For your viewing pleasure enjoy the first ride outside of our own borders; Malaysia! The logistics of getting our bikes out of customs in Kuala Lumpur and onto the road in a foreign country wasn’t without its hiccups, but we eventually hit the road and headed straight for the Cameron Highlands. After that it was back to the coast for an adventure on Penang Island before making our way to the border to enter Thailand.
We decided to upload this video on Vimeo because we’re sticklers for quality, but die hard YouTubers will find the same video on our YouTube channelread more
That’s right folks, we’re back – not literally of course; strictly in the digital sense. If there’s only one good thing that’s come about as a result of the Covid-19 lockdown, it’s that we’ve been able to start going through all the footage that we recorded on our journey from Australia to Europe. It’s an incredibly time consuming process so the forced stay at home order has allowed us to be very productive. We hope to get a few more episodes out before we’re back to full time work. But for now enjoy the first leg of our journey from Melbourne up the east coast of Australia to the Sunshine Coast!
Subscribe to our social media channels so you don’t miss the next episode when it lands!read more
After being stuck in Vienna far longer than expected whilst we tried to finalise settling down, the opportunity to return to London and ride the bike home finally presented itself. Unfortunately Moni decided that she wasn’t able to spare the time to join me, so our original plans of heading north through Belgium, The Netherlands and Northern Germany to catch up with her friends there were made null and void. I decided however to make the most of the opportunity and return to The Alps where I could enjoy the mountain riding – this time without a pillion. It also gave me the chance to catch up with another friend from Beijing, Becs, who’d moved back to Geneva a few years ago.
With views like this, I’m pretty sure you’d be keen to get to The Alps too
With a tight timeline and The Alps firmly in my sight, my trip across France was again nothing more than a commute. I considered stopping in Paris for the night, but the thought of navigating the bike through one of Europe’s biggest cities just to say “I’ve done it” didn’t really enthuse me, so I steered clear. And so in two days, stopping for nothing but food and fuel, I made it to Geneva.
It was fantastic to see Becs again and she wasted no time in showing me some of Geneva’s eating and drinking highlights – we hadn’t seen each other in four years, and enjoying beers on Lake Geneva really emphasised the cultural differences to Beijing. But The Alps were a stone’s throw away so the following morning I set off to put myself in their midst.
I’d marked a few mountain passes on the map, the first being the Grimsel Pass. After giving the bike a good flogging I stopped at the damn wall of Lake Grimsel to take a break and a photo or two. There were motorbikes everywhere, but one stood out: a brand new R1200GS fully loaded, complete with a spare set of heavy duty tyres. Of course, when you see a big bike in an Asian country it’s not at all unusual to see a spare set of tyres on it. But in Western Europe big bikes and motorcycle workshops are in abundance, so I knew this bloke was heading somewhere different. Turns out he’d noticed the “AUS” sticker next to my number plate and we immediately knew we were on bigger journeys than the other bikers tearing up and down the passes.
The old adventurer and the new with the old bike and the new.read more
Wow, how the real world has caught up with us, and fast! Our stop in Vienna several weeks ago opened a big can of worms, aptly labelled “reality”. We tried our best to jam the worms back in again and seal it shut by jumping on the bike and continuing west, but here we are back in Vienna, without a bike. We abandoned it in London to tend to some more reality related business which has taken longer than expected; we’ve since had to postpone our return flight by at least a week. The flip side is that this has provided a wonderful opportunity to update you on the most recent leg of our journey.
My first flight in 21 countries – London to Vienna
The Western European leg itself has been more about catching up with friends and family rather than being tourists. If you look at the map, you can see that for the most part we’d not taken a particularly interesting route to achieve this, but it wasn’t without it’s highlights.
The first stop was St. Gallen in Switzerland to visit Joanne, a former work colleague of Monica’s. Joanne’s husband is Swiss and the family had flown from Australia for a holiday.
