Vespa Long Distance
What Nobody Tells You
150,000 km. 45 countries. 4 continents. Everything below is what I learned the hard way.
Vacation vs. Travel. Pick One.
Up to four weeks: that is a vacation. A long one, but still a vacation.
The moment you cross 20,000 km — or six months on the road — something shifts. You are not restoring your capacity to work anymore. You are living. That is a different thing entirely.
Most people plan for the trip. Nobody plans for coming home. More on that later.
The Machine
If I were leaving tomorrow for 10,000+ km, I would take a Largeframe. PX, LML Star 150 2T, Bajaj Chetak 150, or a Vespa 125 T5. All four have treated me well.
Why not a tuned 200cc? I lost six days in Istanbul waiting for a DR177 cylinder during my world trip. It did not exist there. Outside the EU, customs is a problem. I ended up riding 1,500 km on a rusty original 125 Sprint cylinder I found on a shelf — and leaned the carburettor jet down using a strand from an iPhone headphone cable. It worked. I would rather not repeat it.
The 150cc Vespa motor is the most widely distributed scooter engine on earth. Parts exist almost everywhere except the former Soviet republics. The T5 125 is a different animal — more power, disc brake up front, five-speed gearbox — but still runs on widely available parts across Europe. For continental touring it is an excellent choice. For transcontinental expeditions, the simpler the better.
On vibration: It is the silent killer on long tours. Everything — bolts, brackets, electrics — slowly shakes itself apart. Stock setups vibrate less. That is not a coincidence.
Exhaust: Go quiet. The romance of a loud pipe fades after day three. Your neighbours at every campsite will thank you. So will your hearing.
Packing: The Real List
The full packing list is here — free download, no fluff.
The short version: everything you pack will either save your life, fix your bike, or keep you warm. If it does none of those things, leave it at home.
Tools and spares by tour length. A weekend run needs a spark plug and a clutch cable. A 10,000 km expedition needs a spare tyre, a voltage regulator and a piston. The list scales. Know which list you need before you leave.
Weight and balance. Heavy to the front, light to the rear. Every Vespa ever made prefers this. Ignore it and you will understeer into a ditch in the rain somewhere in Slovenia. I have seen it happen. Not to me. Once.
The one thing nobody packs but everyone needs: a good rain suit. Not a poncho. A suit. With sealed seams. You will wear it more than anything else in the bag.
Budget: What It Actually Costs
Western Europe on a budget: 40-60 EUR per day covering fuel, food and camping. Hotels push it to 80-120 EUR.
Eastern Europe, North Africa, Central Asia: 20-35 EUR per day is realistic if you camp and cook.
The world trip in 2018 cost me roughly 18,000 EUR all in over 80 days — including flights for the bike, shipping, visas, and one emergency repair in Vladivostok that I still think about.
The expensive days are never the ones you expect. It is the brake cable that snaps on a Sunday in a country with one Vespa shop and it is closed. Budget for the unexpected because the unexpected is part of the deal.
Paperwork
Carnet de Passages en Douane. Get it before you leave. It is a customs passport for your vehicle. Without it, several countries will not let you in with the bike.
Green card: Standard international insurance. Covers most of Europe. Check the list of countries before you go — it changes.
International driving licence: Get one from your local automobile club. Costs almost nothing. Have it anyway.
Copies of everything: Cloud backup plus physical copies in a separate bag from your originals. This is not paranoia. This is experience.
The Route Question
People ask me how I plan my routes. The honest answer is: I do not, not really.
I have a direction. I have a destination. Everything in between is negotiable.
The best days of every trip I have done were the ones where something went wrong and I ended up somewhere I had never heard of. The typhoon that forced me off the Trans-Siberian Highway into a village where a retired mechanic fixed my engine with parts from a 1970s Ural. The wrong turn in Morocco that led to three days with a family in the Atlas Mountains.
Plan your route. Then be willing to throw it away.
Coming Home
Nobody talks about this and it is the hardest part.
After the world trip I sat in my flat in Germany for two weeks and felt nothing. Not relief, not pride, not happiness. Just a strange flatness. The world had been enormous and loud and alive and now it was very small and very quiet.
It passes. It takes longer than you think.
The trip does not end when you park the bike. It ends — if it ends — months later, when you have processed what happened to you. Some of it you will not understand for years.
This is not a warning. It is information.
The Short Version
Ride a stock 150. Pack light. Budget for the unexpected. Do the paperwork before you leave. Plan the route and ignore it. Come home slowly.
Everything else you will figure out on the road. That is the point.
Markus Andre Mayer has ridden 150,000 km across 45 countries on classic Vespas. His books on long distance Vespa travel are available here.