It pays to plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the Ark.
One of the bigger challenges when organising such a journey is China. This is simply based on the fact that the Chinese make it more or less impossible to enter their country with your own vehicle. However, there is a way, even though it will cost you a pretty penny. Therefore, nearly everybody who needs to cross China on his way is looking for like-minded-people.
To drive your own vehicle in China, you need to find an agent or a so-called “guide” who knows how to face the hurdles of excessive bureaucracy. Furthermore you need to fix the itinerary, the date of entry and the date of departure. If you are travelling with a motorbike you usually have to bear the costs for an escort vehicle. As I said earlier, it will cost you a pretty penny to manage getting across the “Middle Kingdom”.
Therefore, I have spent a significant amount of time to find people with similar ideas and intentions. But even if you find your team-mates it will take time to align ideas. Here and there you have to give in to find an overall agreement and to make it work. For me – unfortunately – it also meant to cancel my plans to travel across Mongolia. Most of my potential fellows preferred to enter China from Kyrgyzstan.
Since Tibet is at the moment a more or less restricted area, also the idea to enter Nepal coming from China evaporated. Instead I will leave China towards Laos, whereby the “Lao People’s Democratic Republic” was not considered in my travel plans at all. And so one thing leads to another and after Laos the idea is now to go to Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. How to go from Thailand to Nepal will be another issue to be solved. One thing is for sure, it will not be possible to reach Nepal overland. I would have to cross Myanmar (Burma) and here apparently not even an agent can help me to get the bike into the country.
Wasn’t is John Lennon who said “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” ?
Stay tuned !
Leave a Reply