How much weight do you carry?

Just wondering what sort of weight people carry, ive read from between 30 and 50 kgs, obviously 30 is better, but what on average does anyone ride with. Whats the weight of your gear adn the weight of your bike seperatley?

Yes, lighter is better, but it's mainly a matter of personal style. I suspect that about 30kg. is closer to what most experienced cycle tourers carry. The only time one could justify 50kg. would be when loaded down with days worth of food or water for crossing an extremely remote region. Basically there are three ways to go--

1. Traveling light with no camping gear. I went this way recently in South India, Thailand, and Cambodia where I knew that I could always get a room at low cost each night. Some people also travel this way in expensive countries, as a credit card weighs very little!

2. Light-weight camping gear (solo tent, down sleeping bag, superlight sleeping pad) is a good compromise if occasionally venturing into more remote areas when one might wish or need to camp, but won't be cooking. I usually travel this way in Asia. I will toss in a water filter when traveling in the Himalaya or Tibetan Plateau.

3. Full camping gear (with stove & pot) works best in very remote regions or if traveling in expensive regions or if one simply likes to camp and cook at the end of most days. I go this style in places like Europe, USA, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.

Bike - 13kg
Panniers - 3kg
Contents all up - 10kg
Full camping extra - 6kg.
Over check in scales.

I'm riding across France at the moment with less than 10kg of luggage. Not sure exactly what it weighs though. In hot countries I take even less less.

I'll be taking a lot more to Tibet this summer - camping gear and a fair amount of food.

For the rock bottom weight, take mine: bicycle 10 kg, gear 8 kg (on average), water and food 3 kg max. All summed up: 21 kg.

My girlfriend and I are biking through Mexico at the moment (heading south, hoping to make it to Patagonia). Our bikes are probably around 10 kg, and the gear somewhere between 30-40 kg each, depending on how loaded we are with food and water. We tend to be conservative though...although we are spending most time in hotels and eating out, we have gear for camping and cooking. Also lots of other non-essential items (books, etc).

From billweir's list above, I'd say you could do options 1, 2, or 3 in Mexico, depending on where you are, and how far you want to ride in a day. There are some places where you'll find places to stay or eat every 30 km or less, there are others like parts of Baja California where there's nothing for stretches of over 100 km.

When we cycled from Bangkok, Thailand to Lhasa, Tibet, my luggage is around 35 - 40kg, while my crazy partner carried around 70kg! I mean the weight of the stuff inside, not including the bike or rack or pannier bag.

We have:

Notebook computer
Spotlight
Batteries for spotlight
tent
stove
full of gasoline
about 9L of water... (we also have a water filter, but my partner insisted to carry all the water and he's lazy to pump it on the road.)
a teddy bear
a monkey doll
a lot of AA and AAA batteries
two chargers for AA/AAA batt, one quick charge (4 hrs), one super quick charge (15 min)
solar cell panel (but never use)
a full set of bicycle repairment kits (10kg)
therm-a-rest
fresh food (sometimes we carried about 5kg of chickens... just in case)
lots of Vietnamese coffee
a full first-aid kit (another 5kg!)

I still don't understand why we need to carry so many stuff, while we forgot to buy a thick sleeping bag! Big mistake, it's almost fatal!

I'm similar to iik... 10kg for the bike, 10-15kg for the gear (depending on the country and season), but 0kg of food and 0kg of water (usually) = 20-25kg.