It’s coming close

Today is the last day at the office for me – I’m saying goodbye to my colleagues and I hope to see everyone back in September.

And it’s just little over two weeks to go before Paul and I head off east. We have already done a lot of preparations, from planning the route to preparing the bikes. To give an impression of some stuff we have done so far:

• Arranged visa’s for Russia, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Turkey, Tadjikistan and Azerbeidjan. The rest is either visa-free or can be done at the border.
• Figuring out insurance and other formalities for the countries we will be visiting
• Got inoculations: Hepatitis A, B, Yellow fever, japanese encephalitis, rabies
• Got medication against malaria, height sickness etc
• Spoken to a host of people who have done similar trips about the do’s and don’ts – where to go , what route to take, what to prepare, what to bring and what to leave at home. Thanks Wolfgang, Marco, Peet!
• Countless hours of reading up on ride reports to prepare for local circumstances
• Countless hours of debating what tools to take and what to leave
• Together with Olivier from the Motorzaak prepared the bikes – Olivier let us do the work so we got quite familiar with the bikes
• Installed extra USB charging facilities on the bikes
• Prepared off-line and on-line maps, navigation, compass
• Arranged for tyres to be ordered in Russia so we can change them before going into Mongolia
• Training: Medical + first aid, more bike mechanics like plugging tires
• Training: Off-road driving with those heavy bikes
• Built this website
• Figure out how to make movies with a GoPro and a drone (stay tuned!)
• Arranged for transport of the bikes back from Vladivostok to Hamburg
• Prepared laptops with information, maps, e-books, navigation software
• Trying to learn some Russian

And many many things more…