But my good progress so far today between Tsengel and the Border came to a halt here.  There was a queue of about 20 vehicles and the Russian post was shut.  A guy came over in a disinfectors uniform and disinfected my tyres.  He said it was lunchtime.  Border post will re-open at 2pm.  Geez, it was 12:20 now.  I had quite a wait ahead of me.  It was sunny but it wasn’t particularly warm.  The actual border is at a pass between the two posts and is up at 2490 metres, but the Russian post is at the village of Tashanta, down at 2150 metres.  I still had a few biscuits left and an energy drink as part of my emergency supplies.  I consumed them.  I used the time to check over the bike.  I basically hadn’t looked at it since arriving in Mongolia.  I had oiled the chain once, in Mörön, and I had stuck a Pampers baby nappy packet over my fuel tank to act as a cap when the fuel cap had disappeared on me, but that was it.  Apart from that, I hadn’t even looked at the bike.  I noticed now I was missing two bolts.  One of the two bolts that holds the exhaust heat shield on – no big deal, and one of my luggage rack bolts.

That’s potentially not good.  It was the lower bolt on the left side, that holds the rack to the bottom of the subframe.  I grabbed the rack and flexed it … it wasn’t flexing.  I looked at the bolt hole … despite not having a bolt, and despite having load on it, the holes lined up.  Erik had built the rack so strong this year, that even without a bolt, there was no flex and the rack was still in perfect position.  I could have replaced the bolt from my bolt supplies in my pannier, but it was too cold.  I don’t like working in the cold.  It always costs me knuckle skin.  It wasn’t flexing at all so I decided to leave it till later.

The rest of the bike looked in great shape – apart from the missing low fender.  I checked the radiator … it had a bit of mud in it.  The main reason for that extender was that it would keep mud out of the radiator.  I would have had to be careful if I was doing a lot more off roading, but now, with asphalt just 3 metres away as I waited in front of the Russian checkpoint, I decided I wont need to worry about it.  I should just clean out the radiator properly when I get a chance and leave it at that.

The Russian border post opened about 2:15 and by 3:15 I was back on my way in Russia.  Each border crossing currently has me a little nervous.  One of my passports (the one with the Russian visa) got slightly wet in Yakutia, and the damp damaged the foto of me in my passport.  But so far I have been through 4 border posts (the two entering Mongolia and the two exiting) and while all have raised eyebrows and asked questions about it, none has said they wont accept it.

I refuelled with 95 octane fuel at Kosh Agach … the first since Erdenet about 1500km ago and continued on to Aktash.  I found a car wash there, and spent 15 minutes with a washer, getting the last of the Mongolian dirt and bugs off the bike.  I normally clean my bike quite regularly.  Some people subscribe to the view that the dirt and mud on the bike is a badge of its credibility on an overlanding machine.  I don’t.  I like a clean machine.  I wash it whenever I can.

I have been up and down this road a few times and everytime I ride it, it looks different.  This time it was at its finest.  I had never seen the M52 look so appealing.  There are a million potential photo stops and camping spots.

I got another 150km down the road, a town called Ongudai, and had a bite to eat in a local café.  I was going lower, but it was getting colder.  Around me was snow on much of the ground.  It’s unseasonable to be this cold in the first half of September, but a cold front must have moved in.  I stopped as much to warm up as to eat.  I wasn’t particularly hungry.

When I moved off, now in the darkness, the local police pulled me over 500 yards down the road to check my docs.  On seeing I was a foreigner, they waved me on.  Only the bike was dead.  Same symptoms as when the bad starter button had shorted the bike out.  I rolled the bike out of the way of the cops and began taking off the luggage.  If there is one disadvantage to how I have the luggage this year compared to last, it’s that last year I could get the seat off simply by loosening the tank bag straps.  This year I have to do that, plus remove all 3 rear bags.  Sure enough, a fuse had blown.  I replaced it and started the bike up, then loaded it up, and mounted, ready to move off.  Then the bike died again.  I was about to start stripping it of luggage again, when a local farmer came down from the hill, spoke to the police, and offered me a bed in his shepherds hut, just 100 yards away, saying it will be easier to fix it in the morning when there is daylight.  I thought about it for a few minutes and accepted.  It was cold and dark, and I would have to unwind a bunch of tape to find where it was shorting.  That would be better done tomorrow morning.  I still have 650km to cover to get to Novosibirsk tomorrow, but its all on good asphalt roads.  We pushed my bike up the hill to the hut and I took my gear inside.  It was one room, with a 24v truck battery powering a single lamp.  There was a small bed on one side of the room and Tolyan, the Altai shepherd explained it was all mine.  He would make me a cup of tea and go to his house 2km away in town.  He would be back at 7am to tend to his sheep and cows.

