Sam and I recently met to have look (and listen) to the dirt bike we’ve recently purchased together. The bike’s a 1993 Honda XR 250 which we bagged on Gumtree for a relatively low price. The bike had starting and running issues so Sam went to work on it and stripped it down. He then tinkered, fixed, cleaned and cajoled it back together again.
So anyway, we met, sat on the bike (1 at a time), gave it a rev and did some back slapping and grinning (in anticipation of future off road riding adventures) before heading to the pub for talk of bigger things…
We’re off in 2022
We headed to the pub for our first 2022 planning session.
What is 2022?
It’s currently a diary entry, but the plan is that this mere diary entry will evolve into an adventure the likes of which Sam and I can only imagine. We don’t yet know all the details but the things we’ve agreed are:
- We’re going to go away and do something amazing in 2022
- During 2022 we’ve got approx. 3-4 months away to achieve our goal
- We’re travelling on 2 wheels
- We want to see, smell, taste and hear the countries we travel through
- Main roads do not interest us
- We’re looking east, to Eurasia, not West to the Americas
Booner’s gut feeling and Japanese desires
For reasons I can’t really explain, I have Japan in my sights. The prospect of riding from the UK to Japan really excites me. Japan itself looms large on my bucket list – I think this mainly stems from the safe and accessible yet completely ‘other’ vibe it emanates. Plus Sam and I both have mates that live there.
Sam’s MoSCoW
Sam tendered a few more ‘musts’ for our list. Cheif amongst which are Turkey, Mongolia and Iran. I think these countries both smack of adventure and will offer us incredible topography to ride through and cultures to navigate.
The Stans (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to name but a few) are also high on Sam’s ‘shoulds’ list.
Sam’s got some pretty wild ‘woulds’ too – chief amongst which seems to be Afganistan.
I’m not so sure, but we can document it for the moment. I think it’s a ‘would’ if it’s vaguely safe.
And then finally there are a few ‘coulds’ or ‘won’t have (this times)’ – these currently include Nepal, Indian and the area around Bhutan.
What might this look like?
In terms of what that looks like on a map, a quick 15 clicks and some very uninformed pin-dropping on Google maps gives us the below:
Approx. 14,000 KMs of adventure. This rough route now needs refining and simmering down until we’ve created ourselves a realistic and ridable recipe for a great big adventure cake.
We're off in 2022 