Hello everybody,

I'm quite new here; a fellow biker traveler whom I met on the road pointed this website out to me, I can't believe I didn't stumble upon it earlier!

Without much planning, my current travel plans evolved from riding around Nepal and India into building an old Royal Enfield 350 Bullet from scratch in Nepal, to riding it back to Holland. Living the dream!

After a lot of hassle organizing all the paperwork from within Nepal I finally got everything done and set off on the big trip home about 3 days ago. I'm now in Varanasi, India, and, after traveling through India, am looking for the best option to ship my bike to Iran. I'd like to avoid the (although it's very interesting) hassle of crossing through Pakistan.

I'm currently considering shipping the bike from Mumbai or Goa, by boat, to Bandar Abbas, Iran, with SECO shipping company. Estimated costs are about 800 USD and freight time about 10 days.
Included in these costs are all packing services, shipping crate, carnet handling at customs, etc. So if I understand correctly (and if their information is reliable), it would be as simple as a drop-off and pick up from my side, without much hassle.

I did some looking around on HU and found many similar topics, but often quite old or the other way around. I was wondering if someone has recent experience doing a similar thing and is willing to share his/her information.

Air freight would be more convenient but I would rather avoid Delhi (since its not on route for me and I'm not really interested in going there) and haven't found much information about freight services with Mumbai as a starting point.

Looking forward to sharing experiences!

Here's a picture with me and my self-build bike, I'm guessing everyone likes to see these type of things over here

We have also planned overland trip to london from Iran,we are in dialemma whether air or sea transport is convinient to transport our bikes from mumbai ti Iran(Bandar abbas by ship or tehran by air cargo)Big brothers please guide me

Im in Mumbai now and am looking into both options. It seems that air transport to Tehran will cost about 1500 euro, by boat somewhere between 800 and 1000. There's not many options.

If you are looking into putting your bike on a flight, there's more options to choose from when you're flying from Delhi. I didn't want to go to Delhi and thing Mumbai is worth the extra effort, but just to inform you of everything I found so far

The problem I have with shipping the bike on a boat is that the arrival date can change. The upon arrival visa in Iran is only valid for 2 weeks, and having to fly to Teheran, travel to Bandar Abbas and drive all th way back and out of the country in those 14 days is a big risk. I'm afraid I will have to invest the extra money and put the bike on a plane because of that.

Ill update here when I find out more!

For your information, I faced the same problem in June last year (2014).

Finding a reliable and trustworthy shipping agent in Mumbai will be your biggest challenge. They all say that they can help you, but the reality is very different.

There are two carriers that have the wide-bodied aircraft capable of air-freighting a motorcycle from Mumbai (or Delhi) to Dubai UAE. These are:

• Emirates SkyCargo
• Air India Cargo

There may be other carriers, but the above two are the main ones.

Emirates required a lot of money to freight, because they say the bike ('Dangerous Goods') needs to be packed onto a 'special' pallet. I re-call the price was more than USD 3,000, which was too much for me.

Air India was cheaper, but very difficult to deal with.

India is never easy!

In the end I rode all the way back to Kathmandu and air-freighted to Dubai from there instead with Turkish Cargo (via Istanbul).

Best of luck

Keith
.

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Right Way Round ...

We found it reliable by air cargo,getting quotes from shipping companies,
SECO shipping,Capricorn logistics,DHL
You may contact Capricorn(Viraf Mory)+91-8108185886
Please let me know about your solution

It seems im running into the typical problems people warned me about and which I was hoping to avoid..

I went to my shipping company, Eastern Cargo, to pay the shipping costs for around 100.000 indian rupee (about 1450 euro), as things took a turn for the worse. The agent forgot to mention (and quote) the additional costs for the added volume and weight of the boxing of the bike. Please note, this was already after the quote was changed 3 times due to 'forgotten' expenses.

Costs breakdown looks as follows;
- Shipping rate of 275 IND per unit (unit is either the total weight of the bike incl wooden box OR the total volume divided by 6000, whichever is higher).
- 5000 IND dangerous goods handling
- 5000 IND custom clearance
- 12000 IND Carnet handling
- 16500 IND bike packaging
- 450 IND one off fee for 'whatever'

The package weight was 220 kg, and the total volume in cubic cm divided by 6000 (airline standard) is 440. So shipping rate is 275 * 440 = 121000 IND.

So, I'm currently in their offices awaiting the final quotation, but I'm assuming, based on the information so far, that it will be at least EUR 2.200. I'm not able to afford that and find myself in the situation that my bike is packed, my ticket to Iran is booked for tomorrow and am facing so much additional costs that I probably cannot move forward with this.

Alternative; get the bike back to Nepal, get the re-import stamp on my Carnet to secure my deposit and try to sell the bike there before going home. A very big bummer for the whole trip, but an adventure nonetheless

I'll keep you posted.

Geertb - I share your pain!

Whatever happens, don't hand-over your carnet to the agent until you absolutely have to for customs purposes.

There's always the chance you may never see it again .. without a lot of hassling.

Just sayin'

Keith

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Right Way Round ...

Haha, your tip came a little too late for new, let's hope I got lucky on this one.

I was able to bring the price down to just under EUR 2000,-, which I was just able to afford. I wouldn't say I felt very comfortable with the deal but I had no choice.

The agent promised me it would be no problem to ship the bike to Tehran on Tuesday (17th march) if I provided proof of payment upfront. So I did; but they changes this requirement last minute to demanding a SWIFT message from my bank as only valid proof of payment. Additional last minute surprises, yay.

I had to fly to iran the Sunday before that day since me arriving there first is also a requirement. I kept stressing the fact that I NEEDED the bike on Tuesday to keep my planning. Of course they didn't follow through with that promise and it arrived yesterday evening: just before a national 5 days off due to Persian new year.

So; bike is here, I'm heavily delayed but get to see more of iran. Next: getting the bike back in my possession on the 26th and drive out of the country before my visa expires.. Exciting! (And frustrating..)

Ps: sorry for the typos, I'm typing this on my phone and it's really not working well