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Ray parts company from his 'darling' Draga
Ray Urlich has reached Southeast Asia on his motorcycle journey across the world, but he and his darling Draga had to part company in Perth.
Arriving in Perth after a massive 5667-kilometre ride across Australia on the first leg of his ride to raise money for IHC, Ray realised that freighting his Suzuki DR 650 by sea to Vietnam was going to be too slow. So he flew to Hanoi while his bike Draga (‘Darling’ in Croatian) was put on a ship to Indonesia. Ray picked up another motorcycle to travel south through Vietnam while his own bike was on the water.
Ray’s plan is to fly from Vietnam to Bali, collect Draga at Surabaya for the ride up to North Sumatra, travel by ferry to Kuala Lumpur, then drive on to Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos.
“I am losing big chunks of time,” Ray said from Perth after two weeks of waiting to get his Suzuki crated and transported by sea. “We thought the bike was going to take two weeks to get from New Zealand to Australia and it turned out to be six.”
He says he hadn’t realised how long it would take him to send the motorbike by sea. “The bike has to be crated and the crate has to be put in the container and the container has to be signed off by Customs. If I had known it was going to take so long I would have left last year.”
Ray’s getting concerned about making his target arrival date. “I need to get to the UK by the middle of next year.” Every delay now puts him nearer the Northern Hemisphere winter. He is also having to rethink his route to avoid trouble spots, including Myanmar’s civil war and the tension between Iran and Israel. He is planning to ship the bike from southern Karachi to Oman or Dubai to avoid Iran.
Two thousand kilometres into his journey, at Ceduna in South Australia on the edge of the Nullarbor Plain, Ray said goodbye to his two mates, Chad and Justin, who had ridden with him from Newcastle. He continued across the Nullarbor on his own.
The ride across Australia surprised him. “I didn’t expect it to be so varied. We have ridden through ranges, through dirt, on tarmac, on the coast, deep inland,” he says.
“One of the highlights is just appreciating how vast Australia is – when there is nothing behind you and nothing in front of you and the sun is going down. Just the vastness. No phone service. You feel very disconnected.”
Ray embarked on the Southeast Asian leg of his trip on 18 April. It will take him nearly two years of riding through 35 to 38 countries in Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East, Eastern and Western Europe and the United Kingdom. For each mile he rides, he plans to raise NZ$10 for IHC.
One of the important people behind his decision to ride across the world is his uncle Peter Hill. “My grandparents, along with IHC, took care of him his whole life.” After Peter’s parents died, he went to live in an IHC residence in Rotorua.
Ray will record his journey on a video camera. Follow Ray around the world on https://2wheels2everywhere.com and donate to IHC through his Givealittle page.
Above: Rough riders on the way to Mount Ive Station, a family-owned sheep station 200 kilometres west of Port Augusta in the Gawler Ranges in South Australia.
This story was published in Strong Voices. The magazine is posted free to all IHC members.
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