15.08.10

The program for the day was the towns annual off road festival, which saw 4WDs and motocross bikes race around a track

While having a late afternoon lunch, Igor’s phone rang. One of his biking friends had spotted a new bike in town – a KTM 990 Adventure. I knew immediately who it was. I had been in contact with Joe Pichler for some time and had recommended he take the Vilyuisky Trakt via Mirny on his ride to Magadan this year. For those that don’t know him, Joe Pichler is KTM’s Adventure riding guru. The bulk of the promotional material for the Adventure side of KTM’s business comes from Joe and his wife Renate. For more detail see www.josef-pichler.at.

We went straight round to the hotel and sure enough parked in front of it was Joe’s Adventure. When Joe emerged from the shower we took his bike round to Igor’s office parking yard for a wash. Igor’s yard now was housing a Moto Morini, a KTM 990 Adventure R, and KTM 690 Enduro R and a BMW X-Challenge.

A day and half of ‘War Stories’ followed with Joe and I swapping fotos and tales of adventure motorcycling.

– – –

16.08.10

Igor began the afternoon toiling away for several hours on Sherri Jo’s tent. Over 2 hours of toil later in what was described by SJ as ‘surgery’, Igor had fixed a broken valve on the tent. SJ has a tent with inflatable ‘poles’ … if they don’t inflate, then the tent is not a tent. And our one and only night camping on the Old Summer Road had shown us that one of her two inflatable poles did not inflate. Igor of course just volunteered his time to fix this. He did, after all, have a business to run. He deals in home renovation supplies. Business seems to be going well. He has a very modern apartment in the centre of Mirny and a brand new 2010 model Moto Morini Corsaro 1200 – one of the most expensive bikes money can buy. But as is typically Russian, everything else gets put on hold to help a fellow motorcyclist passing through.

My bike also needed the steering head bearings examined … they felt notchy. By now a team of Mirny bikers had gathered to check out the bike show in Igor’s office yard. Joe, Igor and I were also joined by Big Igor, the towns motocross ‘dude’ and Ilya, our Africa Twin equipped main contact in Mirny. Ilya turned up with his new girlfriend, another Masha:

With half a dozen bikers around, the front end of the bike was dropped in no time and an inspection of the bearings showed they were ok. We cleaned them up a bit, added some more grease and re packed them and they felt 95% better.

– – –

17.08.10

I had arranged a day trip for SJ and I to an Evenki village a couple of hours travel away from Mirny. When Joe and Renate arrived in town I invited them to join us, and they decided to stay a couple of days in Mirny and do just that. We left early in the morning. The Evenki are one of the native peoples of Yakutia, traditionally reindeer herders, with relatively little contact with the outside world as most live in remote villages and communities not served by summer roads.

To get there the three bikes had to ride 80km north-east from Mirny to a hydro-electric plant at the town of Svetly, on the Vilyui River. From there we would travel by boat 35km downriver to the Evenki village of Syuldyukar. I had no idea what we would find there – going to Evenki villages was virgin territory for me.

The first thing that struck me about Syuldyukar was how normal it was. There was piped hot water in town, electricity, telephone lines, streetlighting and a post office. I was half expecting to see tee-pees and reindeer everywhere.

The next thing that caught our eye was an amazing home made trike. I quizzed the owner to find out more about it.

It’s used for hunting in Spring and Autumn when the ground is too boggy for anything else. In summer they can use 4WDs and in winter they use snowmobiles … but when its mud city, they fit 4 guys onto the trike and head out with their rifles for a couple of weeks of hunting.

It has a 350cc Izh 2 stroke engine, a UAZ 4WD rear axle and home made bodywork. It was incredibly cool. We loved it.

We were given a tour of the town by the local administration lady, who took us to their Evenki statue. I believe it depicts an Evenki man and woman being blessed by the goddess of the earth.

We were accompanied on our walk around the village by this handsome Siberian Husky:

As we approached the village cultural centre and museum, a group of the towns elders invited us in … blessing us beforehand:

While this community no longer herds reindeer, it was clear that their heritage was all about the reindeer. The clothes in the museum were all reindeer skin, the teepees were reindeer hide and even their modern clothing featured the reindeer emblem.

Once our museum visit was over, we were invited to sign the guestbook. They proudly boasted an Englishman had been here before. I looked up the appropriate entry in the guest book. It was only 7 entries back. The Financial Times Moscow correspondent had been here in 2002.

After lunch we headed back to the waterfront, after stopping to check out a new wooden house being built, completely from materials harvested from forests nearby.

A couple of kids were practising their tepee making techniques:

One of them clearly knew his bikes. Joe had to decline a chance to photograph him!

We headed back to Mirny for more beers and war stories.

– – –

18.08.10

We had a few final things to sort out in Mirny before we departed. Igor had been checking with contacts in Lensk to find out when the next barge left for down south. There was nothing in the next day or so, so we decided to get everything else done in Mirny. SJ had problems with her panniers falling off, so Igor remounted the clamps.

We both had problems with water and dust damaging the heated grips controllers, and this time it was a chance to call another old Mirny contact, the Andrei who had diagnosed and temporarily fixed my electrical starter problems last year.

Andrei also just donated his time, came around and pulled apart both controllers, on both bikes, found the faults, fixed them and sealed everything back up. I am in awe of this guy. He is the ultimate Mr Fixit. And he always has a huge smile on his face. One of these days I am going to do a tour and take him along as support. Probably the most useful and cheerful guy I have ever met.

We even squeezed in a radio and newspaper interview:

– – –

19.08.10

Joe and Renate left town early, headed for Suntar, Nyurba, Vilyuisk and Yakutsk, before their final destination around September 5th – Magadan. I had presented him with a Road of Bones jacket badge in advance. It was contrary to my normal rule of not releasing them ‘in advance’ but Joe is a pro. He will get the job done.

We got the call we had been waiting for … a barge was leaving Lensk for Ust Kut tomorrow morning and we needed to be there about 8am. It meant waking up at 3am and riding thru the early morning cold and darkness for 4 hours or so. But we do what we have to do. We finished up all the loose ends in Mirny, including me visiting mechanic Andrei (another contact from last year) and trying to sort a slight oil leak on my generator cover (turns out to have been a microscopic crack that we had to epoxy weld), and went to sleep early. We slept knowing every little niggly thing with the bikes that had developed on the Road of Bones and Vilyuisky Trakt had been sorted in Mirny. Loads of little jobs that require people more skilled than ourselves to sort out.