Category Archives: Sibirsky Extreme

Sibirsky Extreme

2010 Finale

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23.10.10

After the emotional visit to Lone Pine at sundown, I rode on, into the night, towards the Turkey – Greece border.  By 10pm I was into Greece … land of Zorba … I rode 30 minutes into the night before finding a seaside hotel in Alexandroupoli.

24.10.10

The next morning I woke and went to refuel … only the machine chewed my 20 EUR … told me there was a problem, and told me to come back on Monday to get a refund from the service station (It was an automatic service station). Monday was no good to me. I needed to be on the move. Help came in the form of a Romanian biker who pulled into the station on a Varadero. He was on tour visiting some Greek friends. The greek bought my reciept off me for 20 EUR and led me to another station to refuel.

Greece and Turkey have a lot on common … they may not want to admit it … but actually there’s a huge commonality.  Both are very old cultures that have existed for thousands of years. Both have occupied each other for several hundred years at times. As a result, both have mixed with each others genes extensively. Both have beautiful coastlines. Both are mountainous and great riding countries and perhaps most important of all, both share very, very similar taste in motorcycles. Almost every bike I saw in both Turkey and Greece was a big trailie. Between the two countries, I don’t think I have ever seen so many Varaderos, V-Stroms, Africa twins … there was a healthy amount of GSs and 950 / 990 Adventures too. It seemed over half the bikes in those countries were Adventure style bikes. What cool guys!

After filling up at Alexandroupoli, I headed for my next compulsory cultural pilgrimmage.  Pella today is nothing more than a small out of the way village in Macedonia, but for several hundred years, at least two thousand years ago, it was very important.  And for a decade, was the centre of the universe.  It is the home town of Alexander of Macedon, otherwise known as Alexander the Great.  Pella today is the site of extensive excavations, but almost zero tourists.  A site of significant historical and cultural significance, but no tourists exactly fits my bill for being worthy of a visit.

I pushed on from Pella … I had to get all the way across Greece by sundown. There was a ferry with my name on it, leaving from Igoumenitsa for Ancona in Italy at 8pm. But there was one more thing I really wanted to see in Greece before I left. I checked my watch, checked the distances involved. It was going to be tight … the GPS had me arriving in Igoumenitsa about 7pm … for an 8pm ferry … and I had to stop, explore and take pictures at my final tourist stop – Meteora – a collection of greek orthodox monasteries atop impossible rock cliffs.

I made it to Igoumenitsa about 7:25 and bought my ticket at the port for 78 EUR.  I was hastily shuffled onto the ferry and began to relax for the overnight ride to Ancona in Italy.

Western Europe:

It was midday by the time I unloaded in Ancona.  I stopped for lunch and petrol then rode north past Venice to cross the Alps between Udine (Italy) and Klagenfurt (Austria). Day turned into night, but I was determined to get to Vienna where my friend Lukas, a fellow biker, would welcome me with open beers.

It wasn’t straightforward of course … it was a little colder over the Alps than I expected so early in the year:

After a few days in Vienna with Lukas, days I spent recovering from a bout of the flu, I headed off westwards, aiming roughly for Holland and England, but stopping at another mates place along the way.

Josef Pichler is a well known KTM adventurer I had also met earlier in the year in Mirny, Northern Siberia. Joe and his wife Renate are based just outside of Salzburg.

Joe took me on a tour of Hangar 7, a giant glass museum built and filled for the people of Salzburg by the Red Bull billionaire. It’s filled with Red Bulls racing cars, aeroplanes and even some motorcycles 🙂 Also in there is Marc Coma’s spare bike for the 2009 Dakar.

After that there was another visit. Another friend of Joe’s had bought Marc Coma’s primary 2009 Dakar bike … I was privileged enough to get to jump on it … and what do you know? It fits!

So after I left Joe Pichlers place, I headed for another friend … motorcycle partmaker extraordinaire, Stephan Scheffelmeier.

Two more days were spent cruising leisurely (via the Ruhr) back to Holland, one of two home bases for me on these expeditions.  While the UK is my traditional home and base, so much time has been spent in Holland for motorcycle preparation, that is has become an equal home base for me over the last two years.

Whether the project this year would finish in Holland or England was answered once and for all when I woke on my first morning in Holland to find my bike stolen.