I pulled out my laptop and internet modem (now that I was back in Russia) and began catching up with emails and the like.

– – –

14.09.10

Tolyan the shepherd arrived as promised at 7am.  While he brewed up some tea on the fireplace, I went outside and began working on the bike.  I replaced the two missing bolts, retaped up some of the dodgy wiring, and replaced the blown fuse.  I am running out of those again.  They are small and light so I always take bucketloads of fuses of various sizes.

By 8:30 I had loaded up the bike, drank my huge mug of tea and hit the Chuisky Trakt … the road that runs from Novosibirsk to the Mongolian border.  The morning was punctuated with two more fuses blowing.  I have become very adept at stripping the bike of its luggage now.  Practise makes perfect.  Now that it was warmer I even attempted a more comprehensive repair of the dodgy wiring.   It seemed to work, and I rode on past Gorno Altaisk … the beautiful part of the Chuisky Trakt is the 450 km from Gorno Altaisk to Kosh Agach.  After here I would be on the plains.

I stopped at Biysk for a pair of shashlik skewers … one lamb and one pork.  It was delicious and I was really enjoying it until the matron of the café scolded me for plugging my laptop into a socket on the wall and “using their electricity”.  I was stunned!  I wolfed down my shashlik and left.  That’s something I haven’t seen in a long time … hostility to a paying customer.  She looked right out of the Soviet mold, and obviously acted like it too.  I reminded myself that one of the many great things about being on a bike is that it’s so easy to leave unpleasant people behind.  And I did.

I arrived in Novosibirsk (NSK) about 6:30pm … I was a day ahead of my schedule.  I had earned a free day in NSK tomorrow.

The reason I had ridden so hard to get here over the past 9 days was that I had a flight booked from Novosibirsk back to Holland for a late birthday party for my son.  He has just turned 10.  I absolutely had to be there for that.  I would be back in Novosibirsk 4-5 days later.

I had a contact here, Stas, and gave him a call.  He is a good friend of one of the main tyre importers in Moscow.  He had arranged for somewhere to store my bike and effect some servicing while I was away in Holland.  I met Stas and asked him if there was a cheap hotel he could recommend and he scoffed … “no you stay with me.”

And with that, my mad mission from Irkutsk to Novosibirsk was complete.  5590 (3500 miles) km in 9 days … 621 km a day on average, Including a full East – West crossing of Mongolia.  I don’t know where the Russian guy who had also been through the border at Ereentsav had entered Mongolia, but quite possibly it is also the first East-West crossing of Mongolia on a bike.  That would be an accidental bonus.

– – –

15.09.10

I woke early to take advantage of the wifi internet in Stas’ apartment in central Novosibirsk.  He woke at 10am.  I only had 2 tasks for the day … to ride out to the freight company out in the industrial suburbs of Novosibirsk (population about 2.5 million) to collect my next tyre shipment.  Dean in Moscow had shipped out a set of Heidenau K60s.  They should get me home.  The Michelin Desert and T63 on the bike had done an awesome job getting me here from Magadan.  And so far my record of never having a flat tyre on a wheel fitted with a Michelin Desert tyre continues.  I had no flats, and neither did Sherri Jo.

I heard from Sherri Jo, she is expecting to be back in Russia while I am in Holland.  She is a day or two’s ride behind me now (her bike is in Krasnoyarsk), but she will have a couple of days on the road before I get back and start riding myself.  So we may just pass each on the road again after all.

Above … David Bowie is alive and well and working as a metal worker / bike mechanic in Novosibirsk.

Finding the tyres was a piece of cake.  This year I am using GPS maps from OpenStreetMap (OSM).  It’s a open source global mapping project that takes input in the form of tens of thousands of GPS tracks from all over the world and turns them into Garmin compatible maps.  I have been contributing to the project for 9 months now, and quite a few of the roads in extreme Siberia and Mongolia are my contributions.

