Has Covid disruption made Overlanding exciting again ?
 

Hear me out on this. And it's more of a fleeting thought than a well thought out question.

I was reading a post on the HU Facebook page from a friend. About if RTW or long distance travel will ever be possible again. Or will it ever be so easy again.

Which made me think (quite selfishly), is that a bad thing ??

Overland travel really has become SO VERY EASY. Everyone seems to be doing it. I get the feeling that it has lost it's excitement, kudos and uniqueness. Telling someone that you're going to ride your bike across continents doesn't stir the excitement it used to. Do I dare say it has become almost boring because it's so common ? :innocent:

Adventure bikes and trucks are EVERYWHERE now. They don't turn heads anymore.

But now that it's more difficult to cross borders, get insurance, plan accommodation and not be forced into quarantine, it seems to make travel a bit more 'edgy' again. And this 'New Normal' could potentially last a few years. Or more ?

I was forced to cancel my plans this year. But there are people out there travelling and I'm actually find it exciting again.

And it's the uncertainly that makes it exciting, right ?

What is this cult of struggle?

This is the thing that has made me almost unable to listen to ARR Raw any more. There is this persistent ideology that "it has to be difficult and lonely and undiscovered, otherwise you're not doing it right". Infrastructure - from paved roads to cheap local SIMs and accepting card payments - is seen as some kind of evil, that is ruining the purity of the endeavor.

That's gatekeeping bullshit.

Too many people seem to be in this not for the trip itself - not for the experience and pleasure that they get out of it for themselves - but for the ability to brag in the pub about how many problems they encountered and overcame.

When I think of my trips, be it on a motorcycle or not, the things I remember are not the times when I was miserable. The trips I most enjoyed were not the ones where I got stuck in the mud or had to deal with crooked border officials - it's the ones where everything went well and I really enjoyed myself throughout.

I don't understand this obsession with getting to places where nobody else has been. I understand the pleasure of being in solitude in nature - in a place where nobody else is at the same time as you - but that just means getting up early, or going slightly out of season, dealing with colder or wetter weather. (I really enjoyed renting a scooter in Lisbon and riding out to Cabo de la Roca in February - I'd brought much of my gear from home, and was probably the warmest, best-protected scooter rider in Portugal on that day!) But if there is a place worth seeing, the locals will know about it, and will build a road to it. If some place is properly difficult to reach, it's probably because nobody needs or wants to go there!

Why are we supposed to idolize struggle and misery? It's fun to read about someone else having a bad time while you're warm at home with a cup of tea, but that doesn't mean I want to go and be miserable myself!

So no, I don't think the world shutting down makes ovelanding better or more "genuine". There SHOULD be more people doing it. It SHOULD be more accessible. There SHOULD be options on roads to take, so that you can go around the world on a Gold Wing, and you know what? If it takes you a thousand days, there will be enough great experiences to fill every single one of those days. Even if you aren't riding a KTM with knobbly tires up into the Hindukush.

The golden age of overlanding was when you could take a scheduled car ferry from Korsakov to Wakkanai, or from Panama to Columbia; when any passport besides an American or British one let you get into Iran with only a bit of bureaucracy. The next golden age of overlanding will be when China allows foreign vehicles to transit unaccompanied.

Enough room fro all of us
 

My view:
There are so many places to go.
Experiences to get and
People to meet

There is more than enough for all of us.
If you travel for the purpose of the travel. To see things and visit places,
not to tick something in the bucket list. You do not have to go where there are a lot of adventure bikes.
Go off the main trail, and you will experience a lot.
The world is huge and full of remote places.
Where you can meet new cultures, beautiful nature, foreign people and .....


=
You can do Patagonia-Alaska, using the Gringo Trail.
Tick it on your list. And tell about it on the pub.


Or you can travel small roads to special places,
Where you do not see many "tourists"
And collect memories.
For me that is the purpose of travelling alone by bike.
=

I really hope (but doubt) that things will go back to normal.
So I can do long trips.

But for now, I will enjoy EN2 in Portugal.

https://rotan2.pt

Not by racing it in two days. But to go slowly and take a lot of detours. To find interesting things.

