June 23, 2018 — Lauren Geoghegan
On a cross-continental bike journey like ours, crossing borders can sometimes be pretty easy and can sometimes be a complicated, expensive, confusing ordeal. Visa rules and travel stipulations are constantly changing, almost always poorly communicated, and often inconsistently applied from border to border, month to month, and agent to agent.
In figuring out where our bikes could and could not (legally) take us, we relied a bit on embassy and immigration websites but a lot on the collective experience of the internet, scattered bits of first-hand knowledge not just about how these things might work in theory, but how they're actually applied in practice. In return, we're sharing the (pretty tedious) details of our travels: how we entered each country, how much it cost, and anything else we thought folks on trips like ours should know.
A few caveats before we get started.
First and most importantly, we're Americans. Our visa requirements and costs are typically the same as a whole host of other countries, but often they're a bit more restrictive and more expensive (in reciprocity for our own restrictive and expensive visa process). Sometimes they're less restrictive (though rarely less expensive). Your mileage may vary.
It may vary quite a bit. Even fellow Americans crossing the same border a few days after us could have an entirely different experience. Borders are finicky places, and discretion is often left up to agents who may or may not be having a bad day. Things change. Some of this information may be hopelessly out of date (which is why our dates are listed). If something is no longer accurate, let us know and we'll update it. Don't treat what you read here as the final world. If it's important, get a second (and third, and fourth) opinion.
We're just posting this once and will go in and add new countries as we enter them. So the URL will stay the same, but if you're subscribed to receive email updates, you won't be notified of changes to this page.
All prices listed are in US dollars and per person.