Hi, if anyone out there could give us some advice on paperwork, we would be very grateful! We are planning a RTW trip, starting next March. We have a honda vfr 750 88 and a kawasaki 454 ltd 86. We are planning to drive through Europe, mainly along the South coast, in or around Turkey, as far across the middle east as we can, wherever it is safe to drive, then into India, South-East Asia, all the way down, the ship to Australia, across that, over to New Zealand, then across to South America and up from there to North America, then home to Dublin.

There's no limit on our trip, as we plan to stop regularly along the way and teach English, or work as divemasters, also do a lot of volunteering and charity work. Therefore, we don't know how long we will be staying in each country. I have checked all of this from a visa point of view and am sorting out the visas where necessary for us. However, the problem is the bikes! We are not clear if a carnet de Passage will do in this case. If we stay in India for a long time, will we have problems with our Carnet? If we end up spending the year getting through India, will our Carnet be useless by the time we reach India? Does it have a time limit on it? If so, what is the alternative? Also, if you are planning to stop and work, does this effect you taking the bike into another country? Do you need to re-register it there?
We are also unclear about motorbike insurance. Being Irish, we know that in Europe we need bike insurance. However, where else in the world do you need it? Is any insurance valid in India etc? Our bikes are not very valuable, so from that point of view insurance is not hugely important, but we would hate to end up having problems at borders etc if we don't have the papers they want!
Any advice you can give us would be grately appreciated! As we will need to start organising insurance if it is needed.

Thanks a million!