far as we can make it) visas are the hardest part....looking like 500 quid or more...and half of them they dont even want to issue, but as you are on a bike you could drive via DRC without the angola visa (which is a pain to get) we will be going via DRC in the bedford....but we have 15 people to push


you can actualy sell the bike in south africa if you find somone who will buy it with a carnet or will take it to zim on a TIP ,thats what we are doing,,,there is one forum called something like 4x4cafe that helps people with plated europen cars and bikes in southen africa sell to people who will drive them back to europe

we set of in January...maybe we will meet on the road... . Home - Vikings Across Africa

or you can join us if you dont want to do the driving