Let us bring you up to speed.

Liz and I had a week off from work together back in June. During this week I had suggested the idea of riding motorbikes back to Aus when we do decide to return home. This planted the seed. On Friday 23rd of that week, Liz and I were eating lunch at our favorite restaurant at Bluewater Shopping Mall and we discussed this idea some more and it was then that we decided that we will; A) Return to Australia in the short term, and B) Ride motorbikes there.

With this rough plan, we discussed a possible route: France, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, Bengal, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia and then Singapore for a flight with our bikes to Australia.

I had discovered a fantastic website www.horizonsunlimited.com which is hosted by a Canadian couple that had ridden around the world on a couple of BMW motorbikes over quite a few years. This website is absolutely essential for this type of overland journey by motorbike as it is a complete community of like-minded riders who have done the same thing as we are planning with plenty of ideas and tales and guidance for these journeys.

Having visited this website, our planned route changed somewhat. We discovered that Burma was nigh impossible to enter and ride bikes through, so we had to consider China via Nepal as an alternative only to discover that China can be difficult to get into and ride through, although others have managed to do so. We are going to wait until nearer our departure to see how things progress with the China front. They may very well be more welcoming with the Olympics fast approaching, but we'll see.

Anyway, we have since purchased our bikes, two very tidy low mileage 2000 model Honda ST1100 Pan Europeans both in wineberry red (photos coming shortly). The decision to buy these bikes was made after discussions with our bike mechanic who after been given a choice of a few different types of touring bike suggested the Pans.