But that is me.
And I respect everyone's choice

Things change. And then the changes change. And then .... well you get the picture. Nothing stays the same. And so it will be with Covid. It's here now and then in a few years (probably not months) it'll be yesterday's news and we'll be adapting to the new normal in the same way we adapt to borders closing or opening or politics or ideologies coming or going. That's the reality of travel - you go when and where you can and you pick your own level of 'adventure' / danger / experience.

What's changed (for the better or worse? - you can make up your own mind) is how easy it is to shove your 'unique' adventure in everyone else's face. I notice you posted something similar on the Horizons Facebook pages, a place that seems to be nothing but tales of the 'look upon my travels ye mighty and despair (and buy the book)' type so it's maybe not surprising that there's an element of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out for anyone who doesn't know it) going on. Maybe more people are travelling these days (and the amount of commercial activity surrounding it suggests there are) so it's inevitable some will be taking the hair shirt route. What's certain though is that the participants are making even more noise about it. In some respects it's a bit like people discovering sex for the first time. It's a whole new world opening up and some people will shout about it (parenthood, on the other hand, is like finding all the borders have just closed :rofl:)

Far be it for me to suggest what you need to do but ignoring it all and doing what appeals to me is how I've responded. In fact my response over the last week has been to postpone a (short) trip that should have seen me on the way to the ferry right at this moment. I was planning a loop down the west side of France via the HU meeting in Loupiac, the Camargue and the Alps but the upsurge in CV-19 over the last week has done for it. I suppose I could have gone and written about how I faced the plague of the century (complete with drone footage and galaxy strewn nightime pictures) and survived but I'm not sure a real risk is worth a fantasy (facebook) reward (in fact I'm sure it isn't). I'll pick up my travel projects as and when they're possible (+ time and money allow) and I doubt very much I'll bother anyone else with what I got out of them.

I love the adrenaline of far away travel. The challenge of a difficult road. The hustle and bustle of a chaotic border crossing.

Holidays are quite boring for me. If it's easy, then I don't really see the point unless I'm specifically trying to relax or take a time out.

I quite agree. There is no right or wrong way to do anything. Each to their own.

It's not gate keeping bullshit whatsoever though. A lot of people like to get away from the normal ease of everyday life. To challenge themselves mentally and physically.

A dirt track to nowhere is an absolute paradise to many who Overland. I would have thought the majority.

If a motorway and a service station with your favourite flavour of coffee is your thing then that's fine too. But it really isn't mine.

We obviously have very different personalities.

See, you can't escape the dismissive attitude even when you try. ;)

Actually, though I generally agree with many of your points AnTyx, I think Ted has expressed his opinion without being dismissive. He clearly states that he's just speaking for himself.

I (perhaps most of us) like it somewhere in the middle.

I do thoroughly enjoy riding into a strange town, and finding a good place to sip a latte and doing some people watching.

Mexico........
https://hosting.photobucket.com/albu...66232387_3.jpg

Perhaps that part is even more enjoyable because I froze my butt off riding for a few hours that morning.

https://hosting.photobucket.com/albu...370&fit=bounds

I like a ride where some days are calm and straightforward and other days where there is some uncertainty about whether I can actually get through on the route I chose....

Northern Peru.....
https://hosting.photobucket.com/albu...s/DSCN1042.jpg

But I would say that very few of us would really like the kind of adventure that history records for it's explorers. (Remember: for every Marco Polo who returned from his trip to China, thousands more died of disease, murder, imprisonment, broken bones, etc. Most of us would have been just one of the thousands. )

Myself, I don't care to risk it all.....I just want to get out and see the world, and meet some different folks. Moto travel, in and of itself, requires the willingness to endure a certain amount of suffering and that does make the coffee taste just a little richer.

...............shu

I disagree: even though things are a lot easier now than say 20-30-40 years ago, this kind of travel is still hard.
Or maybe I'm just not as tough as some other folks - and I'm just fine with that.

Sure, I'd much rather search for info on the Internet than thumbing through an out-of-date Lonely Planet, but that for me makes it no less of an adventure.
:rofl:

I am very much speaking for myself. It's just a throw-away thought I had.

