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Hello, reader! 🤟
If you ended up here, you probably had the same question we had before we left: how much does a trip like this really cost? Let’s set the tone right away. This isn’t a post about who earns what or whether we can afford it. It’s simply about numbers as a point of reference. Online you’ll find tons of “one year of travel”, “van life”, or “motorcycle around the world” videos, but it’s rare to see a clear breakdown of what the budget is made of and where the money actually goes.
After Desert Horizons, we’ve got a pretty clear picture of what a few weeks of riding really costs: fuel, places to sleep, food, paperwork, and all the “small stuff” that adds up fast. So we’re opening our Excel sheet and breaking everything down step by step.
Even more so because we only closed this chapter now: the bike came back to Europe in a container from Dubai, and I picked it up in Germany not long ago. Once the transport is done, the logistics side is finally complete, so we can count everything properly, including that last part that people often leave out.
Forecast vs. reality – how much was achieved and why
Let’s start with the most important thing, so from the end: how much the whole trip cost in total.
We were on the road from August 29 to October 5, 2025. That’s 38 days of traveling (and usually 37 nights if you count the “nights on the route”).
In our budget, we split expenses into two “drawers”: 🏍️ Bike costs and 👩❤️👨 People costs. Why? Because it keeps things organized and makes comparisons much easier.
- Bike costs: everything tied to the machine and the route (fuel, service, road fees, insurance, paperwork, shipping the bike back, and so on).
- People costs: everything that depends on us as people (accommodation, food, phone/internet, and everyday small expenses).
This way you can immediately see what’s “bike and logistics” and what comes from how we actually lived on the road. And one more thing: this split scales well for other trips too (solo vs as a couple, shorter vs longer, more budget vs more comfort).
We forecasted a total of about $10,919.68 (PLN 39,199.46). In the end we spent $9,929.92 (PLN 35,646.44), including attractions and our “Other” bucket (things like entry tickets, a Starbucks coffee, a beer, or small grocery runs). So we came in $989.75 under the plan (PLN 3,553.02), which is roughly 9% below our forecast (using 1 USD ≈ 3.59 PLN as a simple reference rate).
Why didn’t we include attractions and “Other” in the forecast from day one? Because you can’t estimate that in a smart way. One day you spend nothing besides food, and the next day you suddenly add a hot air balloon ride, a paid entrance, a tour, or a “we can’t skip this” moment. These costs depend a lot on the weather, your energy, the place you’re in, and your mood. That’s why we treated them as a separate layer and added them after the fact.
How we calculated the costs
We won’t pretend it all calculated itself. What helped was our experience from other trips, a bit of a “project” approach to budgeting, and a lot of research, including tools like ChatGPT or Perplexity. That last part was especially useful in places where most info is in Arabic, or scattered across local websites, and you first need to figure out what you should even be searching for.
Some costs were easy to predict because they’re fixed: official fees, documents, and parts of the insurance. But there were also expenses you simply can’t guess well in advance, like the border fees in Iraq when entering and leaving. In our Excel sheet, those were items that showed up only during the trip, which is why we marked them in red.
On the other hand, we managed to cut a few things down. Some costs dropped thanks to airline miles, and in other places we got a discount, a barter deal, or support through a partnership with a company or a specific person. It was great, but we didn’t build the whole plan around it. We treated it as a bonus, not the foundation of the budget.
The way we counted it was pretty simple: we split costs into categories and types, then tried to forecast them as close to real life as possible. Example: accommodation. Instead of one big number like “hotels for the whole trip,” we assigned a specific amount to each town, and then compared the plan with the real cost as we traveled. That way we could quickly see where the budget was on track and where it was starting to grow.
To keep things clean, we tracked everything in PLN, but our forecast used exchange rates “frozen” on the day we finished the budget (that was also when we sent the cost sheet to our employer as part of the passion sponsorship paperwork). The real numbers were counted after the bank processed each payment, based on the statement and the exchange rate from the payment day. That matters, because otherwise you mix planning with real currency conversions and it turns into a mess.
