Riding the world for a year…

In four weeks today, my partner Kirrily and I leave for the first leg of our World Ride, India.

Kirrily and I on our first trip together, 2023.

A motorcycle trip from Chennai on the East Coast to Goa on the West, a borrowed bike, cameras to record the journey and a plan to see the world before it’s too late to see it by motorcycle will be underway.

The universe has decided it’s the right time.

In the mountains of India the last time I was there.

Kirrily and I got together a little over 18 months ago, both freshly divorced and looking to move on with our lives. We found a place to share together – a large, wonderful house with a beautiful outlook, fabulous outdoor areas, a swimming pool and lots of space for visitors and entertaining… but the owners want it back.

They have been travelling and are returning to the area and want to move in.

Australia, however, hasn’t been treating us well in recent years. I became very frustrated with my job – being the editor of a motorcycle magazine is, in many ways, the perfect job for me – but I was finding the position more and more untenable. Digital is where the world is, magazines are a throwback to the past.

Kirrily wasn’t working when we met, having accepted a redundancy package from the bank she worked at for 15 years. It was time, she needed a break and could afford to take some time off.

Unfortunately, when she did start looking for work it proved harder to find a role which suited her skills and experience than we both thought.

For me, the opportunity to be free of a mortgage (the house got sold off during the divorce), kids (now working adults) and full-time job (I can do my freelance work from anywhere, and travelling will open up opportunities) makes doing a World Ride an experience difficult to say no too.

The decision to go has been made easier by the ridiculous cost of living – especially housing – in Australia.

Of course being a traveller with a camera and laptop is no guarantee of an income, but at least I have contacts and a resume. Having Kirrily along will mean more back of the bike content, the ease of shooting each other for our Youtube channels and social media and shared costs, so travelling further and for longer becomes more viable than if I were single.

Both in our fifties, the idea of preparing a bike suitable for two to ride across multiple continents day-in-day-out on a bike isn’t for us. Those hardy adventurers who do that, all power to you, but it’s not me and it’s certainly not Kirrily. We will be flying or travelling by rail, (when you fly it’s flying, so when you go by train it must be training, right?) renting/borrowing bikes, renting apartments and seeing countries by hub-and-spoke.

Hub-and-spoke is a method of setting up a base, the hub, then riding loops out and around, back to the hub – day trips mainly, but possibly overnighters if the distances and prices work out.

We want to stay in apartments because we love to cook and know eating in restaurants is 3-5 times the cost of preparing food ourselves.

India will be about three weeks, a little over two in the south, riding around the base of the most populous country in the world. The last few days we will be playing tourist in the north, a dawn visit to the Taj Mahal.

Then it’s on to Europe.

When this idea was percolating away in the back of our heads months ago the initial plan was to spend a month in all the countries on our bucket lists – Japan, India, France, Spain, Italy, Great Britain, Brazil, Iceland, Columbia, Canada… but a combination of visa hassles (only 90 days of 180 in the European Schengen area), cost (flying to Brazil is expensive) and weather (lots of those countries overlap on the time of year we’d like to visit) meant the plans got changed.

From Australia, India is north… you almost fly over the place to get to Europe, so going via India was a no-brainer, and I have contacts there which make a motorcycle tour not just achievable but almost easy.

Both Kirrily and I have been to India before so we have a little knowledge of what to expect, we love the food and culture and the weather is benign where we’re going during February (by Indian standards at least).

We both have British heritage and contacts in the UK, so going there after India makes a lot of sense – we can ship an extra suitcase directly there full of warm clothes, extra camera gear I can’t carry on a bike in India anyway and other things to make life easier in rented apartments (cooking without decent knives is horrible, and no AirBnB has good kitchen knives, for example).

Importantly Brexit means time in the UK isn’t part of the Schengen area, which means our time there doesn’t count as part of our 90 days out of 180.

How this works, in simple terms, is any day you spend in Schengen re-sets 180 days later – so if we spent March, April and May there we would have to leave for June, July and August, but could return in September (180 days after we arrived in March).

Given September and October are still great times to visit many part of Europe that’s the plan – spend time in the southern parts in March and April, enjoy the more northern areas in June, back to the UK and other non-Schengen place in July and August before returning places like Spain or Greece in September and October.

We will be avoiding the busy European destinations during their peak seasons, I can’t stand the crowds and the prices anyway.

The actual destinations and dates are still to be determined, I’m yet to chase down borrowed or rented bikes, would love to do some organised tours, still need to work out lots of things… what I can say is we’re going on an adventure, one which will involve motorcycles but not riding like Charlie and Ewen. We won’t have a film crew, but we will make media. We won’t be riding the same bikes, but hopefully a huge variety of makes, models and styles. We hope to meet interesting people who share similar passions, who can show us their culture, teach us to cook their food and share a meal, ride with us and show us the sights…

Follow me here to see the updates from the journey…

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