Plan & Route

FIRST NEWS

It was a lazy Sunday morning during late winters (Feb 2013) when a phone call came to germinate an idea. I got a call from an acquaintance asking if I would like to accompany him and some other guys (a group of more than five bikers) on a biking trip from India to UK (London) along the 'Silk Route'.

Sunday Morning in Delhi

I was amazed at plan, Delhi to London on a motorcycle. Rekha (my wife) motivated me and reminded me that these kind of opportunities come once in a life time. However, I asked for a week to think over and get permission of absence from my office.

Well the decision was made in the first instance only but after procrastinating over the proposal finally decided to take the plunge. Informed people concerned that I am all for the trip. How I feel that I should have thought over thoroughly and decided to choose people accompanying on the trip properly, well as they say, hindsight is always 6 by 6.

TRIP PLANNING

After confirmation and approvals from office for the trip came the part of trip planning. By end of February 2013 it was clear that all others had dropped out (or maybe there were no others and I was misled by this guy) and only me and one more guy from Gujrat were going strong for the trip. I decided to go ahead come what may even if I had to go alone. I could sense that this guy had no idea of long distance trips. 

I had got leave of absence for 70 days and had to complete my trip within this time period come what may. You will see that I do not name this guy, as my intention is to keep him at arms length thus no specifics; just my experience with advice for future riders.

This guy informed me that he had done most of the work of trip planning but on review I realized that it was vague planning and I still needed to get involved for identifying complete route planning, reading experience of bikers who had done long distance, reading about the cities, road conditions, weather conditions, availability of gas, permission of host countries and so on. So I made my list for identifying about the ride and route as such......

a - First identify the route you plan to take.

b - Next identify borders to be crossed and places must see for halt.

c - Identify time period and keep spare days up your sleeves.

d - Read blogs of riders and travelers who have crossed these places.

e - Read official web pages of these countries. Identify expected road blocks in permissions, road conditions, weather, traffic and mechanics.

f - Process your bike papers for carnet (details later).

g - Get visa and ride on......

First Hurdle.    The first hurdle in my planning was China. They have peculiar rules of specific crossings, specific travelling route and distance and compulsion of hiring guides. The compulsory trip to cross China was 18 days with cost nearly US $ 10,000/- per biker. There also was issue of visa to me. I being from government service, visa were not forthcoming at all and decided to skip China. My decision was informed to this other guy and I also offered him to meet up in Kyrgyzstan, however, even he was not sure of this route and decided to follow my route only. Bells rang in my head but were overlooked. I finally took a decision to drop China and then started working out transportation of bikes to Kyrgyzstan or Russia. The summary of requirements for crossing China are as below:-

-You need to have visa and carnet for yourself.

-One needs to contact specific travel agents dealing in crossing China by road.

-Best route is from Nepal to Kyrgyzstan.

-There is a specific route through which you can go. A guide will accompany each group from border to border and has to be paid for.

-Halts and break locations are also specified. Larger the group lower per person cost. If on two wheeler, you have to pay for car of the guide.

-Designated route for our party required 18 days to cross China.

-If group is bigger than 10 the cost is about USD 1500, lesser than that would cost each rider about USD 8000 (too frigging much).

-Generally riders wait around on borders of China, combine into a group of 10 and then cross. Cost effective but time consuming (time of which I was short).

Initial Route Plan

Trip Plan.  After deciding on skipping China, I decided to have the route from Bishkek-Osh (Kyrgyzstan) to Uzbekistan (Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva, Nukus) to Kazakstan (Neybue, Atyrau) to Russia (Astrakhan, Volgograd) to Ukraine (Kiev, Lviv) to Poland to Czech to Austria to Italy to Switzerland to France to Belgium and finally on to UK. The planned route was over 12,000 Kms and required intensive riding over two months. The stretches in Uzbekistan were long and arduous. However, I decided to stick to this route and commenced all my planning and preparation accordingly. The detailed route will be described subsequently.

Obtaining Visas.   As per our planning I had to get visas of following countries UK, Schengen, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. The visas have to be taken backwards that means the final destination first and you work your way backwards to your start point. I realised the massive problems of obtaining visas with an Indian passport at the first instance. Read separate posts for visas for full details, suffice is to say that you need massive time and lot of paper work to get visas. Keep lot of additional days for obtaining visas.

