31.08 – 05.09.10

Irkutsk … I had a few missions to achieve:  My own bike needed two small oil leaks fixed before I hit Mongolia, and I needed a Mongolian visa.  I dropped my passport off at the Mongolian consulate and headed down to the main bike joint in the city and spoke to the mechanic.  The oil leaks looked pretty straight forward.  One was small seepage from the gear selector shaft … I had that at the start of this trip and had not bothered doing anything about it yet … I had the spare seal with me.  The other was a small leak from the camshaft cover gasket.  They were minor, and in many cases I would have ignored them.  But I was heading into Mongolia and I wanted to get the bike in perfect mechanical condition.  He promised to have those things fixed by the end of the 1^st September so I could head off on the morning of the 2^nd.  That co-incided with when my Mongolian visa would be ready.

I did a number of smaller maintenance jobs on the bike and checked as many bolts as I could.  A chance meeting with someone flying to London meant I had a quick edit of my entire luggage and found 4 kgs to send home.  The bike was in great shape and lighter than ever.

I left Irkutsk early on the morning of the 2^nd September and got only 50km down the road when I noticed oil pissing out of the engine and all over my boots.  None came out when idling so I crawled back to Irkutsk at 30 km/h.  It was the cam cover gasket again.

I found the mechanic and he apologised profusely, promising to fix it straight away.  But we also had one other problem.  My starter button, had died.  Several attempts to fix it with a new spring were just resulting in the spring shorting out and melting the plastic button.  Eventually I told the mechanic to stop trying to fix it.  Buy a new button and dash mount it.

By the evening of the 3^rd, the bike was again ready, new starter button and all.  I had spent half a day blasting it with petrol to get it clean again.  Over a litre of oil had come out 2 days ago and had got everywhere.

Only the weather forecast for the 4^th and 5^th September were terrible.  Arctic conditions were forecast, night time temperatures below zero and even the possibility of the first snow of the season in Irkutsk.  It was due to return to sunshine and slightly warmer temperatures by Monday.  I decided to wait.  This would really stress my plans.  I had to get to Novosibirsk by the 15^th of September.  But I wasn’t going to go the 2000km route on the highway, and I wasn’t even going to do a 4000km route via Mongolia Ulan Ude and Ulaan Baatar.  I had a number of other objectives:

(1) to drink the muddy waters of the Baljuna

(2) to enter Mongolia at the only land border crossing open to foreigners that I had not yet been through – Ereentsav, thus completing a full set of Mongolian crossings.

(3) cross Mongolia not just form Ulaanbaatar to the west, but fully from East to West … via Choibalsan in the east and Olgiy in the west.

This route would be over 5500 km.  By leaving on the 6^th of September, I knew I would have to average over 600km a day to do it in 9 days.  Considering over half that distance would be in Mongolia, it was really squeezing things down to the wire.  There would be no possibility to fix anything that went wrong, almost no time for maintenance … I had to wake up, ride hard, sleep – stopping only for fuel and food.  There would be no time for camping … takes too much time both in the evenings (you have to stop before it gets dark) and in the morning (you have to pack everything up).  Some days would probably require me having to ride into the darkness.

I spent my last day in Irkutsk on a cold ride down to Listvyanka, by Lake Baikal, with a local café waitress.  It didn’t get above 6C (43F) all day.

– – –

06.09.10

I woke early at Nina’s place in Irkutsk and headed into the kitchen.  Nina made me a cup of tea and told me she just heard on the radio it was -1C at the airport.  We looked at the thermometer outside her kitchen window.  It was more optimistic.  It read +3C.  I shivered at the thought, then drank my tea and packed my bags, before wheeling the bike out of the garage.  By the time I was all loaded up and moving it was 9am.  There was a lot of ground to cover today so I threw caution to the wind and zoomed down a bus street.  A policeman in the street saw me but it was too late.  I was past him by the time his baton was out.  You cant wave down a guy from his rear view mirror.  We both knew I had made it past and in my rear view mirror I saw him turn around and focus on the next batch of oncoming vehicles.

In just over an hour I made it to Kultuk, on the Western corner of Lake Baikal, and stopped to refuel.  My week in Irkutsk plus the run out to Listvyanka and back had used most of the fuel I had been carrying.  I put my headphones in and went into cruise mode … hours passed, as did Lake Baikal, and by 2pm I was on the outskirts of Ulan Ude.  I had done 450km so far.  I continued on.

30 km beyond UU, I stopped again to refuel and grab some lunch.  There was over 600 km still to go to Chita, my target for the day.  It was an optimistic target for sure. 1100 km from Irkutsk.  It should be the first time I have ridden over 1000km in a day outside of the western world.  But I needed to be optimistic and I needed to cover a lot of ground.

My route from Irkutsk to Novosibirsk, via Borzya and Choibalsan, would be somewhere around 5500 km – over 3000 of those in Mongolia.   My flight out of Novosibirsk was for the morning of the 16^th September.  I had just over 9 days to get from Irkutsk to Novosibirsk … I needed to average close to 600 km a day … when you consider over half the distance to be travelled would be in Mongolia, it was a real stretch.  But there were things I really wanted to do and see that made this route so compelling for me.  I had to go for it.

