Globe Gallivanting- motorbiking across the world

That afternoon we discovered 9 British Embassy workers were arrested for allegedly inciting riots.  Britain immediately chucked out some Iranian Embassy workers.   It was impossible to find out what was actually happening.    The average Iranian has this problem all their lives.  The rich families have illegal satellite discs and proxy-servers so they can access world news.    We tried for Indian visas again in Tehran.  Because of the worsening situation with Britain, all the phone lines had been cut.  The Indian official behind the counter was very nice, and tried his hardest for us. Sadly though, Indo-Anglian bureaucracy means that the only way to procure a visa for a Brit is to contact the Indian Embassy in London to request one. Obviously that was unlikely to happen.  The permission needed to be fax, and the E-mail system was aparently down anyway.  We were stuck, without an Indian visa, again.  This meant that on...

The trip to Tehran the following day was long and dusty.   The landscape comprised mostly of desertlike nothingness, punctuated occasionally by mud hut villages, all universely beige and flat-rooved.  The general colour theme to Iran was ‘Neutrals’, as though a mid-90s interior decorator had gone overboard.   We saw a hut with ‘Down with Israel’ painted fairly unambiguously across its walls. We got flagged down by the police, and deemed it best to stop.  They were stern and unsmiling, and checked our passports formally.  They asked us where we were going, in a manner that suggested we were unlikely to make it there unimpeded. We beamed graciously and remained unworried.  We asked them where the nearest tea shop was.  The second-in-command accidentally offered us some of their tea from a handy flask.  We thought it an excellent plan, ignored the system of ‘tar’of’ conveniently, and parked up the bike.  There stood we, drinking...

We rode off on our way to Tehran, where we would need to stop and sort out visas for Pakistan and India, having been refused them so graciously in Ankara.   The roads were boring, in excellent condition, and fast.  We stopped a couple of times to eat.  We managed to get bread, of an unpleasant cardboard texture and, nothing if not consistent, taste.  On the second occasion we were a little more adventurous and attempted to use our Farsi phrases. We tried the Farsi for ‘I am a vegetarian.’  The waiter said ‘No.’.  We tried again.  He shook his head.   This was a little confusing.  We opted for more bread.  By my second day in Iran I had lost a fair bit of weight and my trousers wouldn’t stay up.     Meals there run as follows: Breakfast: Flat unleavened bread with carrot jam or spreadable ‘cheese’. Lunch: Kebab. Dinner: Kebab. Little did we know at the point that bread would become our favourite dish… We...

We headed off towards the main roads, with our new desire to visit Halkidiki driving us forward. We rode down the first prong of Halkidiki and immediately ran out of petrol. Just made it on reserve to the petrol station though- our luck was really in that day what with bears and all. We spotted our first snake, about a meter long, but with its head squashed as though someone had run it over on purpose. The prong was fairly pretty, but possibly not quite as beautiful as expected. We rode through a strange deserted tourist resort with a few rich Greeks eating over-priced fish in a beach-side restaurant- one place had a fish dish for 65 Euro. We got sneered at for only ordering coffee, and the coffee itself was undrinkable, with the grains lurking in the bottom. It was possible a very refined way to drink coffee, but I am of the Nescafe school, and I took a gulp and had to discreetly spit. It transpired we weren’t going to be able to afford restaurant food in Greece either, and we fou...

We rode across from Sorrento to Bari the next day, via Matera. The plan was to catch the Bari to Igoumenitsa (Italy to Greece) ferry overnight. It was a 17-hour car-ferry with cabins for the posher passengers, and for us smegs a few scattered seats. There was trepidation, oh yes. We set off on the fast and boring motorway. Adam picked up a German in a service station doing a big group tour on a boring-looking bus, and he chatted for while. I think he thought we were a bit mad when he discovered what we were up to though, and he left fairly promptly, though his bus did keep passing us and honking, so possibly he’d informed the driver. We stopped for lunch at a non-descript garage where there was nothing at all non-meat on offer except one sorry-looking, slightly congealed apricot tart. I ate it. Obviously. The barwoman was out-Italianing the Italians with her loudness and banging about of cutlery, and one old guy got so worried he actually left without getting anything at all. We ran aw...

This is the very first blog post from our trip across the world. We had the idea late 2007, when we went up the Himalayas on a Royal Enfield. While we were up there, freezing in a tent at 5000m, we decided it was all a good laugh, and we'd save up and do it properly from the UK to at least Australia on a bike. So here we are, 2009, having saved up by working 3 jobs and living in a caravan on an organic farm in Tadcaster nr York for the last year and a half.. Our rough route is: France, Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Bulgaria again, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, (possibly Nepal, maybe if very lucky China), Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia!! Its open to change though, depending on what happens enroute. We've saved up enough fo a year's travel to Oz. Then we run out. Unless we can wrangle some money along the way, any way possible (well, any legal way). When we get to Australia we will work for a year to save up enough to come b...