The Second Hurdle.   Ukraine refused visa to us. No tourist visa was being given to single Indian males as per embassy officials. You can apply for business visa ( not applicable) for us or tourist visa with family. That left us four other options of entering Europe by road. 

Through Georgia - Extremely bad roads passing through high mountains which are closed most of the times as per my survey.

Through Belarus - Similar problems as Ukraine with bad roads.

through Latvia or through Finland. 

I decided to change my route and move through Scandinavia. This would provide me an opportunity to move through old Silk Route and also through less traveled Scandinavian Countries. This other guy continued to change his route based on my decisions, latching onto all my decisions.

Final Route.   Finally I homed on to my final route as Kyrgyzstan - Uzbekistan - Kazakhstan - Russia - Finland - Sweden - Denmark - Germany - Netherlands - Belgium - France and finally to UK a distance of about 12,000 Kms.

Route Details.    The route decided by me involved skipping China and transporting the bike to Bishkek by air, sea or land. This involved massive logistics issues of finding someone to take it and cost for same. Finally got through Breeze Ltd (Jyotsna) who assured me of transportation by air though the cost would be nearly double the bike cost. Cheapest is by sea but takes longest time.

Had me thinking whether to send bike or buy a new one there only. I gave option to these two guys to ride on land route through China and I would join them in Kyrgyzstan. They could have taken my bike also, however, these two guys did not want to travel on their own and decided to stick to my route and planning.

The final planning boiled to my planned route as : Kyrgyzstan (Bishkek-Osh) - Uzbekistan (Tashkent-Samarkand-Bukhara-Khiva-Nukus) - Kazakhstan (Beynue-Aytrau) - Russia (Astrakhan-Volgograd-Moscow-St Petersberg) - Finland (Helsinki-Touro) - Sweden (Stockholm-Varnamo) - Denmark (Copenhagen) - Germany (Hamburg) - Netherlands (Amsterdam) - Belgium (Brussels) - France (Paris-Brittany) - London. I expect to stay minimum a day in each location with a few extra days in good cities. The total distance would be about 12000 Kms. Due to visa issues I had postponed my start by two weeks and now would start on 16th June 2013.

My journey would be by flight to Kyrgyzstan, then along with one more biker from Gujrat and his mechanic riding on our bikes along the identified route. My wife, Rekha, would join me midway in Helsinki, Finland.

Basic route as identified through 'Google' were saved in my mobile phone and are shared below.

First Leg - Bishkek to Osh (Kyrgyzstan)

Osh (Kyrgyzstan) to Tashkent (Uzbekistan)

Tashkent to Samarkand (Uzbekistan)

Samarkand to Bukhara (Uzbekistan)

Bukhara to Nukus (Uzbekistan)

Nukus (Uzbekistan) to Beyneu (Kazakhstan)

Beyneu (Kazakhstan) to Astrakhan (Russia)

Astrakhan to Moscow (Russia)

Moscow (Russia) to Helsinki (Finland)

Helsinki (Finland) to Stockholm (Sweden)

Stockholm (Sweden) to Copenhagen (Denmark) to Hamburg (Germany)

Hamburg (Germany) to Amsterdam (Netherlands)

Amsterdam (Netherlands) to Brussels (Belgium)

Brussels (Belgium) to Paris (France)

Paris (France) to London (UK)

Afterthought - How different the actual ride went to the planned one taught me the lesson of flexibility in all plans. Finally this was the planned route with no certain halts or pit stops. I decided to take the journey as it would come and not stick to any mode less the final date of reaching London by 16 Aug 2013.

Visa and Carnet

Visa

The biggest requirement for any international traveler (especially from India) is getting visas in time. Its a huge ask with truck loads of documents and time requirement. The time was extra for us as we were crossing more than 15 countries and it involved lot of logistics.

The requirement of visa has to commence with final destination country, in our case United Kingdom. UK visa is one of the most efficient process I encountered. It's been outsourced to VFS and is an online process. Though the time required for clearance is one of the maximum due to numbers involved. The documents required range from identity to status to business to your exact wealth identification. Interview is compulsory and appointment has to be taken online. After form submission everyone has to go through bio metric and then wait. In my case I got the visa in 10 working days but overall our group got delayed due to rejection of one visa due to poor planning by these guys. It took nearly a month for getting their visa through.