And yes, we logged every transaction. Literally every single one. It doesn’t sound very romantic, but it gives you peace of mind. You ride knowing how much room you still have, and after you’re back there’s no “wait… where did all the money go?” moment. It does cut a bit into spontaneity, but on a route like this we prefer control over stress.
One last note about accommodation, because it’s usually the biggest part of the budget. To estimate it properly, we mapped the route in a few variants: how long the ride would really take on a motorcycle, how many stops we’d need (fuel, food, bathroom breaks), and then we added a time buffer, around 20% for us. You don’t ride a bike like you drive a car, and an overly optimistic plan can ruin your day faster than running out of coffee.
We didn’t ride to the limit and we didn’t treat it like a “10 hours a day because we can” challenge. We changed our accommodation plan only once in Saudi Arabia. The heat quickly reminded us that a plan is a plan, but real conditions can shut it down fast.
Motorcycle-related fees
Before we get into fuel, servicing, and the rest of “life on the road”, it’s worth separating the costs that come purely from riding this specific bike, through countries where paperwork can eat both time and your nerves. This section is that package: things that are required or strongly recommended, so you don’t end up improvising at the border.
📄 Documents
In our case, the paperwork was a bit heavier than the usual “I grab the registration and I’m good to go.” The bike is on a lease, so we also had to deal with a notarial authorization and a bunch of legalizations (🔗 we have a separate post about that). If the bike was fully ours (registered to me or to Jadzia), the registration document would basically be enough.
In the spreadsheet we split it into three blocks, so we wouldn’t throw everything into one bag:
🛂 Carnet de Passage: This is basically a “passport” for the bike. In some countries it makes things much easier (and sometimes it’s simply required). For us it came to $283 (PLN 1,016.26), so a bit less than we planned.
📝 Certified document translations: These were translations for specific needs (one version for Turkey and another for Arabic-speaking countries). Total cost was $230 (PLN 825.30), also slightly under our forecast.
🏛️ Legalizations and stamps (notary / foreign ministry / embassies): This is the part that depends the most on one thing: is the bike fully yours, or not. For us it came to about $287 (PLN 1,028.66). The biggest difference was the UAE legalization. In real life it cost more than we expected.
To sum it up: the full paperwork package (CDP + translations + legalizations) came to around 💰 $800 (PLN 2,870). It was doable to plan and doable to handle, but if you’re doing a similar route on a leased bike, it’s smart to keep a buffer, not only for money, but also for time and your own sanity.
🛣️ Tolls
- Section total: $140 (PLN 503.70). Our forecast was $54 (PLN 192.49).
Road fees ended up higher than planned mainly because it wasn’t just “a vignette and a highway.” In Serbia we didn’t really include it properly in the forecast, in Turkey it was more predictable, but the biggest costs were border-related fees tied to the bike: Iraq (temporary import when entering Iraqi Kurdistan and when exiting federal Iraq into Kuwait) and Kuwait (an X-ray scan of the vehicle). In Saudi Arabia we also had to pay for parking in Ad-Diriyah in Riyadh.
And the UAE? In our plan we only included Salik, the toll system in Dubai. In the end we didn’t pay any Salik (we simply didn’t need to), but instead we had a few “bike-related” costs like formally closing the temporary import when leaving the UAE for Oman, and washing the bike… because it was so filthy it’s not even worth describing. 🧼😄
🛡️ Vehicle insurance
- Section total: $159 (PLN 571.56). We had forecasted $404 (PLN 1,450.00).
When it comes to vehicle insurance, in theory it’s easier to predict than “other” expenses, because you often have price ranges and fairly clear rules in each country. For us, this part ended up much lower than planned, but not because we found some magic deal. It was more that some things worked out in real life, and some things… didn’t go the way they should have.
🇹🇷 In Turkey we were thinking about getting full coverage (AC), but in the end we didn’t. We already had a Green Card, and I couldn’t find a solid option for AC that felt normal and reliable.
🇮🇶 In Iraq we handled it through Hamraa Insurance, so this part went smoothly.
🇰🇼 Kuwait was slightly above the “typical” amount, but this one we could still estimate before the trip.
🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia was the exception, and we’ll say it openly: we “saved money” in the worst way 😬. The app didn’t work properly, and in the end we rode without insurance. We do not recommend it and it’s definitely not a tip to copy. It’s more a warning that sometimes the system crashes at the worst possible moment, and you need a plan B.
🇴🇲 In Oman it went the other way. We got a bit overcharged 🙃, but with a chargeback we managed to get back around half of the amount, so in the end it didn’t hurt as much as it did at first.
🇦🇪 And the UAE: this one was actually pretty predictable.
⛽ Fuel
This is my little pride moment, because I really did it: I logged every single fill-up. Cash, card, everything. It ended up as 49 entries in the table, and thanks to that our fuel costs are counted properly, with no guessing.
- Section total: $624 (PLN 2,240.53). We had forecasted $653 (PLN 2,344.93).
- Total fuel used: 654.41 L (we had forecasted 656.83 L).
That works out to an average of about 13.4 liters per fill-up, and roughly $12.7 per fill-up (PLN 45.7), depending a lot on the country, of course.
Fun facts about numbers:
- Our most expensive liter was in 🇭🇺 Hungary: about $1.93 per liter (PLN 6.91/L)
- Our cheapest liter was in 🇰🇼 Kuwait: about $0.35 per liter (PLN 1.24/L)
- The biggest chunks of our fuel budget were: 🇹🇷 Turkey about $180 (PLN 645.21) and 🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia about $142 (PLN 509.72), simply because that’s where we did the most kilometers.
One more thing that’s a nice reference point: with an average consumption of about 6.5 L/100 km, those 654 liters mean roughly 10,000 km of riding. So fuel on this trip was about $6.13 per 100 km (PLN 22), or around $0.06 per km (PLN 0.22).
📦 Return transport of the motorcycle
- Section total: $1,381 (PLN 4,956.93). We had forecasted $975 (PLN 3,500.00).
When we were planning, we assumed the bike would fly back home. In 2024, when I did the research, the air transport itself (without all the airport-related extras) with Emirates was around 2,600 AED, so in our spreadsheet we put a safe about $975 (PLN 3,500) and figured the topic was covered.
But in real life it turned out differently. Once we started asking around and trying to turn it into a real “door to door” service, it quickly became clear that flying the bike back would cost roughly twice that 😵💫. So the decision was easy: we went with a container.
We ended up working with Pangaea Speed Dubai 🤝. They shipped the bike by container to Bremen in 🇩🇪 Germany for about $917 (PLN 3,291.60). On top of that we added “full” cargo insurance for about $216 (PLN 775.90), because with this kind of transport you really don’t want to save a couple hundred if the risk is losing a few thousand 😬.
That still left the last leg: Bremen → Poland. Shipping it to Poland would have been expensive, so in the end I decided: alright, I’ll ride it back. The trip cost about $248 (PLN 889.43).
And now the best part: December, around 1–2°C ❄️, Germany to Poland, riding the bike right after picking it up from shipping. Amazing idea, thank you, never again 😂. But at least it closed the whole thing, both logistically and financially.
Fees related to us
Alright, now let’s move to people costs, because the bike won’t ride itself, and on the way we still need places to sleep, food, and all the usual paperwork. And this is where it differs from the bike side: a lot of it depends on your travel style. You can cut the budget with cheaper stays, pay extra for a better location, do a “cheap day” and then a “treat yourself” day. We’ll break it down into clear blocks next.
🛂 Visas
Visas are one of those things that seem easy, because you can find the info online in five minutes. And usually that’s true… until someone changes the prices between your estimate and the moment you actually pay 😅.
- Section total: $580 (PLN 2,080.45). We had forecasted $412 (PLN 1,480.18).
The biggest hit was in 🇮🇶 Iraq. We expected $80 per person (because that was the visa price at the time), and then the government bumped it up to $160 per person. More than double. Amazing country, great people, great vibe… but that price jump was honestly a “come on… really?!” moment 🙃.
🇰🇼 Kuwait and 🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia were close to our forecast (even a little cheaper), so it wasn’t like the whole visa budget went off the rails.
