Italy to Malasya, spring 2015. Need your opinions!
hi folks. im in the early stages of planning the first leg of RTW trip. Im looking to leave in the spring of 2015, riding solo on my V-strom 650, from italy to malasya. From there the plan is to ship to North America (or even better Mexico or central america).
i just wanted to run this by some of you more seasoned travelers to see if you could help solve some doubts or pinpoint errors/discrepancies in my planning.
The route is as follows:
ITALY, SLOVENIA, CROATIA, BOSNIA, SERBIA, MACEDONIA, BULGARIA, TURKEY, ARMENIA, IRAN, PAKISTAN, INDIA, NEPAL, back to INDIA, BURMA, THAILAND, LAOS. CAMBODIA, back to THAILAND, MALASYA.
BUDGET: very tight. will camp rough or couchsurf where possible and stay away from hotels.
BORDER CROSSINGS: i will be traveling on italian passport, with a CDP for my motorcycle. Its pretty straight forward all the way to the TURKEY/IRAN border. For the remaining countries, as far as i understand, the situation is the following:
IRAN: can obtain visa in Ankara (maybe), but im better off getting it from the iranian embassy in italy. At the moment it is unclear wether a guide is needed when entering with own vehicle, wether this only applies to USA/UK/CAN/AUS citizens, or even if it's true at all. Monitoring the situation carefully as it unfolds, but in case things go south and iran becomes off limits does anyone have any suggestions for bypassing it and shipping directly into Paki or India?
PAKISTAN: tried to find some info on the web but the site for the paki embassy in italy is down, and all emails bounce back. on another site, however, i found that in order to get a visa you must present a whole lot of docs: most of them are pretty regular stuff like passport and such, but it seems that they also wanna see my bank statements for the last 3 months (WTF!!!), airplane tickets (which i obviously dont have) and hotel reservations (do i have to have this?). Once inside pakistan i understand that i will be escorted for part of the way (at least through baluchistan) but that this is free of charge (?). can you confirm that?
INDIA: VISA is pretty straight forward as far as documentation. Can it be gotten at the border? as far as i understand there are no particular restrictions as far as getting around on a foreign vehicle.
NEPAL: according to their govt website a tourist visa can be issued directly at the border. can you confirm that?
MYANMAR: Would absolutely LOOOVE to see Burma but i understand that at the moment it is a major pain in the back. Need to be escorted the whole way trough the country at a considerable cost. It might be feasible if i manage to find a large enough group, but if thats not possible i will be forced to fly the bike from kathmandu to Bangkok.
THAILAND: i will need to get a double-entry visa since i plan to go to laos and cambodia and will need to re-enter thailand to get to malasya. their embassy website, however, says that you need to provide a two-way air ticket. How did you sort that out? Other than that, i assume it can be easily obtanied en-reoute by going to a thai embassy/consulate in india or, even better, kathmandu. is this the case?
LAOS: tourist VISA can be easily gotten through the embassy in Bangkok or directly at the land border. no major drama there
CAMBODIA: 30-day visa can be issued at the border.
MALASYA: Visa at the border. no hassle.
WEATHER
i worked out a chart with monthly rainfall averages (find it in the attachments). ideally i would leave Italy at the beginning of June. Aside for a couple of stops in Croatia i will be tearing it up through the balkans as ive been there many times before. I do however plan to spend some time in turkey and especially in Iran where i have some very very good friends.
i would like to enter India in late Septmber or early October in order to escape the summer rains, but that would put me in Nepal in late October/Novermber. Do you reckon it's feasible to visit the country around that time of the year or do i risk getting bogged down in snow?
from then on it seems pretty straight forward. Hit SE Asia in November when the dry season begins, and ride around for a a few months. It seems theres absolutely no way of staying dry in Malasya as it rains all year round, but i would be shipping out of there in the spring of 2016 towards North America or, even better, Central America (so far i have been unable to find reliable routes from SE Asia to latin america, do you know of any?)
That should be it. What do you people reckon? can it be done? any thoughts?
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