The Guinness Book of World Records has officially accepted our application for the record for longest motorcycle in a single country.

The Guinness website’s official description of our record:

The longest journey by motorcycle in a single country is 33,357.15 km (20,727.13 miles) and was achieved by Buck Perley (USA) and Amy Mathieson (UK) who rode throughout China from 19 July to 11 December 2013. The duo’s journey took 146 days and took them through all of China’s provinces. The motorcycle used was a Chinese CFMOTO CF650-TR.

(A quick note on the discrepancy between our total as posted on the homepage and the record as recognized by Guinness. Because Guinness has to have proof of each kilometer of the trip they needed to take the total amount as recorded by our GPS rather than the odometer. Unfortunately due to tunnels, equipment malfunctions, and forgetting occasionally to turn on the GPS, our GPS reading was a bit short of our odometer)

We are both very excited and honored to have our record attempt accepted by Guinness. It was an amazing journey, one that took us from the 3rd lowest inland place on earth up to the Himalayas at Everest Base Camp. We experienced every type of climate, from the windy grass plains of Inner Mongolia to the dry heat of the Xinjiang desert, from freezing temperatures in the Tibetan plateau to the lush sub-tropics of southern China. We also met some amazing people and made some life-long friends along the way.

We would also like to thank all the people that helped to make this possible. All of our partners that gave support for The Great Ride and our friends and family back home. In particular, thank you to Du Fangci, Ying Mathieson (from ACA Publishing), Li Qiang, Tim Mathieson, Oliver Blockland (from KOA Group), Chelsea Eakin, John Hanrahan (from Snap Adventures), Tibet Travel and all the people at CFMoto and Free Lunch for Children.

What’s Next?

The riding may be over but the adventure of The Great Ride isn’t quite yet done. Guinness is sending us the official record certificate, so we’ll post some pictures once we get that (make sure to follow us on Facebook for up to the minute updates on that). We’ve also been very pleased with the progress of our fundraising efforts, even though we haven’t quite made it to our goal of $19.5k/¥120k to support two schools for a full year. If you haven’t yet, head on over to our Donate Page to learn more about the charity and what you can do to help.

Finally, while on the road for those 146 days we built up quite a bit of material, written, photographed, and filmed. We’d really like to use and expand on all this material to try and share this trip with a wider audience; what we learned about China, the adventures we had, the people we met, and all the amazing things we saw. So stay tuned for further news on The Great Ride of China book and documentary!