A day of furious running around, interviewing locals myself, putting together clues I had sought and found via the internet, resulted in the bike being located later that evening.  Police came and liberated my bike, but it wasn’t before thieves that taken a couple of panels and damaged a few attachments.

And so Sibirsky Extreme 2010 ends with the promise of rebuilding the bike … it’s a great chance to refresh the machine for the challenges of 2011 and beyond.

Sibirsky Extreme

Turkey

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After a weekend of fun and games in Sochi with the Dutch quadracycle guys, the three of us sat down for a late lunch on the Monday 4th of October. We parted ways about 4pm … the two guys had about 360 km to go to get their record … but had probably left it too late in the day to do it all today. But they were now on their way to Moscow, where a party was being organised by Yamaha Russia.

I headed 200 yards away from our lunch spot at McDonalds to the International Port … where having said farewell to 2 travel companions, I met 2 more.

Mike and Irene from Georgia were travelling around Europe and the former Soviet Union 2-up. Both had been born there and had returned by 1200 GSA to visit their birth country, 20 years after leaving for the USA. Now they were about to board the boat to Turkey too.

The ferry arrived the following morning in Trabzon on the Turkish Black Sea coast, and along with Mike and Irene, I slowly did the Turkish customs shuffle while the rain pelted down outside the building.

Over 2 hours later, and with the rain now much lighter, we finally made it through and were about to get underway. Suddenly, the Turkish officials. who had been slowly plodding through the proceedures so far suddenly started waving and told us a big cheese was arriving and we needed to quickly leave the customs area … we were shooed out of the building, on to the bikes and out on the street. Mike had to go back for his passport and I rode on ahead.

I rode towards the town of Giresun, stopping first when I saw an ATM by the side of the road, and about 30-40km from the port, with the weather clearing a bit, I stopped at a roadside cafe to wait for Mike and Irene and to have lunch.

By the time lunch came and was eaten, there was still no sign of Mike and Irene. I assumed they had either stopped for lunch themselves, or had gone a different way.

It was now 1pm, and I was still less than 50km from Trabzon. I wanted to get to Cappadocia, and the town of Goreme tonight. It was about 650 km away. I had to hit the road.

I followed the coastal road west until the edge of Giresun, before turning south. The next 3-4 hours was a fantastic road. The road would from sea level up to a mountain pass at 2200 metres and the green, lush vegetation changed almost instantly on reaching the pass. From here on it was much drier, but the roads were no less windy or enjoyable.

I can highly recommend the road from Giresun to Sivas. A good adventure motorcycling route!

I continued on and passed the inland city of Kayseri just as the sun was setting. 50 km further on was Goreme. I pulled in to the touristy town in the dark, found a hotel for a good price (15TL, about 7 quid) that had internet.

I would have liked to stay in Goreme for a few days and check the place out a lot more. There are a number of valleys, churches ans even whole underground towns carved out of the soft rock. But I had to push on. I stopped for a few pics and then hit the road … towards Antalya and the Mediterranean.

I headed to Dave and Juliet’s place. They are an English couple who take in stray animals and visiting bikers in equal measure, not far from Kas, in Turkey.

I left Dave and Juliet to their menagerie, and hit the coast road. It was great weather, sunny and warm but not hot, and the scenery was as easy on the eyes as a Vladivostok bikers party.

I rode north … another great windy Turkish road, between Fethiye and Denizli. A couple of hours later I arrived at the modern Turkish tourist village of Pamukkale at the bottom of the hill … and its ruined twin … the Greco Roman ruins of Heirapolis, a spa town, at the top of the hill.

This place is kinda famous for its thermal springs … and travatines. Calcium rich water deposits calcium down the side of a hill over time to make these things:

I met up with a Marmaris based biker, Ihsan, for a ride out to see some local scenery. Ihsan has a local TV show about adventure biking.  But he had recently sold his bike, a 1200GS, and will get a new one for next season. So we went around to Yusuf’s place to borrow his 990 for the day. They have a club in Marmaris called Marmaris Riders. Almost everyone in the club seems to have an adventure bike. Yusuf’s KTM (pictured here) will be shipped to Alaska at the start of next season, for his planned ride to Tierra del Fuego.

