29.08.09

Tony and Terry checked into the Lena Hotel in downtown ust Kut.  I had ridden ahead of them to get to Ust Kut in time to sort out a boat trip back to Lensk.

I still harboured a burning ambition to get to the Arctic Circle in Asia.  Tony and Terry were short on time and had to head back to the UK, but I thought I just had enough time before the seasons changed to try one more time to get North from Udachny.

A few handshakes and hugs could never be enough to say farewell to the two guys who have partnered me along this BAM Road odyssey.  Tony has been with me for almost 3 months … initially just planning to ride Altai, Tuva and Lake Baikal with me over 3 weeks, but that grew into 3 months across some of the wildest roads in Siberia.  I am unsure how it will feel to be riding without Tony.  It was in Central Asia the last time I set out on a day’s ride without waking up Tony first.  I dont think I have met a guy with such understated determination.  No matter how tough things got, Tony just put his head down and got the job done.  What he lacked in technique he made up for in abundance with balls.  The guy is all about balls.  If you see him, offer to shake his balls!

Terry has been a different asset on the BAM road.  Apart from his ability to have a laugh, his vast off road riding experience going back about as long as I have been alive, was put to good effect on the tough BAM road.  When the going got really tough it was great to send in Terry up front to show the best line though.  I learned a lot about line picking from watching Terry carve up the toughest tracks.  Terry was the first person we turned to if anything mechanical or technical was amiss.  ‘Terry, what do you reckon?’.  Terry and I rode at similar tempos and for long stretches it was just Terry and I riding together, followed by a wait for Tony.

I will really miss those guys.  In 2 weeks or so, they will be back in England, and I will be where they are now.  Maybe I am mad to head up to Udachny again.

I loaded the bike onto the boat for Lensk at another obscure loading point.  As it happened, the boat had to dock briefly at the main river port anyway, next to the Lena Hotel.  I called the guys and told them to bring a few beers down to the river.  We clinked beer bottles for the last time down on the shores of the Lena, and my boat pulled away into the darkness, set for 1000 km on the Lena.

– – –

30.08 – 31.08 – 01.09.09

I shared a 4 berth room on the boat with Valeri, and old truck driver from Lensk.  He was clean, didnt drink or smoke, and was about as good a companion as I could have hoped for.

I had been told the ride to Lensk would be two days,  Valeri had been told a day and a half.  A couple of hours out of Ust Kut and it was apparent that was not going to happen.  The engines shut down and the boot moored in the river about midnight.  When I awoke in the morning, we had not moved.  We were still just 45km from Ust Kut.  It was almost midday before the engines fired up again.  We had thought the boat had stopped due to fog last night, but there had be no fog since early in the morning. It was apparent there was a bit of engine repair and maintenance going on.  I noted only one propeller was turning and when the boat was moving we were making about 17-20 km/h … about the same as the barge had done two months earlier.  So I assumed we would also take about 3 days for the journey.

The boat had warm showers for a few hours each day and a galley, where hot meals were prepared 3 times a day.  That was a big improvement on the barge.  In theory the barge could have cost us about 9000 rubles each back in July … the price for vehicles was 4000 rubles per metre of length.  But they didnt know how to account for motorcycles as they are not full width vehicles.  I guess they could have charged us half the regular price per metre, but in the end they charged us nothing, and we took the barge from Ust Kut to Lensk for free.  The boat I was on now, the ‘Moskovsky 11’ charged 8000 rubles (180 EUR) per passenger for the journey (which included a cabin) … and 6000 for the motorcycle, which was fitting neatly on the front deck of the boat.

I have been in touch with Arnaud, the Frenchman we met in Vladivostok.  Arnaud went up to Magadan and rode to Yakutsk.  He is planning to ride to Lensk and we will probably try and take the return ferry together from Lensk to Ust Kut in about a week.

while beached in Kirensk to pick up a few passengers, I briefly fired up the laptop internet connection and had a chat with Mac Swinarski.  He is back in Poland after his epic ride to Anadyr.

This year is a turning into a great year for horizon widening in Siberia.  All sorts of new possibilities have opened up.  Routes have been mapped and documented.  Mac was telling me even the  locals in Anadyr know nothing about the perfectly decent new roads he found to their city.  Only a handful of people know anything about the roads – usually the truck drivers that regularly drive them in their 6WD trucks – and they typically dont have internet.  We found the same with the BAM road and Vilyuisky Trakt … There was only one guy who could tell us the Vilyuisky Trakt was definately do-able in its entirity, and that was Andrei the mechanic in Mirny.

Most of the locals you ask en route don’t have a clue and know only about the area within about an hour or two’s drive away from where they are. The two Moscow guys we met adventuing across the country in their wazzik (Road of Bones) had expressed great surprise that we had done the Vilyuisky Trakt.  They had been been researching Russian 4WD sites for months, and found nothing to suggest it was possible.

– – –

Back to life on the river … A day later, and our boat docked in Vitim, where the Vitim River joins the Lena.  Vitim is a real boom town around here.  There is a big plan to develop oil and gas fields about 170 km ‘inland’ and Vitim will be the centre of logistics for that.  The next few years will see the town grow from a small service port to one of the key cities on the Lena, the same way Lensk grew dramatically to service the diamond towns of Mirny, Almazny, Aikhal, Udachny and Anabar several decades ago.