When I started over-landing about twenty years ago, there were not many others around. Sure, people have been doing this for a millennia, but It felt a lot more unique, and I liked that. I loved that if I chose to ride the road less travelled, it would be a challenge because there wasn't another traveller ten minutes behind me that could help me out.

I loved it when I rolled into a fuel station and I would have people asking me questions and offering to buy me a drink etc. Egocentric ?? Probably... That rarely happens now.

I liked it when I wasn't just one of million doing the same journey. On the same kind of bike etc.

I want to feel like I'm exploring new places or being, dare I say it, "Adventurous" It doesn't feel much of an adventure to me if it's too easy. Or I'm surrounded by a safety net of people.

I suppose you can compare it to Climbing to Everest base camp. I bet it felt like much more of a special achievement when there wasn't 10,000 people in-front and behind you doing exactly the same thing.

With all this Covid disruption, It has kept people home. Too worried to travel. It's harder. Maybe I'm just saying I like less people :)

When there wasn't a million other overlanders on the same road, when you happened to see another one, you would both stop and say hello. "Where've you been and where are you going?" Make a new friend. It's a great feeling. Now there are so many of us around that you're lucky to get a nod.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy the other side of it too. Sometimes I just like to book a hotel, turn on the sat nav and ride somewhere for a relaxing break.

I think the key is then finding those locations that meet those "excitement" criteria.

I think the fact there are many more doing shouldn't come into it, other than the fact their numbers then "sanitise" and tame areas which would have otherwise been adventurous.

An analogous example would be the Turkish coast. I went when I was a kid: empty. Just traditional Turkish fishing villages with a couple of simple hotels. Look at Kusadasi now....

The fact is that development comes and consumes.

We might lose an exciting "genuine" destination, but then the locals get progress and investment, so then the next step is finding that excitement elsewhere.

I imagine there is a degree of trying to recapture times gone by: try as I might, I cannot now recreate the carefree me of my youth.

Back then if someone had said "fancy living in [enter random place somewhere remote] for a year?" and I'd jump on it.

Now, it's impossible, unless I want to abandon my partner, kids, home and burgeoning business...

Well I don't know about making it more exciting but it is making it a real pain in the arse.

I am currently in Bulgaria, having just arrived from Romania.

I am from the UK and I am trying to get in to Greece however the bureaucracy involved is positively off-putting.

I have had to pre-book accommodation for 14 nights just to fill in the form saying that I want to enter the country as I am unable to do so without it. I then need to get a negative test within 72 hours before I enter.

I will apparently get my QR code from the Greek Government 1 day before my date on entry.

I can not enter Greece without it. If for any reason they decide not to issue me with a QR code or refuse me entry, then it is too late to cancel my accommodation and I lose the money for that.

Also, I want to tour about, not sit in one place for 14 days.

In addition, at the moment, Ukraine and Hungary are closed. If you want to go in to Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Northern Macedonia, Albania, or Montenegro, you can do but go then need to get quarantined for 14 days when you come back out.

Exciting? Not in my opinion.

I personaly like the fact that more people are doing it. After all I am part of the "more people" so I cannot sneeze at that.

More ressources for information from previous travelers allowed me to reach very beautiful remote areas of some countries where I would not have gone in say 1990 because of the lack of information.

The popularity seems to be a hinderance only in very touristy areas, the rest all I see are positives.

I truly hope that in the long run Covid does not make traveling harder or more expensive. It would be a shame to see it becoming less acheivable for others.

When I decided to ride to Tierra del Fuego in 1974, the only map I could find for Central and South America came from National Geographic. The only source of motorcycle travel information was Road Rider, that had a circulation of 10,000. Just getting out of the US was an adventure. To make a phone call from Peru required a trip to the phone company head quarters in Lima and making an appointment. If there was no answer, make another. Every thing was an adventure, frankly I would not want to be going blind again. But, to each his/hers own. I like to ride, not try to guess which dirt path at the fork in in the road(main highway) would get me to the next town.

Hello

So do I, just my 2 cents.
I can't really follow your path of thoughts, it sounds a bit cynical,
so just some responses since we're at the pub.beer

I fear it will take more than next year to return to normal, once the vaccine is here and 8 billion people got it, I hope after the comming economical crisis I still have the possibility to travel.

