Good morning all and welcome to a brand-new decade!
Hard to imagine it’s 2020 – seems only yesterday we were worrying about the Millennium Bug! But before we head down too much of a nostalgic route and say things like ‘I remember when all this was just fields’ it’s time to launch into the new year.
In the office Anna, Kaylee and Charl are flat out on the organisation side of things, booking tours, sorting permits and ticking off all those ‘behind the scenes’ jobs that ensure our tours run as smoothly as they do. Meanwhile Toby and Kayne are being kept busy in the steamy heat of Cambodia, so they’ve got tales of helicopters, monkeys, mine-detecting rats, emergency underpants deliveries and some suspiciously tall women with big hands. Oh hang on! That one’s not for the newsletter, forget that one…
It’s going to be an interesting year again!
PATAGONIA RECCE IS ON
No sooner have Toby and the team got one South American tour up and running – the rather wonderful Colombian Trailblazer – there’s another one in the pipeline. Our esteemed leader has been itching to get riding below the equator in this enormous continent and now it’s actually happening! In just one year’s time Toby and a band of Ride Expeditions regulars will land in Patagonia for some truly astounding riding. Vast open spaces, enormous mountains and trails that go on for days on end – it’s all there and waiting to be explored. If you think you might like a bit of this, we might just have a space or two left so get in touch if you are up for it. But be warned – this one is not for the faint-hearted!
HILL TRIBE HEAVEN
Now this is one of our little gem tours that maybe doesn’t get the star-billing of the Himalayan or Cambodian tours. The Hill Tribe Expedition is a truly exceptional experience, taking in the wonderful landscapes of Laos in a meandering circular route that starts and ends in the UNESCO World Heritage recognised town of Luang Prabang. We’ll cross rivers on boats, ride stunning hilltop trails, stay in rural homestays with Laos families and visit remote communities rarely seen by tourists. The trails here are gentle and beautiful, so even if you are a relative novice to off-road riding, this tour will give you a unique and unforgettable experience in a wonderfully diverse and interesting country.
If you fancy getting involved in this tour, get in contact on [email protected]
QUEST COMPLETED
We can officially announce that the very last Cambodian Quest tour has been completed. Don’t worry though, this tour hasn’t been dropped – but has been given the five-star treatment and like a beautiful butterfly, will re-emerge as the “Cambo Quest” – a Premium Standard dirt biking tour with a host of tour dates (including a brand new date in July) that will deliver a truly exceptional and unrivaled experience. You know the classic Spinal Tap guitar sequence – this one will be at 11 from Day One. We’ll only be using Yamaha WRFs, we’ll only be staying at premium hotels and resorts, and we’ll even spend some time in the air – viewing the incredible Angkor Wat temples from the comfy seats of a private helicopter!
For this tour’s recently completed swansong, Toby and the team treated the fearless group of travelers to some fantastic riding. Jungles, rivers, single track, flat out dirt roads – they’ve had the lot and the smiles have not left their faces. They got to preview some of the upgrades too, with a beautiful chopper ride over Angkor Wat – the achingly beautiful and ornate ancient temples just outside Siem Reap. They watched the Buddhist monks feeding sweets to monkeys, they ate some truly weird street food and maybe indulged in the odd cocktail or two!
In fact, one of the truly unexpected and special experiences was meeting up with an amazing group of mine-detecting rats and their trainers. Although our tours stay well away from them, Cambodia still has areas littered with landmines and these plucky little rodents are helping to locate them and make these areas safe again. It’s just one of the amazing things you can see in this fascinating country.
If the new CAMBO Quest looks like the one for you, Kaylee would love to hear from you – email her on [email protected] and she’ll sort the rest!
CAMBODIAN MOUNTAINS?
The Cardamom Mountain Explorer is another one of our tours that will get an upgrade to premium status, but if you want to grab a final bargain on the standard tour, the last one goes out on February 10th and we’ve got just two last-minute spots left. It’s a wonderful adventure that travels right up into the highlands of this region for an amazing seven-day tour that packs an awful lot into a week. Great trails, incredible climbs, stunning waterfalls, river crossings and even a beautiful tropical island to finish.
This tour will become the Jungle and Mountain Explorer for it’s new dates in June, November, December, January and February, with a fleet of WRFs to choose from as standard, upgraded luxury accommodation and that peachy helicopter flight thrown in to name but a few of the new perks!
SAVE, SAVE, SAVE!
While we try to make our tours as keenly priced as possible, we also like to reward and encourage returning customers and groups. So, if you’ve already been on one of our tours before or you are putting together a group of five or more riders for one of our tours, then we can offer an immediate 5% discount straight off the bat. That could pay for some new kit, a new helmet or maybe you could even take out your partner prior to jetting off to ride bikes in wonderful scenery. Every little bit helps, right?
EMERGENCY PANTS
This falls firmly into our WTF corner. Towards the end of our Mongolian recce tour, Ride Expeditions’ perennial unlucky video guy Ian was running desperately low on underpants, having gone a full five days in the same pair of undercrackers. As a habitual over-packer and kind soul, blogger and scribe Julian gave Ian a spare new pair that were left in his kitbag to tide him over ‘till he got home.
This should have been the end of it. Until this message hit the group chat from Toby in Cambodia:
Just in the lift with Ian and he randomly comes out with
“I’m wearing Julian’s underpants”
“The black ones he gave me – I always think of Julian when I wear these”
If this was not unsettling enough, Ian has left a phone message for Julian asking him to buy some of the same pants and bring them over to Cambodia at the end of January. Julian was unavailable for comment
BLOG CABIN
Short and sweet this month as Julian has been off on his travels, but we’ve got a cracking blog on why you should go motorcycle riding in the Himalayas to keep you informed, amused and amazed in equal measure. Lovely
AND FINALLY
So to finish the month we’ve got an amazing video from this year’s Dakar capturing all the drama of this year’s event and Ricky Brabec’s historic win, the first for an American on a bike and Honda’s first victory in the event for 31 years!
But if there’s one bit that really stands out, it comes at 2.25 in the video. With hobby riders across the world obsessing over which tyres are best and what pressure they should be run at, Husqvarna pilot and former AMA motocross legend Andrew Short shows you that it’s all about the rider, not the tyres….
Enjoy!
This post first appeared on Cambodia Motorcycle Tours | Ride Cambodia, please read the originial post: here
