The Big Plan- South America

The first idea of a Round-The-World had come to our minds many years ago. But somehow it just seemed too 'out-there'. It was really just wishful thinking of 'Let's ride the Road of Bones, let's go to Mongolia, let's ride the Pan-Amercian Highway, without really putting our foot down and actually starting to plan it.

After three years of having been on the road for over 200 days each year, in 2017 both Satvik and I had decided to get back to focussing more on our work. And slowly, the riding reduced to a one-week ride every 2 months, then just a weekend-ride every month, then a week-end ride every 3 months and finally with the pandemic, no rides at all since the Jan of 2020.

Over a period, with our time on the saddle reducing, the itch for the RTW started returning, only this time stronger than those days of 'wishful thinking'. We were both getting more stable in our work and at a stage where one would probably start looking for investment opportunities. But we decided to invest not in land, a property or the likes, but towards our 1st RTW to South America.

While we really wanted to travel to South America some day, there was very little we really knew about the place other than the Amazons, Pablo Escobar, Machu Picchu and Ushuaia. The most daunting thing about starting to plan was, where do we even begin?!

So even after deciding that we would ride around South America, we had no idea where to start planning. This probably is going to be biggest hurdle for you too after you make up your mind that you are going to do it; it sure has been our biggest hurdle yet.

So where did we really begin?

I started to just look up videos on travels around South American at first, just for inspiration. I didn't know what places to look up for videos, so I would do the usual 'must-visit places' kind of searches. And YouTube has the habit of throwing similar content at you once you start watching a particular type of content, so that helped. In a few weeks, I was familiar with a few most-visited places or the must-visit places.

If you are just starting out and have no idea where to begin, this might work for you too. For us personally, the very time-bound way of planning is not the most preferred and it's perfect that we have a whole two years to plan this thing out! ;) Since I also run a business, it is important for me that I am able to put some strong processes up in place so as not to have the departments I handle go off-track or feel lost when I am gone. So, two years, I think is good for that too!

People suggest different ways to fund long travels. We are planning to go the saving-way. We methodically save every month. You can either do it by actually putting aside money in a Bank Account, or invest in something. I have invested in Mutual Funds currently. That way, I know I am locked in for a certain period of time, and come-way-may I can't touch it for something else that comes up!

The second this we started to figure was, is this saving going to be enough for the trip, and if yes, how long can we be on the road with this saving. This is probably the most important thing on your mind. At first, I did generic searches on approximate costs of travel in the specific countries we want to travel to. There are blogs online with details of how much other motorbikers have spent (in full detail) on a daily basis on their trips. Depending on whether you are the more comfort-seeking type, the all out camping-cooking type or somewhere in between, it is still easy to find an approximate budget per day for your trip.

We are both the in-between type here, so we would want to be camping and cooking on days when we can, and would want proper accommodation on days we can't.

Horizons Unlimited is a good place to find others who have motorbiked in the places where you are planning to ride to. It is a big community and chances are, wherever on earth you plan to ride in, someone in HU has already been there and you can get a ton of information from their posts.

The first place I started out though wasn't HU, but another Overland Blog PikiPiki Overland. It is a blog by a couple who have travelled extensively around South America. They have great, in-depth content on planning your RTW and when I came across their site, I read everything there was on the website in days! I was now equipped with the basics of camping, cooking, how to pack, border crossings, buying/renting/taking your motorbike, insurance, Visa and a whole lot more.

Voila, I had crossed the first and the biggest barrier- Where do I start.

After having done our approximate budgeting, it looked like we could be on the road for about 6 months, give or take. One of the ways lot of people save up for long trips is by selling off everything that they own, get on the road, find work to do along the way, and try to live that lifestyle for as long as possible. I know of people who have done this, and it is working very well for them, and they are living their dream! But that isn't our plan. We want to ride around South America for about 6 months, come back to our lives, and start doing this more often, hopefully having set up work in a way that it doesn't require us to be present much in person.

Given the 6 months we set aside, our trip will be across 6 Countries - Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.

Next, I started checking up on routes, places to visit, roads to ride, things to experience, people to meet, in as much detail as possible. Since this is the first round of research, I have kept it very very wide. It covers everything that a Country has to offer, through my searches and reading up of hundreds of blogs on each Country. I haven't restricted myself to a time-limit for any Country, seasonality for some places, distances or the overall feasibility. My first round of work has been to read and understand as much as I can about the Country and what it has to offer without being bogged down by 'it might be too expensive', 'it might be too far', 'it might be dangerous', or 'it might not be worth it'. Just putting my fingers all over the map!

As a result what I have now is extensive route maps for each Country, with a lot more kms than the 6 months can cover on it. Not to worry. We can come to that later. What are the next 2 years for, if I already do everything right away! ;) As per the current plan, we spend more or less a month in each country, with Peru being a little higher and Bolivia being a little lesser.

Next has been to check seasons. South America has very tricky seasons due to its proximity to the Equator, its sheer vastness, the variation in terrains and altitudes. The range being from extremely rainy to sub-zero temperatures to sweltering heat. And even if we manage to make all places in what is considered good-weather as per forecast, there is no telling when the weather can really change.

There has been one thing I have been putting off for later - researching on the options for buying the bike. The first decision of whether to send our motorbikes from India or rent one or buy one there was decided long back. We won't be sending our bikes from here since its just ridiculously expensive (considering also the cost of the Carnet - which we will come to sometime later). Renting a bike won't make sense since we can't use them for so many border crossings. We have finalised on buying motorbikes and riding them there. While this has been an easy decision, there are still some logistical issues with being able to sell them in a different Country since we are not doing a round-trip back to Colombia. We haven't yet finalised how exactly we are going to deal with it, but when we do, I will write about it.

Visa requirements is another daunting question since there are 6 countries to be crossed. I have managed to do my initial research on this, and it turns out that it's fairly straight-forward to enter most of these 6 Countries, if we have the US B1 B2 Visa. So we will try getting our US visa sometime next year, and then proceed from there.

There has been some good progress done on what all we would be needing for this trip. Considering the variation in temperatures, we need to invest in some great layering solutions, Camping and Cooking equipment, upgrade some of our riding gear. While there are extensive packing lists available online of what other motorbikers carried with them, there surely is no one list that can absolutely fit us. Some things that might be of utmost importance for others, may not really be very important for us and vice versa. Anyway, this list is long for us, and we have a lot we will be getting from the US since there are a lot more options there for say camping and cooking gear. We have made our first big buy on REI, the highly rated MSR Mutha Hubba NX 3P tent. It is currently sitting in Seattle with Satvik's aunt whose flight back has been getting delayed due to the Pandemic.

Some countries in South America (specially in the Amazon region) also require some vaccinations to be taken, so we have this planned out- to get the Rabies, Typhoid, Yellow Fever and few other vaccinations as a precaution.

Insurance is another highly discussed topic online, whether one should get it or not. We are currently going with the Murphy's Law and so, going to get ourselves insured anyway! There are a lot of Insurance Companies and it is very important to read all the fine-print on what, when, where and how much is covered. I haven't yet done a lot of research on it, but from what I know, World Nomads ranks high on our shortlist for getting our Insurance done.

There is still a long way to go, and so much work to do, but hey, it's a decent start, isn't it?

I will continue journaling our preparations and giving out as much information as I can, of what has helped me in planning and making our 1st RTW..

Until next time!

Cheers!

Shubra