Choosing a Bike
Okay, probably the most important aspect of any world motorcycling adventure is the motorcycle. There are so many to choose from, and the one you end up choosing will play such a huge part in your life for the six months, year, decade that you’ll be riding on it, you want to make the right decision.
It all depends on where you want to go and how much you want to spend, but I highly recommend choosing the lightest and simplest bike that will carry you and all of your luggage (and maybe another person) as far as you can conceive riding. Take into account things like tank range and maintainability, comfort is very important and the ability for it to go off-road if required.
My bike was a Kawasaki KLR650… A much tried and tested world motorcycling machine. I eneded up riding her 42,000km from Brisbane to Spain and managed to do this on three sets of tyres (front and rear), two chains, three sets of break-pads and about 9 or 10 changes of oil. I did the doohickey upgrade, but it didn’t have any services or valve-clearance checks. I did have one small problem with the battery, which kept boiling dry. Before I left, I gave the suspension a re-grease, then did it again when I returned home. This is typical reliability for the KLR, ideally you want to find something similar.