🏨 Zakwaterowanie
You can really play with this part if you want. We went with a simple rule: before the trip, we booked all our stays with free cancellation (usually until the end of the day, sometimes until the day before). That gave us peace of mind, but still left us flexibility in case the route changed, the heat wiped us out, or we simply wanted to stay somewhere longer.
- Section total: $2,979 (PLN 10,694.27). We had forecasted $4,182 (PLN 15,010.00).
Sure, there were places where we went a bit over 😅. The best example is Al Ula and the caravan stay, which was the most expensive single night in the whole list. But in other locations we managed to go much cheaper, so overall it still balanced out.
The most interesting numbers:
- 💎 Most expensive stay: Caravan by Habitas Al-Ula – about $226 (PLN 810.80) for 1 night,
- 🪙 Cheapest stay: The First Collection Dubai Jumeirah Village Circle – about $53 (PLN 189.28) for 1 night,
- 📊 Average price per night: about $83 (PLN 297.00) per night.
And two quick tips from our experience:
- 🔎 Don’t stick to just one platform. We mixed Booking and Agoda, because in many places Agoda has the same properties cheaper or with better conditions. It’s worth comparing 2–3 options before you book.
- 💳 If you can, pay by card. Not because it looks nicer in your banking app, but for a practical reason: if the place doesn’t deliver what it promised (no breakfast, Wi-Fi doesn’t work, the standard is totally different, and staff shrug it off), you have a real path for a complaint and a chargeback.
📶 Connectivity
Internet on the road isn’t just for maps and posting a story. It’s also logistics, bookings, banking, quick info checks, and sometimes просто staying in touch with each other.
- Phone/internet (mobile): about $185 (PLN 663.10). We had forecasted about $305 (PLN 1,096.00).
What helped a lot was choosing eSIMs (or local SIM cards) for specific countries, not big “regional” packages. And a small real-life tip: don’t save money by having internet for just one person and hoping the other will “manage somehow.” On a trip like this, it’s better if everyone has their own SIM/eSIM. If you split up for a walk, lose each other in a crowd, or just separate for a bit, having contact saves time and nerves.
- Satellite communication: about $101 (PLN 362.40). We had forecasted about $42 (PLN 149.76).
Going over budget here was easy: we didn’t include the activation fee 🤦♂️, and well… it happened. On the bright side, it’s a kind of “one-time” cost. If we travel again next year and come back to the subscription within the allowed window (up to one year), we won’t have to activate everything from scratch.
🍽️ Meals
This was the moment when, after I put my estimates into the spreadsheet, Jadzia was ready to hang me 😄. But in the end… we made it. And even with some room to spare.
We used a very simple method: a fixed daily food budget for two people, then split it by country based on how many days we spent there. No guessing “maybe this will be cheaper, maybe that will be more expensive,” because when you’re planning you still can’t predict whether you’ll eat street food three times a day or end up in a proper restaurant with a coffee on top.
- Section total: $1,254 (PLN 4,501.88). We had forecasted $1,501 (PLN 5,388.60).
That’s an average of about $34 per day for two people (PLN 122, over 37 days). So in practice it’s around $17 per person per day (PLN 61), which is exactly the kind of level where you can eat normally, not live on gas station chips 😅.
What’s interesting is that the biggest “differences” didn’t come from places being expensive. It was more about how long we stayed in each country and how our days played out:
- in 🇷🇸 Serbia and 🇧🇬 Bulgaria we ended up a bit over the plan,
- 🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia and 🇴🇲 Oman were clearly below our forecast, because we could eat well without burning money,
- 🇦🇪 The UAE came out higher than we expected.
✈️ Return transportation
This part is our favorite example of how a plan can be totally different from reality, but this time in a good way 😄.
- Section total: about $438 (PLN 1,571.60). We had forecasted about $1,560 (PLN 5,600.00).
The route was DXB (Dubai International Airport) → FRA (Frankfurt Airport) → WAW (Warsaw Chopin Airport), and we used 18,000 Miles & More miles for the tickets 🎫. The about $438 (PLN 1,571.60) you see here are the extra fees, mainly for checked bags and airport charges and “taxes” you still have to pay even with an award ticket.