Nobody needed that shit virus.

Travel was always easy depending on your passport and destination, the hardest part was always getting the arse off the couch.
Internet, GPS etc. made information and contact easier, but some borders and areas are now closed, or you need guides etc, Thailand, China.
I read and heard stories about Algeria, just hop on the ferry and play in the sand, just closed when I made my bikelicence.

There are still some deserts that you can go into, just dont check your fuel and the excitement will come...

If there are to many bikes at the northcape in Norway in July, just go in January, folks back home will once again say you're crazy and locals offer you a cup of warm coffee.
(But even that has been done by many others before you...)


Just remember, overlanding has never been (for us here in the pub) exploration of uncharted land, even the worst sandtrack was build by someone, then after a couple of hundred miles you need gas, how did that get into the plastic bottle there?
When we thick we're at the arse of the world, it's the center of the world for the person filling gas out of the plastic bottle into your gastank.

Is the one that travels today a hero or just someone who is recklessly and selfish spreading the virus?
Just think about that.


cheers sushi


P.S.
If overlanding by motorbike is to easy for you, switch to bycicle, they make every motorbiker (who thinks he's the biggest badass) look like a http://www.sherv.net/cm/emoticons/ca...y-emoticon.gif
:rofl:

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.

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.

:)


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

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.

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.

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 bier).

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?

:mchappy:

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 bier :rofl:

I hear you brother and share your pain.
:frown:

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.

https://i.postimg.cc/4y2KTtK2/1970.jpg

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 bier

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.

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?

after my dead body I'd take it - as I said no need for such vaccinates same as for flue etc, building you immune system is the key no shots. doh

That's your decision; good luck with it.

Tell me more - how do I build my immune system? What do I need to do - eat stuff?, exercise?, drugs?, prayers? How do you do it, what’s the secret? I only ask as I’m sick and tired of hiding away in lockdown knowing that my immune system doesn’t have a chance if the bug comes along. If there’s an easy way to supercharge it to the level where the bug bounces off you’ve got to share it. :thumbup1:

I think it's called a vaccine... doh

No worries, mate.
Step aside, I'll have your's.

And more in the pipeline, which will be easier to distribute and cheaper. :) Just read an interview with a professor of genetics here at University of Tartu, whose team has been developing vaccine candidates for an Indian pharmaceutical manufacturer (India has a good history of making affordable generic versions of medicines). So yeah, by Summer of 2021 things ought to be much better.

I don't think this will be a "winner take all" race, nor should it be. The Oxford vaccine can cover the needs of places with poorer infrastructures, while as a First World citizen, I am happy enough to pay a hundred euros for the Pfizer vaccine tomorrow instead of ten euros for an Oxford vaccine in three months.

Has Covid disruption made Overlanding exciting again ?
 

Just to jump in on the vaccine debate, I have been vaccinated against cholera, smallpox, polio, TB, tetanus, Typhoid, various types of Hepatitis, Flu and probably more than I remember.

Apart from a sore arm I have not suffered from either side effects or any of the diseases mentioned.

In order to travel in the 1970s, outside of a western bubble ,you had to carry a vaccination certificate, and depending on where you were in the world you normally had to have cholera and smallpox and South America and Africa added yellow fever to the mix. If you turned up at a border without the right certificate you were given the option of getting a vaccination at the border, expensive with the real possibility of a blunt dirty needle, so people had their jabs in time.

I would see that one way of opening up travel post COVID vaccinations will be by means of a vaccination certificate, but maybe this requires too much cooperation in a post Trumpian world.

Charles
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Sad to see antivaxxer and convid comments starting to appear on what is a travel forums populated by open minded travellers. Better to keep that stuff on Social Media

Back on topic, travellers are still out there travelling, with new challenges. Lots of reports from those on the road enjoying normally crowded tourist sites without the crowds.

