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Have motorcycle, will travel…

25/06/2010

For the last 30 years BMW Motorrad partner Edelweiss Bike Travel has operated exciting and creative motorcycle tours, first in the European Alps and then expanding to all five continents. Now the Edelweiss team from Mieming, Austria, has come up with a definitive ride designed to capture the imagination of all motorcyclists – a 40,000 miles (65,000 kilometres) tour around our entire globe on a 248-day route that includes all five continents!

Operated in conjunction with GlobeBusters, this ambitious two-wheeled expedition starts on November 14, 2010 at the Edelweiss headquarters in the Tyrol Alps and journeys to Paris, France, before continuing all the way south to Dakar, Senegal. This first section runs for five weeks and crosses the Sahara on paved roads.

From there, participants and their dual-purpose machines are flown to Buenos Aires, Argentina for the second section of the trip, which runs through most of South America, ending in Bogota, Columbia nine weeks later. After crossing the Panama Canal the third stage heads up to Los Angeles over the next five weeks. Then they will fly across the Pacific Ocean all the way to Australia, where four weeks and 7,000 miles (11,500 kilometres) of adventure await.

The fifth and last section will see participants travel from Beijing, China all the way back to Edelweiss’s home base in Austria. This route will cover most of Asia from east to west, as well as a large part of Europe. If all goes to plan, on July 20, 2011 there will be celebrations as the expedition team returns safely back home!

Twenty-three lucky participants of the expedition have recently met for the first time at the company’s headquarters in Austria. They came from Canada, the US, Brazil, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy, either by air (those from the Americas) or on their own motorcycles. Over two days, the 23 prospective world tourers now know more about how and where they will ride, how their expedition bike should be equipped for the journey, what riding skills they need to practice or acquire, what they should pack, where the route runs, where they will stay, what they should – and should not – eat, and so on.

Tough riding conditions and extremes of temperatures aside, one of the biggest challenges of this expedition will be for the participants to spend eight months together, riding long distances, eating, talking and drinking together and helping each other through this once-in-a-lifetime experience. If this information has whetted your appetite for a life-changing touring opportunity, then the good news is that for those adventurers who are dreaming about joining the trip, there is still space for two riders for the entire ‘round the world’ journey. For those with less time, then limited space exists on section 1 (Europe/Africa), section 2 (Latin America) section 3 (Central America) and section 4 (Australia), although section 5 (Asia/Europe) is full.

Those who are interested, but need a little more time to plan and save for this kind of trip will be pleased to know that there will be a second ‘Discover Our Earth’ expedition late in 2012. For more information, please visit www.edelweissbike.com