First of Novenber 1996 we were ready to go. 5 long years of preparing and of saving money had past and now it was time to leave. Our motorcycle, a Yamaha XJ900 with EZS-sidecar, a luggage-box, had been loaded on top of a truck for being shipped (by boat) to South America a month befor and, as usual, there was the moment that we decided that the only thing left to do was 'just to go'.



Although we'd put a red line across the worldmap as to have an idea of what our route was going to be, we found out as soon as we started travelling that the world was a lot bigger, travelling the way we did, as we had anticipated and that we would need more time. And so it happened that our journey lengthened from 'about a year or two' to 5 years and that we did not go once but twice around the world. In total we covered about 225.000km and visited 63 countries.

We did not find our little paradise on earth, which was probably the reason that we ended up returning to Holland. We do have our favorites though; love to travel in Russia and really look forward returning to South America. There are also countries we have not been yet, like Mongolia and China, where we will travel to in 2009. Marocco is also on our 'wish-to-go-there' list.

Chili

Project
We did not only want to travel to see the world and absorb what it had to offer. But to connect our world tour to a good cause, like many do nowadays, did not feel good. We therefor got together with a group of Dutch children and set up the basis of what was going to be "The World on a Children's Drawing", aiming to make it possible for children to virtually travel along and discover the world together with us. We did this by connecting children around the world by exchanging their drawings, in which the children told each other about their world. The project grew out to be huge and thousands of children from over 50 countries joined.009

The good cause also became part of the project, as we visited many SOS-Children's Villages around the world and also some refugee camps like in Uganda (child-soldiers) and Turky (after the earthquake in 1999), children's homes and other projects (street children), but also the most highly rated schools and churches etc. to work with the children, talk about the world and make and exchange drawings. This way, together with the children, we spread their images and stories around the world aiming to increase awareness and understanding of the differences in the world as being something interresting and positive. Of course the press was often there as well. We ourselves made our contributions for a Dutch quality newspaper (NRC Handelsblad). After our world tour we worked out a plan to keep the project going, but due to a lack of finace it did not happen.

Kiwi - Nieuw Zeeland

Website? Of course it is very much possible to build a website of this journey. We filled 10 thick notebook-diaries and for 5 years we wrote our weekly updates for a local newspaper. The thousands of slides we made are more images we could ever show. The slideshow we put together (about 300 slides) can take 2 as easily as 4 hours to do. And, as we think that we are not going to build the website (just think of how much work it is to scan all those slides), also the plan to write a book seems hard to realise.
After having been 5 years on the road our pockets were as good as empty and we needed all our energy to build up Ride-on MotorTours en start our new lives.

Tanzania