Originally Posted by dunkleosteus

One thing you can do, like I did, is buy a rigid mountain bike designed around bikepacking but with a suspension-corrected fork and look for someone selling a nice sus fork taken off a new bike. I'm riding a surly karate monkey with a nice, basically new fork I got on pinkbike. The total cost was well within your budget. There's a nice list of other options here h t t p s://bikepacking.com/index/rigid-steel-off-road-touring-bikes/ .