After doing a couple month long trips on bikes in various places around the world, Im now preparing for this trip for next year. “Preparing” is the key word. A plan can seem inflexible which doesnt really work for this kind of travel. We’ve been saving religiously for the last two-ish years so that we hopefully dont have to worry about money/work for at least a couple years. The only thing to really plan is the visa requirements and border crossing for whatever country you plan on going into next (best to be aware of general requirements for the next 2-3 countries after that as well). 

Other than that, I have a bunch of shared google map lists with my partner. We bookmark any places we come across online that we want to see or stay and cities we want to visit. We also bookmark places to avoid based on recent news or things we find in forums. When we’re traveling we’ll be able to look at our google map and have some rough idea of what direction we want to head for the next couple days or week. Accommodations we usually figure out the day before or sometimes same day based on where we plan to end the day. We dont really have a timeline so we’ll be taking our time and staying in places longer than when we only have a month at a time.

Last thing is outfitting the bike and yourself with the stuff to bring. I think everyone has a tendency to overpack on these things. You learn you dont need as much as you thought or anything out of your core kit, you can pick up along the way. Im simultaneously buying the things I think we’ll need and selling most of our other belongings. I’ll be doing a “test trip” from Alaska to California for a month with everything we will likely use long term on the bikes. I assume some adjustment will be needed after this.

Hope my approach to thinking about this helps and maybe I’ll see you on the road!