Locals are obviously also big contributors and most Russian cities are immaculately mapped.  The Garmin brand Russian maps are nowhere near as detailed or accurate, as Sherri Jo discovered when we arrived in Vladivostok, and she saw only one road in Vladivostok and it was no-where near where it should be.   Naturally I loaded her up with the OSM maps.

I left the freight depot, with tyres around my waist, but didn’t get too far before the bike died again.  Fuse again.  I had no fuses with me.  I walked the streets in search of wire, and found a scrap piece of electrical wire 50 yards away.  I took one copper strand and wrapped it around the blown fuse.  It was primitive, but it should work.  And it did.  I rode on to Dima’s workshop … allegedly Novosibirsk’s finest motorcycle mechanic.  I gave Dima a list of things to sort out … menial tasks like finding and fitting new rear indicators for me … I was missing them now that I was back in urban environments.  But first on the list was to sort out my dodgy starter button system.

– – –

24.09.10

I had caught up with Sherri Jo briefly in Novosibirsk.  She was headed for Mongolia and I was headed for Europe.  I plotted out a track for her over a few beers with local bikers, and loaded it onto her Garmin.  That way she should be able to get out of any trouble she gets herself into down there.

I left Novosibirsk happy that a bunch of smaller issues had been sorted on the bike.  Dima the mechanic even spun me out a whole new fuel tank filler cap, out of a billet of aluminium.  The starter relay had been swapped for a Yamaha one he had lying around, new rear indicators were on the bike, oil and filter had been changed, new chain and front sprocket fitted, new tyres fitted etc.

I said farewell to Stas and Dima and hit the road to Omsk late in the afternoon.  It was almost 4pm by the time I passed the outskirts of Novosibirsk and found myself on the open highway.

After my week off the bike, I was unaccustomed to long days in the saddle again, and was pretty tired by 8pm.  I pulled over with just 350km done at a roadside motel and called it a day.

– – –

25, 26, 27, 28 sept 10

From Novosibirsk westwards was just a case of doing the miles.  I wanted to get to European Russia as soon as possible.  It was getting cold now, and I still don’t have any heated clothing.  The days were warmed by the sun on my back and the heated grips on the bike. Thank heavens I had fitted those before I left.

The cities went by, Omsk, Ishim, Kurgan, before I arrived in Chelyabinsk on the evening of the 26^th.  I met a couple of bikers on the outskirts of town and agreed to meet them tomorrow morning to get a small oil leak fixed.  It was the invisible crack in the generator cover that Andrei had temporarily fixed with epoxy metal in Mirny.  I went and spent the night just outside Chelyabinsk with Valery, a handyman in a nearby village that I had met 6 months earlier.

As planned, I met up with the Chelyabinsk bikers on the morning of the 27^th and we headed in to Sasha, a bike mechanic in the centre of town.  He was also an alloy welder, and he stripped the cover off and had it all welded up again by midday.

Then it was time to head across the Ural mountains and cross into European Russia.  I spent the remainder of the day riding the 500 km to Ufa.  I saw a motorcyclist on a yellow BMW (think it was an F800GS) with metal boxes, heading eastwards – that was first foreigner on a bike I had seen since saying farewell to SJ in Irkutsk.  At least I think it was a foreigner.  What’s he doing heading into Siberia at this time of year?

The road thru the Ural mountains was very slow going due to endless trucks crawling along, very limited overtaking opportunities and very heavy traffic police presence.  But I made it to the bright lights of Ufa, the capital of Bashkortostan, by 9:30pm.

It was after midday Sep 28 when I left Ufa.  I had the luxury of getting some clothes washed there and some were not dry enough to depart earlier.   Kazan and an old family friend was the target for today.  It was another 550 km day.  I made Kazan about 8pm, but the last hour and a half were in rain.  Cold rain.  I spent some time on the internet there and also checked out weather forecasts for a bunch of cities on potential routes.  It was cold and if I didn’t leave Kazan tomorrow, I would probably catch some sub zero weather.

I made an executive decision to change course and head south.  From Kazan I would head to Sochi on the Black Sea coast.  Weather there was +20C and above (68F+).  I estimated it was a 3 day ride … 3 x 700 km days.

Whatever clothes that weren’t washed in Ufa were now washed in Kazan.  I now had a full clean kit bag.  Here is my host, ironing dry my gloves!

– – –