Valeri my cabin mate was telling me that if it werent for the crisis they would have started building the planned road between Lensk and Vitim already.  Watch out for that one in the next few years.  Already there is a road from the BAM town of Nebel to Kirensk on the Lena, so in a couple of years you would need a boat only from Kirensk to Vitim.  In about 6-7 years, you wont need the boat at all to go from Ust Kut to Lensk as there should be a road all the way.  (Actually you dont need a boat now – you can go all the way the long way round via Tynda and Yakutsk.)  Plans are to link Ust Kut with the new oil and gas fields by road, which will already be linked to Lensk via Vitim.

– – –

02.09.09

About 10am, after 3.5 days on the river, the boat docked in Lensk and I unloaded my bags and then the bike.  I had a big day ahead of me.  I was going to try and get to Udachny, 770km away, all on dirt roads, by the end of the day.  If I made it, it would be the biggest day of the trip in terms of mileage.  I had wasted enough time on the boat and had itchy feet.  Too much time sitting and thinking, without any doing.

I found a fuel station and hit the road.  It was 10:20 when I left Lensk.  I’d had plenty to eat on the boat over the last few days so breakfast was not required.  I would go straight through to Mirny 240 km away.

The road from Lensk to Mirny was in truly excellent condition.  Its one of the finest dirt roads I have ever ridden.  I sat on 110 km/h the whole way, but if I didnt have mousse in my front tyre and gearing for low speed via my front sprocket, I would have done most of the road at 130.  I stopped on for photographs.  The seasons were changing up here already and the trees were bursting with colour.

I fuelled up again on the southern edge of Mirny.  I didnt need to – I would fuel up at Chernyshevsky 100 km further up the road too, but there the price would be a lot higher and the quality less reliable.  Better to get as much as possible while in Mirny.  I sped on to Andrei’s workshop, our trusty mechanic from 2 months ago, arriving at 12:45.  I had texted him I was on my way as I left Lensk, but it was a quiet day in the workshop and he was away.  I stripped the bags off the bike and just took a couple of much lightened bags – leaving two bags at Andrei’s to collect on my return.

I stopped at the Mirny market place to pick up some Samsa’s for the trip North.  Andrei had shown me this little shop, a personal favorite, 2 months ago, and remembered the samsa’s were the best I had eaten in Russia.  I took the liberty with time of eating one.  I pulled out of Mirny just before 2pm.  It would be a 6-7 hour ride to Udachny, 530 km away, assuming I stopped only for fuel along the way.

The road from Mirny to Chernyshevsky is not as good as the Lensk – Mirny section of the Anabar Road, and party out of respect for the road and partly because I wanted to get accustomed to riding at 90 km/h for the section North of Chernyshevsky to conserve fuel, I slowed to 90 km/h for the 105km to Chernyshevsky.  I topped up with 5 litres of fuel there.  Now I was maxxed out on fuel.  Both tanks dripping fuel onto the pavement.  22 litres ready to burn.

Last time we went up from Chernyshevsky, both Tony and I had both burned more fuel than expected … we had a strong headwind the whole way and rode at 110 km/h … which probably explains it.  But I ran out before Aikhal, which is still 65 km short of Udachny, and relied on Tony going ahead to get me 5 litres.  This time I wanted to go straight thru to Udachny. There wasnt too much wind about and I was going to try and stick to the more economical speed of 90 km/h by the GPS … which is about 96 km/h on my speedo.

The usual collection of ‘Jacksons’ (terminology courtesy of the brothers Vince) stopped me to ask the usual question in Chernyshevsky when I refuelled and then stopped at the shop for a litre of liquid refreshment, but I brushed them aside.  I was on a mission.  I had now done about 350 km and had 420 still to go – non stop.  I didnt know when it got dark this far North at this time of year, but I was only 3 weeks from the equinox … I guessed it would be about 8pm.  I had no time to spare if I wanted to not risk riding in the dark.

Headphones were blaring and I just concentrated on the surface of the road ahead.  There had clearly been rain around and some patches of the road were moist, tho so far no rain had touched me today.  The first point of interest would be the village of Morkoka.  It’s the only inhabited place between Aikhal and Chernyshevsky.  It has about half a dozen buildings, a fuel station that seems to only sell diesel (though I would try again to buy petrol when I got there) and I have been told a cafe with rooms.

When I got there, I asked a stopped truck driver where the cafe was.  It seems a silly question for someone in the west, but in the more remote parts of Russia, every building and every door looks the same.  None offer a hint of what is behind each one.  Places like Morkoka dont even bother with signs.  There are no visitors here – Just the regular truck drivers who know where everything is. I marked the location of the cafe on my GPS and moved on to the fuel station.

I am compiling a list of waypoints of all the cafes, fuel stations, hotels, water hazards etc I have used, crossed or even seen in off the beaten track Siberia.  I think that would be useful.  No one needs a guide or guide book if you already know where the fuel, cafes and hotels are.

As I suspected, the fuel station refused to sell me fuel – mentioned something about needing paperwork, coupons or something like that to buy here.  I looked inside my tanks to guess how much fuel I had left.  My economy looked good.  I estimated at current consumption I would get to Udachny with 2-3 litres to spare.

It was always a risk, now that I was travelling alone.  When I was with Tony we could take these risks.  If one person ran out of fuel, the other could go ahead with the fuel canister.  Tony had been Tsar of the spare fuel canister … mainly from necessity.  Terry and I both had 22 litres of capacity, due to modifications, but Tony had just the stock 17 litre tank.  This was however, compensated with a old 5 litre oil container found by the side of the road, at a cost of zero rubles / dollars / euro / sterling. By strap