POLL? BEST/WORST motorcycling country?
 

I have no idea how to start a poll; but I propose a poll where one would vote for the best motorcycling country.; and to keep it usefull I propose that members DON'T vote for their own country.
further I would like to add the category of worst country.

Items to consider, Roads, safety (crime), landscape,cost, climate, friendliness of the locals, even quality of local beer, roll all this up and come up with the best and worst.

I'll chuck m my choices in...

USA#1

Paraguay; worst

Does anyone know how to set this up:helpsmilie:

You have to have a minimum (paid) membership to post polls.

Germany gets my vote.

TR I'm guessing that it would be for best..?

Best: France, but only because Croatia, the whole of Scandanavia, Morocco etc. take longer to get to.

Worst: Austria: tolls, tolls, tolls, carnets, tolls, pass charges....

Andy

Best - anywhere not the UK
Worst - UK ( car drivers can't see motorcycles )

Worse Greece


Best. Spain/Portugal


John933

Some hard decisions to be made on this one, but boiling it all down:

Best - Overall, France (particularly towards the south), but pushing it a close second is Western USA

Honourable mentions go to "West" Africa from the Atlas mountains to Senegal and the Balkans

Worst - SE UK or LA (take your pick), but a tie between parts of Southern Italy, Switzerland / Austria, some bits of East coast USA for third place. All are either too busy or too bureaucratic. The Toyko region of Japan just avoids the drop zone as the "charm" hasn't worn off yet.

In my personal experience:

Best: New Zealand. I've toured through the Islands twice on rental motorcycles. Terrific riding and roads, great people, beautiful scenery, etc.

Worst: Indonesia. Traffic can be nuts, especially within 50 KM of Jakarta. Some areas are lovely, but overall I found riding there to be more of a headache than anything else.

For the total experience - riding, roads, meeting locals, food, culture, climate, costs etc

1. Indonesia - truly exotic, Sulawesi, Sumatra, Flores - just gorgous. Friendliness of people - I was invited to stay at locals and they didnt allow me to pay for my food. I was warned about local police and corruption. Instead when I asked for direction for hotel/accomodation the police escorted me to hotel and PAID MY ROOM. This happend two times. Beat that!
2. Laos - fantastic bike roads, beautiful people, friendly, hospitable - children are waving at you as you pass villages, serene nature, cheap overall.
3. New Zealand - awesome scenery and roads. Friendly, helpful and hospitable locals. A bit expensive though.

Bhutan, Nepal, Kyrgizstan and Australia are close behind.

Worst - Cambodia. Bad and boring roads, unfriendly locals, totally destroyed nature (chooped down all trees) corrupt police, terrible driving.

OTOH, in the UK we have the RFL but it does seem to me that the Austrians actually spend their road-related income on the road infrastructure, probably in recognition of the value of such tourism (and, anyway, those high passes need good roads).
e.g. the GrossGlockner highway.
Other roads among the Austrian tolled system are privately owned; in a simillar manner to here in the UK where we have privately owned bridges spanning key river crossing locations but the Austrian tolled private roads tend to lead to the high ground only i.e. there is no compulsion to travel that route.

I have been wondering how this may be affected by the introduction, reported to be next year, of driverless cars into the UK.

I am reluctant to nominate any particular country for best or worst on the basis that many physicial attributes don't change significantly across national borders (geography, geology, flora, fauna, even road surfaces in some cases).
It seems that only the people change.

I was pondering on this while recently returning to the UK and observing numerous Sunday riders "at full chatter" on the passes of the Vosges and a few other roads, pillions hanging off the back and the forks fully compressed into downhill hairpin bends.
Registration plates were French, German and Swiss in the main.

My tentative conclusion was that the UK may not be one of the worst places to ride a motorcycle (that also depends on why the riding is taking place) but it can't be up there with the best.

Austria may have sorted themselves out in the digital age, to be honest I've gone round forever. The annoyance is that they'd let you stop to buy the carnet then 200 yards up the road stop you again for the road charge, then five miles later for the pass. Very much a feeling of local roads for local people.

To anyone from the Austrian Government; you've lost 20 years of fuel, beer, food and hotel duty to the Czech Republic and France because they probably make the same charges in a more convienient way.

Andy

Worst - India.

Absolute nightmarish traffic, literally every cliche you've heard about the driving there is true. I spent a week in Delhi and after a few days my hands would begin to shake just walking towards the bike - my system was already firing up the adrenaline from so many near death experiences.

Best - also India.

Get away from the populated central north and it's amazing. Misty mountain roads in the NE, up around Darjeeling and Sikkim, and the whole Kashmir / Ladakh area. The Leh-Manali highway, Spiti Valley, and everything around there. Jaw-dropping.




Honourable mention to Kyrgyzstan for best roads, too.

The drivers though, still think they are on horses. Love organized chaos like in Indonesia and Vietnam. But erratic random driving is the worst to anticipate: Kyrgyz, Mongolia and China lead the way.

It's France and Germany for me.....in that order. Having said that I have limited experience. Spain is ok, Italy was not one of my favourites, Holland and Belgium were boring.

Sometimes we can get a nice surprise when we look at our own countries. We tend to take them for granted.