It was a strange feeling saying goodbye to Drew after literally spending every waking minute together for the last four months. We’d travelled so far, met so many people and experienced so much; together. Of course, the practical part of me (which a lot of people would argue is the most dominant) knew from the beginning that this moment was coming. But that didn’t make it any easier to say farewell.
Very happy with ourselves as we stepped off the bikes in the heart of Vienna
And that’s a wrap folks! For me this epic adventure has finally come to an end, I promised Sophie I would be home for her birthday and although I have missed it by one day I will make her birthday party. I feel naked without my motorcycle, my life as I know it is in a 27kg bag and my bike will eventually make it home by ship, thankfully James and Monica can look after it until then.
What a bike! Brigitta’s 17 years old with 170,000kms on her clock and she’s taken me 26,250kms across 14 countries without a hitchread more
We’d not researched anything about Bulgaria – originally planning to simply transit the country enroute to Romania. This would have been more than achievable, as Google Maps suggests that the 650kms from Istanbul to Bucharest can be done in a little over 8 hours, which has become normal day of riding for us. But a day or two out we thought we should at least stop for the night – after all, when were we likely to visit Bulgaria again? And so it was with blissful ignorance that we crossed the border of Turkey and Bulgaria and officially entered the European Union and our third continent.
Turkey is our last destination before heading into Europe and it’s no surprise that our spirits have dropped over the prospect of this journey being over. 10 years of talk and 3 years of planning has lead us to this point and all of a sudden it has become reality: in two weeks I will be home with my beautiful wife and back at work. I wish I had some drama to share about Turkey but the reality is that I don’t. No breakdowns, no army checkpoints and no AK47’s here, just a very calm, peaceful country with a landscape to match.
After our massive effort crossing into Turkey we woke lazily in our border town hotel room with no plans. We changed some money and took advantage of the wifi to research a route. We were so far north we decided to head up to the Black Sea, then cut back across the country through famed Cappadocia, onto some beach time on the Mediterranean, before heading north to Istanbul. We needed to avoid South-East Turkey due to the conflict in Syria so this plan worked well for us. Our hearts sank over breakfast as we cast our eyes out to a cold and wet morning – not ideal on a motorcycle but we had confidence we would soon be up on the Black Sea and the weather would improve. Our spirits lifted 10 minutes down the road with the rain gone and the road drying out we were heading north and the countryside was breathtaking.read more
Iran: it emerged like a verdant oasis in the middle of a desolate desert wasteland. At first, it was hard to tell if our opinion of Iran was neutral; if you’ve read our earlier posts you’ll appreciate that our journey through the sub-continent was a real test for us, and this warped our sense of normality. But it seems that we’ve passed the test with flying colours to be rewarded in this fantastic, vibrant country.
We’re in Isfahan! It’s Friday morning and James’ wife Monica has just landed. Lucy will join from Jordan later tonight and its a near miracle that James and I arrived at 6:30pm last night. Once on Iranian soil we completed the 1250km journey to Isfahan in 17 hours, through the desert on perfect tarmac with hardly any traffic woes. I could have glued my throttle on at 110km/h. After 2 days in Iran I have finally had time to reflect on the journey thus far and especially Pakistan.
It’s fair to say luck wasn’t on our side in Pakistan but then again Pakistan is not a lucky country. After my last post from Nagar Fort our journey to the Iranian border proved to be the toughest 12 days of our trip so far and I’m pleased to say that James and I are still best mates and we have made it across the most difficult nation on route with no injuries or broken bikes.
Approaching the tunnel in Nagar.
We left Nagar Fort behind schedule and shortly after taking off on the way to the tunnel we needed to pass through, a member of our police escort stopped suddenly and reversed at speed into my bike! I bailed in time to obtain no injuries with the petrol tank taking the blow, leaving a decent dent in it but luckily not leaking fuel. I actually found humour in the whole ordeal given we were under ‘police protection’. James on the other hand didn’t. His blood was boiling within seconds, giving the police a lecture about mirrors and the like. But this incident was just the beginning of it.