I have been really impressed with the rugged and beautiful Turkish coastline … we headed out beyond Datca to have lunch with a mate of his, Cem, who also has a 1200 GS and rode to Baikal and back a couple of years back.

I left Marmaris, now firmly heading for home. I was getting reports of very cold weather back in England. Its a bit unseasonally early for that sort of thing, but I had to move my ass.

I had a few places I wanted to stop and see on the way.  First cultural stop on the way home was the city of Troy. For a very long time, people thought the mythical city that features in Homer’s Iliad was just fictional – just legend. Until they found it .

The Hellespont or Dardanelles is the strait that separates Europe from Asia in this part of the world. I headed for Canakkale, where there are regular ferries across the narrow strait.  Above Canakkale was a massive Turkish reminder … a symbol of pride dating back to the rise of Mustafa Kemal and thus the rise of the modern Turkish nation.

18th of March 1915 … it was the date the Turks turned back a poorly planned and wildly overoptimistic British plan to simply sail up the Hellespont and capture Istanbul by naval bombardment. It was a plan from the “soft underbelly” theorist extraordinaire, Winston Churchill. But they didnt get anywhere near Istanbul. They didnt even get past the first obstacle, the Hellespont / Dardanelles still 200km from Istanbul.

After the Royal Navy failed to sail, let alone secure, the Dardanelles, Churchill sent the Army in … British, French, Australian and New Zealanders landed 6 weeks later on the Gallipoli peninsula, to take the Dardanelles by land. But that 6 week delay had given Mustafa Kemal, a young officer in the Ottoman Army, just enough time to prepare a defence for what was pretty obviously going to happen next.

The result was about 9 months of trench warfare, in which the ‘Allies’ got nowhere … failed to take the Gallipoli Peninsula, failed to take the Dardanelles and never came anywhere near Istanbul.

The repercussions were that Churchill was forced to resign, Australia gained “national conciousness” (such that it would never again blindly follow Britain’s lead or blindly put its soldiers under British military command) and Mustafa Kemal began his amazing rise to becoming the father of modern Turkey. So for both the Turks and the Australians, the Gallipoli Campaign is central to the birth of their respective Nationhoods.

Crossing the Dardanelles here took me directly to Gallipoli Peninsula. And here there were a number of memorials I needed to see.

I was unprepared for the huge array of military cemeteries, dozens and dozens of them, very well preserved. The peninsular is largely national park, in order to preserve the graves and battlegrounds. As mentioned earlier, the region is very symbolic for the Turks as well, for the role the battles played in the rise of Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk), and that helps preserve the region as a sacred site.

A lone motorcycle stands watch over the Australian cemetary at Lone Pine, sundown 23.10.2010:

One of the more touching follow ups on the Gallipoli campaign was written by Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) himself in 1934 … 19 years after the battle.
He wrote a tribute to the ANZACs that is now found in the Ataturk memorial in Canberra, and on the ANZAC memorial on the Gallipoli peninsula.

Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives; You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country, therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us, where they lie side by side now here in this country of ours.
You, the mothers who sent their sons from faraway countries; wipe away your tears. Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land, they have become our sons as well.

Route Map – Turkey:

Kalmyk, Russia, Sibirsky Extreme

To the Black Sea

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29, 30 Sept

I left Kazan optimistic that this change of plan would bring me warmth and headed south past Lenin’s home town of Ulyanovsk, then Syzran and by the end of the day found a motel outside of Saratov.  By the end of the day I had reached 51 degrees north latitude.  Since Novosibirsk I had been travelling across Russia around 55 – 56 degrees north.  I was making progress towards warmth.  I had thought of stopping a couple of times today … Ulyanovsk has some great Lenin memorabilia, museums and the like, but time and the cold that accompanied it was weighing on me.  I decided I would just focus on heading south.

The 30th was another day of heading south.  It turned into a day of 2 unexpected features … one was Dutchmen, and the other was traffic fines.

While continuing my march southwards I saw two foreign looking bikers and two bikes saddled down with metal boxes filling up with fuel in a petrol station.  I slammed on the brakes and stopped for a chat.  Two dutch guys from Eindhoven were heading for Novosibirsk … and were planning to go via Kazakhstan.  I explained to them its already very cold up north, and getting colder … then I told them how I was frozen in on the Kazakh steppe not too much later than this last year.  It sounded like I was the bearer of gloomy news, and I wished them well, but at the same time, I knew they would have quite a few unpleasant days ahead of them.

