Hi There,

Mi wife and I have been dreaming for about 4 years to do a motorcycle RTW , we have been saving and the plan was start the trip by the beginning of 2015, but I have been retrenched and now is a good time to star the trip.

The problem is that instead of having a year to plan it, we have around 2 (if we start in Australia) o 4 months (if we start in Chile, our home country) to plan it.

The last month has been really crazy reading the forum, planning, doing the math ($), etc. Actually we still don't decide if we will do it with a Chilean or Australian registered bike.

So this week I have been reading about going to China in the bike, I didn't know it was such a pain in the neck!!!!. I don't have time to do all the paper work now (and probably I can't as I still don't buy the bike), but I have been reading a lot to get an idea of how to do it when the time comes.

So here a few questions:

Do I need a carnet to go to China? (I think I don't but I didn't find any post saying that explicitly)
we are thinking to travel without a carnet because we need the cash for the trip.

How much time in advance normally we should need to join a group to go to China (share co$t) and do all the paperwork?
I've seen here that everybody plans going to China between 6 to 12 months in advance.
My plan is to travel to some place "near China" (Spain or Russia) and there stay a couple of months and do the paperwork and find a group to join.

Tibet is a must, if we can't get there in the bike we will store the bike in some neighbor country and take a "normal people tour" (booooring tour for us)

Our dates are now highly undefined, if we start in Australia we would like go to South East Asia and then China in the first half of 2014, if we start in Chile we will do America, then Europe(maybe) then China.

Any advice will be very much appreciated, specially from people who has been there.

PS: sorry about the long post