I find some people’s writing inspiring and they make me want to undertake a trip - the thing is it isn’t the parts where they go to specific sites that are interesting particularly but the wildlife and scenery they see. Other writings make me want to stay at home so that I can cringe in private. At the end of the day I just want to see more of the world and slower pace than a holiday normally allows - I will probably do some sort of blog - more so that family and friends can see that I am still alive and where I have got to.

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You will have to do without pocket handkerchiefs, and a great many other things, before we reach our journey's end, Bilbo Baggins. You were born to the rolling hills and little rivers of the Shire, but home is now behind you. The world is ahead.

It depends on what you are into and we are all different.
Some of us like to be seen as different and get kudos for what we do and others don’t.

Some of us like hardship, the harder the better, some of us don’t. And some of us can no longer do the harder stuff.

I just like being on the bike, seeing places I haven’t seen before and meeting people. Doesn’t really matter where. Japan is still my favourite place to tour.

You are correct about the uncertainty that makes it exciting - not the hardship IMO.

Funny thing is, when I had depression I always made things harder for myself - almost like I subconsciously wanted to hurt myself. Now I go with the flow a lot more.




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Horses for courses. Not everybody wants to nurse a dying bike to a desert island and live on raw meat and dug-up roots along the way. Then again not everybody wants a Goldwing, 4* hotels and 4-lane freeways all the way. An element of challenge makes a trip all the more memorable, but step over that line and a challenge becomes a PITA, turns a trip into all the wrong sort of memories - and that's where I see this virus right now. When it's gone (or at least controlled/abated) there will still be plenty of adventures out there. It's not a pissing contest, if you want to travel easily or in hardship it's your journey and your experience. Never mind everyone else's. You're not unique, you're part of a community not a Victorian explorer in search of the source of the Nile. And leave the bloody drone at home.

Just get out and ride. The adventures will find you.

The toughest part of any journey is the 10 paces between the sofa and the front door.
Covid hasn't changed this.

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Hear the challenge, learn the lesson, pay the cost.

Perhaps one way of re-injecting some excitement would be to pick a destination where you don't speak a word of the lingo, to consciously not take a GPS or mobile (except maybe of a Nokia 105: phone and text max for emergencies), to only take a paper map, and only stay at places you can find on arrival etc.

All that will already increase the 'think-on-your-feet-olity" of it all.

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Adventure: it's an experience, not a style!
(so ride what you like, but ride it somewhere new!)

I believe it’s all perception anyway and has been since before ancient times.

When Ted Simon broke his leg he just waited, he knew someone would be along as people lived in the area. Let’s face it, there’s not many places on earth where humans don’t live and even the inhospitable places are travelled across by some trader or delivery driver.

Histories of pioneer travellers have been written from their own perspective - but humans lived in Africa and the Americas long before the white man got there so food and fresh water was available - actually in abundance.

Of course this doesn’t mean that overlanding is not an achievement, it is certainly a pastime that all of us enjoy and get great satisfaction from or we wouldn’t be on this forum. But I feel that comparisons of any kind are impossible and counter productive in this arena (obviously Philosophising in the pub is fine ).

Just an example of perception:
A friend of mine used to do 4x4, extreme Off road racing in Russia. It was so extreme that all the cars were hand built, from scratch and there’s at least 1 death every race - and it’s a small field. Nobody asked him about it or seamed remotely interested, even though it was a major achievement every year made more amazing by the fact that he was a privateer with no money and did everything himself and was on the podium occasionally.
A few years ago my wife and I rode round the Balkans and into Greece for our summer holiday. Loads of people wanted to know all about it, “could you get petrol? Were the roads tarmac? Was it dangerous?

And that is absolutely all I am doing.

Because there isn't much else to do at the moment apart from share my brain farts with the unfortunates who walk into it

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Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

I hear you brother and share your pain.

That's how I travelled for the first 30+ years of my overlanding life (such as it is) and I travelled like that because that's how everybody travelled. Here's a picture of me in Morocco in 1970 keeping in touch with my family by 'hippy zoom' - I'm writing a postcard.



I beat the postcard back by nearly three weeks.

Whether instant communications or better infrastructure or any of the other things that can now get you out of the sh*t when things go wrong have lowered the bar such that more people are now willing to 'risk it' I have no idea but I suspect there's an element of that going on. People though have always travelled. That picture above has a history that goes something like 'I'm there because the person with me (who took the picture) did a trip the previous year with somebody who ran a business 'overlanding' the hippy trail to India through the 60's'. And he had a lot of customers. There used to be a whole load of overlanding truck businesses giving people an introduction to life on the road back in the 90's - are they still going?

I do wonder though if you cut all the technology that has come along since the millennium out of your life whether overlanding would seem just as niche as it did when I started. So no social media, no web sources (such as this) no DIY published books etc, not even phones. How would you then know if anyone was travelling unless you met them on the road. Just about every trip I do I meet someone or other who's travelling but it's not many - even doing something as touristy as Route 66 some years back I probably only met half a dozen non US travellers.