The requirements for getting visas kept us amazed throughout. Every country had bucketful of requirements while our friends having European or US passports need barely move their fingers and visas are granted. Getting UK visa also has it's advantages of not requiring bio metric in any of the other nations on our route. I took assistance of internet and went to each country embassy site for collating our document requirements.

Getting Schengen visa was again a challenge. I went to their counter before submitting to ask the requirement and called our guys from Baroda for submission. On the day of submission they was discussion among the counter people to identify where is Vadodra (official name of Baroda). On my offering them help by informing that it's in Gujrat, we were amazed when the next question was where is Gujrat. This to from Indians and not from guys from far of countries. I had to take their geography class and also gave them a lecture of 'Be Indian and Know India'. All of them would have known counties of USA or UK but no Gujrat. I was afraid to name few places of NE and embarrass myself. My visa was accepted but these guys  had to move to Mumbai office for applying. Actually the whole issue was because these guys wanted every thing done by me. It was now troublesome for them to process their documents themselves. Anyway, Schengen saved our pain as it reduces need for number of visas and is a boon for travelers.

Again one of these guys got Schengen visa with reduced dates due to their not handling documents carefully and they were forced to re-apply for correct duration thus involving time penalty. By this time I was jittery and decided to postponed my trip by two weeks. Where earlier I had planned to kick off on 2nd June, I decided to start my journey on 16th June. I informed my decision to these guys and sure enough they followed suit and also requested me to change their flight tickets also.

After UK and Schengen visas in my passport, I confidently marched on for Ukraine visa and got the biggest surprise. Ukraine had stopped giving tourism visa to Indian males without their family in retaliation to India stopping visa for unaccompanied Ukraine females. Probably the logic that if you don't want them here you will not be allowed opportunity in their state. But what about guys not wanting it here or there......

This was major setback and forced me to decide on different route to enter Europe. Besides Ukraine I had options of Georgia - very bad roads, Belarus - visa issues again, Latvia or Scandinavia.

I homed on to Scandinavia and changed my visa requirements accordingly. As all Scandinavian countries are covered in Schengen visa, it saved lot of time. These two guys decided to stick along and changed their route also. 

Getting visas for Central Asian Countries including Russia requires a 'Letter of Invitation' and voluminous forms in Russian. These letters of invitation are issued by authorised travel agents for tourists and are time consuming and costly. Meanwhile I got a life saver of a guy (Travel Agent in Delhi) who for a price offered us visas for all the Stans and Russia. To ensure timely visas I decided to pay extra thus increasing the already rocketing budget and gave him a go ahead. Finally, based on verbal request, I ended up paying for visa and processing fee for these two guys also. A decision which I would later regret, as they say, hindsight is always six by six. Though this travel agent proved true to his words and got me visas as promised within three weeks. His details are 'Shalimar Travels', (Sambhav - +91-9810372981) (shalitravel@yahoo.com)

Finally on 10 June we had following visas with us - Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Schengen and UK. With my earlier travel there is option for only three more blank pages before I need to apply for fresh passport.

Kazhak Visa looks something like this......

Visas in hand - Journey planned - HERE I START.........oops wait on man....what about permission for your machine....

Carnet

Well not yet....there is requirement for permission for the bike, this is called 'Carnet'. It's something akin to visa for your vehicle. Also known as 'Carnet De Passages En Douane', its an understanding between partner countries of allowing personal vehicles holding this document within their country without taxes. It entails depositing of collateral amounting to thrice the cost of your vehicle. This collateral is returned once you return back with your vehicle. This ensures that you do not sell your vehicle outside India/ parent country without paying taxes. In India it is issued by Automobile Associations depending on your home town. They charged me ten thousand rupees. Carnet looks like this......

One needs to have passport, visas and be a member of any of the automobile association. I got it from WIAA (Western Indian Automobile Association) based in Mumbai. Carnet booklet has many pages, each with three perforated portions having details of your vehicle. You need to get it stamped at every country exit and entry as proof . One portion is taken by customs at entry point, one portion by customs at exit point and one portion remains as your proof. 

While exiting India, first page is filled and stamped and one portion torn off. Now the second portion of this page would be required only on return. Its essential to get this stamped at every country to ensure that subsequent countries allow your vehicle. Its like a proof of your journey.

Visa in passports, Carnet in bag......Here I Come.....