The sun set about 8:10pm.  By 8:40 it was fully dark.  I still had 130km to go to Ulan Ude.  I don’t have any qualms about riding at night, because my lights are fantastic.  The only thing I do worry about is tiredness.  I stopped for some dinner at a roadside café.  I rode for another hour and 30km short of Ulan Ude I spotted a big truckers motel.  I had planned to go into the centre of town but it would be more expensive there.  This place looked new and in good condition.

The only reason for me to go into the centre was no longer valid.  There was a chance to catch up with Mick and his Compass Expeditions trip.  I noted last night they had ridden from Ulan Ude to Chita yesterday.  It was a big day by tour standards – well over 600km.  I thought they might even have a rest day, but I got a text from a man watching their spot tracker that Mick had hit the road in the morning so was no longer in Chita.  Which meant I had no reason to go into the centre.  So I took a room in the truckers motel for 600 rubles, grabbed a beer and unwound from my 1065km day.

– – –

07.09.10

By 08:30 I was ready to hit the road.  While yesterday was no more than a ferry stage for me, today I started doing things I actually wanted to do.  Breakfast at the hotel delayed me.  It took 15 minutes – something I normally wouldn’t worry about, but now, for the next 8 days, every minute counted, and I felt frustrated at the slow omelette delivery.

I had a look at the catalogue of waypoints and routes I have been collating and it appears very few western bikers if any have turned right at Chita.  The Aginsky Trakt heads south east from Chita towards the Chinese Manchurian border, and the road follows the Trans Manchurian train route.

After breakfast, I rode through the early morning Chita traffic and headed out on the Aginsky Trakt.  After an hour I turned off it.  I had a little diversion planned.  There was something I needed to do before I continued on to the Mongolian border.

Those who are familiar with the Genghis Khan story will know the significance of Baljuna.  For those who are not, the story goes something like this:

In 1203, a ‘triumvirate’ of Temujin (aka Genghis Khan), his childhood friend Jamukha and Toghril, the Ong Khan, had won a lot battles and now dominated the Mongolian political landscape.  Jamukha and Genghis had gained their power under the sponsorship of the Ong Khan and had risen rapidly to become the top military commanders, with huge followings of their own.

Only one of Jamukha or Temujin could succeed the aging Ong Khan and Jamukha acted to betray his childhood friend.  He convinced the Ong Khan that Temujin was plotting a coup, and Jamukha and the Ong Khan planned an ambush of Temujin by using a wedding as a ruse.  Temujin attended only accompanied by a small guard of his closest guards and soldiers and was caught off guard by the ambush, his troops routed and he had to flee for his life.  He and the other survivors rode north east for several days non stop to escape their pursuers (a mongol warrior on a horse could cover over 200km in a day).  Where they finally stopped was at a small lake called Baljuna.  It was here at Baljuna that they recovered.  The future Genghis Khan was so impressed with the loyalty of the men who stayed with him when all seemed lost that he pledged to share everything with those who had ridden with him to Baljuna.  It would have been far simpler for those men to defect to Jamukha, now that he appeared to be the future leader of all Mongolia.  Those men who rode to Baljuna with Temujin (said to be 19 assorted military and tribal representatives consisting of Muslims, Buddhists, Christians and the more traditional shamanists) in turn pledged eternal loyalty to Temujin.

The Baljuna Covenant was sealed by drinking the muddy waters of the Baljuna.  It bonded the fate of the 20 men together for life.

Those who drank the waters became known as the Baljuntu, and were always considered the exalted ones after that time.  The Baljuntu were the equivalent of the 12 apostles.

It was one of the low points in the career of Genghis Khan, but it was also a key turning point.  After Baljuna, Temujin was undefeatable.  The next year 1204, he had regrouped, roused his scattered supporters, had the Ong Khan murdered, and had defeated Jamukha in battle.  In 1206 he was crowned “Genghis Khan”, universal leader, the first man in Mongolian history to lead the entire unified tribal nation.  With no more internal battles to be fought he was able to turn his attentions and his men’s fighting skills outwards … and the rest, as they say, is history.  But without Baljuna, it would all have been very different.  But for the loyalty of his men, he could have been back to nothing.  The Baljuna Covenant came to mean everything.

I have only ever read of one credible attempt to locate Baljuna.  After considerable effort to make sure names, distances, directions and descriptions correlated, and after visiting many potential sites, the researcher concluded Baljuna is the muddy lake just south of the village of Balzeno, in Aga-Buryatia, about 20 km south of the town of Kurort-Darasun.

I headed for the lake at Balzeno, found it and took the bike down to the shore.  The waters were indeed muddy – just as they should be.  I spent 15 minutes reflecting on the Baljuna legend, imagining the exhausted men fleeing the ambush back in Mongolia.  Then I walked through the sloppy muddy shores into ankle deep water and drank from the Baljuna myself.