I can't say I've ever travelled for 'bragging rights down the pub' but maybe that's a personal (or family at least) characteristic. Even after 50yrs I still feel I've just scratched the surface in what I get from it. So you'll rarely find me talking about it (posts here and writing books on a "I don't know what I think until I read what I wrote' basis notwithstanding). It's my version of visiting old ruins with a tour party and a guide book. When I look at what other people are doing with their trips I wouldn't deny some of them look very impressive, all multi media and 'derring-do'. They sell a good adventure. Because it now seems to be 'common as muck' (in both senses) and commercialised to a level unimaginable when I sat writing that postcard, whether that should influence what I want to do now is something we all have to decide for ourselves. It doesn't personally bother me. I note it as I've noted it happening in other areas of life I'm interested in. That's the problem if you're an 'early adopter', others eventually catch up.

I think in line with the OP that the world has changed. Nobody's sure of the new rules. On Mars I would wear a space suit. On Earth you can really get someone angry by just wearing a face mask.

Waiting for Robert's Rules of Order v2.0

In the meantime, if you are alone and in the wilderness, not much has changed.

bingo, there are definitely better ways for spending your life then on highways and service stations, being lonely, dirty and wet

The way I have rekindled my love for motorcycle and travel was to come off every motorcycle forum and all the motorcycle groups on FB. When you no longer have to see all the bullshiit post on Adventure and all the people trying to sell you a dream and charging ££££ to go riding or camping with them it suddenly became more enjoyable for me. What I want is not for everyone else and many enjoy the forums and paying for organise meets . I’m back out wild camping and getting the feeling I had lost over the last few years since I returned to the UK. Safe happy travels no matter how you do it. Dazzerintheflesh

Well with there now being four vaccines that have shown good results so far we may be able to start thinking about getting out on the road and travelling. There is an analysis of the four vaccines here.

The two American vaccines require very low temperatures (-70C / -80F) to store the vaccine when transporting it whereas the Oxford University and Russian vaccines require normal fridges to store them in. I suspect that these more easily achieveable storage temperature will be one of the three criteria that will favour the British vaccine being used globally - even though it may appear to have lower effectiveness (there is evidence that giving a half dose first and then a full dose later has a much better effectiveness rate (90% compared to 70%) than two full doses. The other two criteria being availability and cost.

The Oxford vaccine is around £3 per dose compared to the Pfizer £15 per dose and the Moderna at £25 per dose - I haven't heard any price information about the Russian vaccine. The reason for the Oxford vaccine being so much cheaper is that it was part of the deal between researchers / developers at Oxford University and the manufacturer AstraZenica that there was a blanket no-profit policy and that it had to be made available to ALL countries that requested it.

The availability of the Oxford vaccine should, hopefully, be good as it is being made in around 10 different location around the world. No doubt the Pfizer and Moderna will also be. However the reports are that there will not be enough made in 2021 to get the whole world covered so it is likely that the vaccine programme will carry on into 2022 and 2023. The Oxford vaccine is readily adaptable to cope with different strains that may evolve over time - I don't know if the same is true of the others.

Hopefully this will mean that people can start travelling again but I suspect that it will be a gradual thing and rely on the traveller having been vaccinated - and having kept up their vaccination record - before being allowed entry into many countries.

It would be interesting to hear from others who may have heard additional information about other vaccines - in the UK we get more info about the Oxford vaccine than any others.

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You will have to do without pocket handkerchiefs, and a great many other things, before we reach our journey's end, Bilbo Baggins. You were born to the rolling hills and little rivers of the Shire, but home is now behind you. The world is ahead.

I know that when the Pfizer vaccine was first announced the need to keep it at -70C caused a few head scratching meetings at my wife's medical practice. How on earth do you prevent the stuff from going off before its used. The time delay in getting suitable freezers looked like it was going to exceed the time it took to produce the stuff in the first place. So when the second one, the Moderna vaccine, was announced, and that could be kept in a normal freezer at -20C there was a sigh of relief. The OX-AZ one only needs normal fridge temperatures - the same as flu vaccine - so even if it isn't quite as effective in lab trials I suspect by the time the low temp ones have degraded on their journey from factory to needle there won't be much in it.

The cost side of things is interesting but first and foremost the stuff needs to work, and by that I mean get the country disease free and back to normal. From that perspective you may be better off having loads of not quite so good stuff delivered quickly rather than waiting for new freezers / workflows / staff training etc that the low temp stuff requires. There's no doubt the American vaccines are technically elegant and a better way of producing the antigen but at this point loads of Oxford vaccine Ladas would be a better bet than a few Pfizer Rolls Royces. I presume it's all being thrashed out in the usual smoke filled rooms manner beloved of government but (as of today anyway) nothing concrete has filtered down to local health centre level. It's all become very personal though as my wife's sister has just gone down with the bug.

Well if you look at the evidence then yes, I believe that they are safe. The process for safety testing hasn’t changed but the hurdles in the way have been cleared so that there is no waiting for funding, there are more volunteers to test than ever before and as far as I am aware the only fatality was for a vaccine from Sinovac that was immediately withdrawn from the testing programme. With all of the time wasting processes being cleared to allow rigorous test to be undertaken then you will see a quicker route to a vaccine but it is not less safe than the normal route.

No vaccine is 100% effective but the effective rate of the ones that I have mentioned above appear to be good. So why wouldn’t you take it?

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You will have to do without pocket handkerchiefs, and a great many other things, before we reach our journey's end, Bilbo Baggins. You were born to the rolling hills and little rivers of the Shire, but home is now behind you. The world is ahead.