We will see restrictions on borders and travel progressively ease up over the coming months as vaccines and controls measures get agreed. Travel might not be quite the same as recent years but there still a world out there to explore

Forsythia is what you need, no need for a vaccine bier

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/omGH...28/judelaw.jpg

I use snake oil. It has never let me down. Obviously it has helped that I don’t know anyone that has had TB, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria etc. since they were virtually eradicated by vaccines - but I swear it is the snake oil.

http://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/syndicated/people-believed-covid-19-hoax-now-buy-homeopathic-cure-forsythia/

A slightly-longer memory helps (although who am I to interfere with your snake oil consumption?). I've had mumps and measles, and took the cure for latent TB. Friends just a few years older than me had polio, and some now have post-polio syndrome. I'm glad my mom didn't contract rubella, take thalidomide, or drink or smoke while carrying my incipient self.

I absolutely love the flu vaccine, which has saved me untold days of serious suffering since it became popular in the eighties and nineties, before which I used to lose a week each winter to high fevers, body aches and lingering malaise. I love pneumonia vaccines too, and have seen enough people with shingles so that I raced to get each of the available vaccinations as soon as they were available. I've had jabs to prevent hepatitis, and therefore haven't seen my eyes turn yellow or had to refrain from alcohol for 6 months following major journeys like my friends who traveled on budgets in the seventies.

I've also taken cures for giardiasis, amoebic dysentery, and malaria, and have availed myself of highly-efficient antibiotics on any number of occasions. What's not to like about modern medicine...I mean, aside from certain well-known shortcomings, about which I complain as loudly as anyone? A hundred years ago my life expectancy in the US would have hovered around 48, but here I am chafing at restrictions which prevent my next major motorcycle journey at age 65, hoping for another 15 or 20 years before one pandemic or another brings me down.

Kind've weird to condemn modern medicine while reaping so many of the benefits, I'd say. With luck, we'll see each other somewhere down the road.

Mark

Well, vaccination passports are already a fairly universal thing. I got one originally when having a bunch of shots done for South America, took it with me to South East Asia too. Encoding the relevant information on the biometrics in your passport should be relatively trivial - the world has agreed on a universal specification for biometric passports already, after all!

Oh, you've not heard about the little blue pill? Turns shortcomings into... um. :innocent:

Vaccination passports ala Yellow Fever cards make complete sense, especially if it can be electronically on your passport, with date and result. I'd go for that. People who don't have a passport will have an issue but they don't travel anyway. :)

Proof of vaccination status is likely to be the key to getting the travel industry going again but I've been wondering exactly what that proof ought to look like. The days of a piece of folded card with some rubber stamps on it is likely to be over as it's just too easy to make one yourself on a home printer - or buy one on eBay like you've been able to get 'novelty' driving licences.

Incorporating it into the biometric data on your passport means sending it off, something that's likely to take months when the offices are swamped if it becomes a prerequisite for travel. Plus expect a backlash from civil liberties organisations as well. Some kind of phone app may be an alternative but seeing what a pigs ear they made of the track and trace app you might want to postpone your travel plans until it actually works.

Having said that I've heard that the vaccination programme is actually starting next week - I know some people who are scheduled to get it ('it' being the Pfizer version) on the 1st /2nd Dec. So far though I'm not aware of any thought having been put into proving you've had it.

I think there is some merit to Touring Ted's post.

Although I really think that it is a great thing that more people are overlanding, and although I have no needs to neither brag or feel special or unique, there is still a point to be made.

Many places arround the world has been over excerted by tourists - taking away from the exotic and uniqueness that was part of the attraction in the first place.

When I as a visitor is as exotic to my host as the host is to me, there is a mutual exhange of something wonderful. However, assimilation grows with the number of similar encounters - one become more tailored and adapt to eachother - in everything. And that can become a bit mundane and boring.

That much said, I think we are a long ways away from overlanding becoming your regular James Cook package holiday. I don't get the sense that I am traveling in a herd. Sure I meet overlanders along the way, but mostly in the typical bottlenecks (ferries, border crossings, etc) or on the main throughways, the common overlanding friendly camp grounds, or on famous heritage sites, etc - but that is nothing new.

I still get the sence that if I only just skip a border or two away out of western or northern Europe (whre regular motorvehicle insurance no longer has coverage), things get exotic quickly - especially if I get even only a few miles off the the main throughway.