As I prepared to go, I spotted a blue silk sash that a local Buryat had tied around a bush by the shore.  These are a sign of respect that Buryats and Mongols tie blue material to something to gain the blessings of the blue sky, heaven.   The silk was too long and a yard of the material was muddied all over the ground.  I took out my pocket knife and cut it, so that it didn’t dangle in the mud.  I looked around for another place to tie the yard I had cut, then I hit on the idea of tying it to my bike.  Not only will I then have a lucky blue cloth with me, but it will be a special blue cloth, muddied by the Baljuna itself.

I rode off feeling up for a challenge.  I had the blue sky with me now.  A quick check of my map showed a short cut between Kurort-Darasun and Aginskoye, the capital of Aga-Buryatia.  I decided to take it.

I shouldn’t have.  While most of the track was a blast, there was one stretch, about 25km long, that took me almost an hour.  It was a straight enduro track.  Six inche tree roots everywhere, loads of mud, trees fallen across the track.  I barely got out of first gear.  Clutching loads, engine fan running loads.  It’s just not my cup of tea.  Not on a bike carrying a spare tyre.  I had decided to carry Sherri Jo’s discarded Desert with me to Mongolia.  I would fit it in UB.  I had new tyres waiting for me in Irkutsk, but they werent Deserts …  I had no time for problems in Mongolia so going with 2/3 worn Deserts was a better choice than brand new Korean knobblies.

I swore my way through and reached a village … from then on it was fast double track … and after the next village a full speed graded road.  By Aginskoye, I was back on asphalt.  Aginskoye struck me as very new modern kind of place.  The Buryats have a bunch of regions … They have their own republic just next door, and adjacent to the Buryat Republic are Irkutsk Oblast and Zabaikalsky Krai … both contain autonomous Buryat sections.

Further on down the road, once I have left Aga-Buryatia, I passed the towns of Mirnaya and Bezrechnaya … both were full of crumbling soviet buildings.  I was getting close to the Chinese border now, and I assumed they were military facilities built in the 60s and 70s when Soviet relations with China were particularly bad.

I refuelled at Borzya.  The locals all asked me if I was going to China.  There are two borders available thru Borzya, the Chinese Manchurian border, which is obviously the main game in town, and a quiet little outpost of a border with Mongolia.  I turned right soon after refuelling and headed for the Mongolian border, 80 km away.

This border crossing was the other reason I had to make this long winded route eastwards, when I really needed to be heading westwards.  The first was spiritual – I needed to drink the muddy waters of the Baljuna, the second was I wanted a full set of Mongolian border crossings.

There are only 5 land borders open to foreigners in Mongolia (at this time); 4 of then road borders and one rail border.  They are:  Dzamin Uud – Erenhot (China), Altanbulag – Kyakhta (Russia), Tsagaannuur – Tashanta (Russia), Sukhbaatar – Naushki (rail only) and the final one is Ereentsav – Solovyovsk (Russia).  I had at various times crossed all of them with my bike … including the rail only crossing, which I crossed in a freight wagon, with my bike, in the middle of a cold September night in 1994 … except for one.   It was the one border crossing in the far north east corner of Mongolia that still eluded me; Ereentsav – Solovyovsk.

Halfway between Borzya and Solovyovsk, the asphalt ran out.  I reached Solovyevsk but it was nothing like any other Russian border town I have seen …at least not in the last 10 years.  Border towns tend to be buzzy places with lots of wheelers and dealers, cafes full of truck drivers etc.  This place was a town with no economy.  Run down, dilapidated.  I cruised thru and reached the tiny border crossing facilities on the other side.  They looked firmly shut.  This was no 24 hour border.  A few minutes later a Wazzik van rushes up to me from the village, checks my documents and tells me the border is closed.  Closed?  As in closed?

No closed because it’s after 7pm.  It will re-open at 10am tomorrow.

Damn … I had hoped to get the border formalities out of the way and camp on the Mongolian side.  There was no hotel in town.  The border guys in the van told me I should knock on a few doors in town and someone might take me in, before driving back to the village.

In a way I was relieved.  This was one tiny border crossing.  It looked so disused that it could well have been closed.  I had checked the information on the Russian border service website when in Irkutsk a few days back … but websites can be out of date.  I was glad it was open, but starting at 10am will chew a big chunk out of the productive part of my day.

I went back into the village, knocked on a few decrepid old doors and had a lot of “no-interests!” … I thought my luck with Russian hospitality must be running out.  I found a shop of sorts … actually it was a lady who sold stuff out of her living room … and bought some orange juice and mentally prepared to make camp.  I decided to try one last house I hadn’t got a response from earlier one more time.  This time a skinny weird looking guy in his mid 50s greeted me.  I explained my dilemma and he said sure you can stay … but can you pay me.  I offered him too much, 500 rubles, but I didn’t want to be refused.  He accepted with glee and fired up the banya.