If you fly even a little and collect miles, a return like this can cut a nice chunk off your budget 💪.
🎟️ Atrakcje i inne wydatki
We didn’t try to price this “to the last cent” when planning, because it’s the most unpredictable part of the budget. It depends on the day, your mood, the weather, whether you stumble on a great place, and whether you feel like spending money on an experience or just everyday stuff like the metro, laundry, or coffee. That’s why we treated these two categories as a separate layer in our budget: added during the trip, but logged carefully so later we could see where the money actually went.
- Attractions: about $441 (PLN 1,583.00)
The biggest spend here was 🇹🇷 Turkey: about $319 (PLN 1,145.20), and the hot air balloon in Cappadocia alone was about $286 (PLN 1,027.71). The rest were the usual “on the way” tickets: museums, entry fees, viewpoints. Outside Turkey, attractions were more symbolic: 🇮🇶 Iraq about $39 (PLN 139.11) ( e.g. Babylon ), 🇰🇼 Kuwait about $20 (PLN 71.24) (Kuwait Towers), 🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia about $51 (PLN 183.83) (e.g. Maraya), 🇴🇲 Oman about $12 (PLN 43.67).
- Other: about $849 (PLN 3,046.35)
This is all the “life between the points”: public transport tickets, taxis, shopping, laundry, small fees, drinks, souvenirs, even paying for a toilet at a gas station. The highest totals were in 🇦🇪 the UAE: about $198 (PLN 709.88) and 🇴🇲 Oman: about $161 (PLN 578.50). It’s simply easier there to spend on small “little things” that don’t hurt one by one, but add up fast.
📌 Together, attractions + “other” came to about $1,290 (PLN 4,629.40). Over 37 days, that’s an average of about $35 per day (PLN 125) for everything that isn’t accommodation, food, fuel, visas, etc.
Czy było warto? Our summary
Of course it was worth it. And we’re saying that as people who, right up to departure day, had this little voice in our heads asking, “Are we sure this is a smart idea?” 😅 Because this isn’t the kind of decision where you “fly somewhere for a week and go home early if needed.” It was our first trip this long on the bike, and the first time we really handed control over to the route, the weather, and whatever happened along the way.
And honestly, we have huge respect for people who ride even further 🙌. A motorcycle trip to Australia? Sounds unreal, but people do it 😳. We’re also lucky that our jobs sometimes allow remote work, so we can fit travel into life a bit more easily. If you love traveling but work a physical job, it often looks very different. You have to fight for every day off, not “add an extra day or two” with a laptop. Even more respect for that.
Would we do something like this again? Yes. No hesitation ✅. Probably in a different direction, because we like discovering new places, but the format itself, long distance, many countries, a bit of improvisation, and a lot of real life on the road, is definitely staying with us.
For us, the Middle East was a great first choice for a trip like this. It wasn’t a jump into the total unknown. We already knew the region, we had a rough idea of the temperatures, the driving style, the vibe, and what we were signing up for. And that’s probably the biggest takeaway: your first big trip like this is much easier if you don’t start with the toughest destination on the planet, but with a place you already understand at least a little.
And one more important thing, because without it this finance post would feel incomplete: we wouldn’t have been able to do this trip in this form without the support of people around us ❤️.
- 🤝 First, partners and sponsors. We managed to reduce some costs thanks to partnerships, barter deals, and discounts. Sometimes it was specific gear, sometimes a service, sometimes simply a discount that made a real difference in the budget. And on top of that, there was passion sponsorship, the kind of support that isn’t “an ad for the sake of an ad”, but a real contribution to a project that makes sense, because it’s backed by a lot of work, planning, and then the full story from the road.
- 👨👩👧👦 Second, family. Not always in a direct way, not always like “here’s a transfer”, but often in practical ways: moral support and simply knowing someone’s cheering for you when you’re thousands of kilometers from home. You can’t really put a price on that, and without it, staying calm and focused on the road is a lot harder.
And the money? The spreadsheet, the numbers, the comparisons, that’s just a tool. What matters most is what stayed in our heads after it was all over. And that’s exactly why this trip was worth every single złoty 💛.
