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Comment by jharohit | Hacker News Reader

wow - the views of the Western Sahara, Namibia, Kenya, Zanzibar & the water driven mill is simply staggering! I wonder what were his costs overall. That truck surely looked like a petrol/diesel gargling machine!

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He said [1] upfront costs were ~$100k, though recouped ~$30k by selling the truck at the end.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/53eqlt/i_quit_my_job_...

Reddit thread has NSFW tag for source pictures

With this type of adventure, you can get your cost down to maybe 5-10k/year if you travel light (bicycle, motorbike) and camp out a lot. Source: Quit my job and rode a motorbike from Central Europe to Mongolia. One of the best decisions I've ever made.

What sort of bike did you take? A shitty 600CC that was knackered to start with, or did you go for a BMW tourer a la Long Way Round?

KLR 650, it is pretty heavy in the mud but easy to work on. Many adventure bikers start taking light, modern, powerful fuel injected bikes for long range trips now, like the WR250 and the KTM 690 Enduro. I saw some guys struggling hard with GS1200s in sand and mud. If you know you're going to drop the bike a lot, it's probably worth going for a lighter option.

Thanks. It's something I've been thinking about doing :-)

Edit: Can those lighter bikes take panniers? I guess you're not going a long way with a rucksack?

Yes they can. I used hard cases, for future trips I will change to soft luggage though because everything will be ground to dust in hard panniers if you don't pack tightly and ride hard off-road for days. Walter Colebatch designed the "Magadan" soft panniers after riding the Baikal-Amur Mainline, I personally haven't used them yet but will try them for the next trip. If you're into this kind of stuff, check advrider.com.

Sweet, thanks for the tips.

On a only slightly related note: there's a guy who drove across a lot of Asia and Europe on a C90. He filmed some of it and cut it togheter. Here's an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2LEgowbzSc

I don't think you want to bike through a forest if it's going to take days..

That was a few years ago, the pound was significantly stronger back then. But even at the current exchange rate, he sold it for over $35k.

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