I think travellers can get the best of two worlds now - go on the main routes if you need more comfort and convenience, or just turn off the main road and be on Mars after only a few clicks.

These days, the vaccination passports require a special sticker that comes on the vial of the vaccine you were injected with. It's a holographic sticker with fairly serious protection elements on it, in addition to a serial number.

Basically, consider that proof of vaccination for pet passports has been a thing for many years, and fraud protection for those has also been thought through.

Well, sure, but the same used to be true for visas. ;)

coming back to topic I would say yes, there are some positives from that whole situation. This pandemic propaganda showed how naive people are, showed governments and media cannot be trusted same as so called public health care and other services. Taking all these into account traveling now will be a challenge and will require some intelligence hence will be more entertaining. Actually already is when I was riding around during lockdown. :thumbup1: BTW coming once from communist country didn't expect that freedom can be taken away so easily from people under any regime. History is repeating itself.

For those that know little about vaccines and how they work here is a link to a World Health Organisation website that teaches the reader about vaccines.

https://vaccine-safety-training.org/

Sadly, what it doesn't do is to try to convince the anti-vaxxers that the world is round rather than flat, that man actually did go to the moon, that the CIA did not blow up the World Trade Centre etc

Part of the trouble is that vaccine biochemistry is a complex subject - and even more so with the approach Pfizer took with theirs. I have a degree in the subject (although from a long time ago) and I had to sit down and look carefully at what they'd done to understand it.

If you either dumb it down to cartoon level for people or just say 'trust us' you're laying yourself open to all sort of distortions or misinterpretations. If you've never heard of mRNA or have no idea what it does you could well be convinced by 'fake news' and the usual suspicion of government activities that it's something malign because you've no basis on which to judge the merits or otherwise of each sides argument. In some respects the fake news / conspiracy theory mob have an advantage as they can say pretty much anything they like whereas the scientific community is bound by various codes of ethics etc.

Nah!:Beach:

Yes history is repeating itself, isolation has long been a preventative for dealing with pandemics, back to the days that the Venicians used a 40 day quarantine to help prevent Black Death. It’s a minor loss of freedom for the common good.


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I dont think Everyone is doing it at all . What is one person's adventure is another person's walk in the park . Remember most people are not in the position to walk away from their job , mortgage, loans , family etc nor do most people have that sort of spare cash hanging around . I remember doing a trip to Bosnia when it poured nearly every day , roads were washed out and I'd forgotten it was Ramadan.........adventure enough for some I would suggest......another day in the office for others .
Going by my customers , a large proportion couldnt give a fxxx about travelling by bike to places far away some do western Europe and only have a week or so , whilst a small group are genuinely what I would call travellers....little wonder there arent many if any rtw bikes on the market , by that I mean built solely for that task ?c?

It is clear that in the UK at least not everyone is taking all reasonable measures. Go to the shops around the town where I live and there is around 90% of the people wearing masks and wearing them properly rather than with their nose hanging out. Go to a town just 5 miles away and it is closer to 75%. The town where I work it is around 50% of people in shops wearing a mask - but that is getting better. Oddly, the infection rates are inversely proportional to the mask wearing rate. That is what can be seen easily and I suspect that that is a higher figure than other aspects of keeping the virus numbers low because it is visible. Certainly social distancing appears to be optional for many people.

As regards people working well I have had our factory open for the whole time with reduced staff initially but with everyone back in since July - occasional days when I have furloughed people but generally everyone in. The difference between now and this time last year is that we insist on face coverings if you are coming onto the site - we meet people wearing our masks. As far as I know I am the only one to have had Covid and I got that from my wife back in March. The staff are really good about keeping away from each other and from visitors / customers.

It really is not hard to follow the rules - obviously we have some cretins in the UK that think that driving 250 miles home with a sick wife and having Covid yourself is acceptable - the sort of cretin that then goes for a drive as an eye test.... I would love to know the views of his insurance company as to whether his insurance would have been valid for such an exercise.

With the arrival of the vaccine we can see a light that we think is the end of the tunnel - so some people are dropping their guard at precisely the wrong time, it has been a long journey lets not screw it up at the end, but people are.