As for me, things were looking up.  I reached Volgograd by early afternoon and took off one jacket.  (I ride with 3 in the cold … a fleece, a Klim windstopper and then the Klim Adventure jacket on top of that).  It was warming up.  I figured mid teens by now.  Watermelon stands lined the highway.

I thought about stopping off at the monumental war memorial, the Rodina Mat (Mother Russia) statue atop the Mamaev Kurgan, for a few fotos.  But I had been to Volgograd twice before – significantly for me, I had been there in winter.  The memorial has a completely different feel in winter when it is cold and bleak, and you feel how insanely miserable it must have been for the 1.1 million Russian and 400,000 Germans soldiers who died here.  The scale of the battle of Stalingrad is insane, add in the civilian casualties and the total toll of the battle is between 1.7 and 2 million lives.  The life expectancy of a soldier arriving into Stalingrad to join the battle was less than 24 hours.  The Mamaev Kurgan itself is probably the biggest burial ground on earth.  Entire divisions were wiped in a morning trying to take or retake it.  A visit to the museums and memorials in Volgograd is an intensely moving experience.  It’s one thing to visit it on a bike, but to really soak it in, nothing beats a winter visit.

More info here;  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stalingrad

For a deeper perspective, read Beevor’s book “Stalingrad” before you visit.  It’s a great primer and the great names that feature in the museums – the Chuikov’s and the Rokossovsky’s etc – really mean something once you have read up on their roles in history.

Taking pictures on a warm autumn day doesn’t do the memorial justice.  I will defer to my winter pictures:

I passed a police checkpoint on the southern edge of the stretched out city and was asked where I was headed.

“Sochi” I replied.

“Ah – there are two Dutchmen that went through 20 minutes ago, also headed for Sochi.”

“20 minutes?  OK I better head off and try to catch them, Spasibo!”

“Don’t worry, you will catch them, they are on tractors!”

I headed off, still southbound, now thinking to myself …. Tractors?  I guess that means they are on 1150GSs or something like that.

100 km south of Volgograd, I caught the Dutch guys … they were on Quads!  We stopped and chatted.  They were just 1400 km from breaking the world record for longest journey by Quadracycle.  From Rotterdam they had driven their quads to Mongolia and were now headed back.  I noticed they had also tricked out their quads with Hyperpro suspension.

For more info, see http://silkoffroadsurvival.com/

The dutch guys were headed past Elista tonight to camp somewhere on the open steppe, and I was headed into Elista itself to hook up with Zhenya, the Kalmyk biker I had met last year when passing through Elista.  We agreed to meet up somewhere on the road to Sochi tomorrow and I sped off, leaving the guys fielding questions at a Kalmyk police checkpoint.

I went into the Kalmyks in last years posts, so anyone wanting more photos and info on the Kalmyks, see here: http://www.advrider.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9811659&postcount=24

I myself ran into a Kalmyk police officer sometime down the road and was shown a photo of me doing 102 km/h 15 km back down the road.  90 km/h (56mph) is the open road limit in Russia.

“You must pay a fine” the cop scolded.

“Come on mate, it’s only a small bit over the limit.” I pleaded

“Then make it a small fine” he said, exasperated …

I slipped 300 rubles (7.50 EUR) into by driving permit and handed it back to him in the time honoured method.  In 3 seconds I had my emptied driving permit back and a “good luck” from the cop.

Just 50 km from Elista I was pulled over again for speeding … more overzealous Kalmyk policery … this time I was apparently doing 55 km/h through a 40 km/h zone for roadworks.  Fortunately the head honcho among the 4 cops started chatting to me and asked where I was going.  “Elista” I relied.  “To see the Grand Hurul.”

His face beamed with pride.  The Grand Hurul is a huge landmark in Elista and the biggest Buddhist temple in Europe.  Kalmyks are very proud of it.  “The Grand Hurul!” he roared with a huge smile across his face.  Then he reached out and hi fived me and told the junior officer to give me my documents back and let me go.

I reached Elista and was met on the outskirts by Zhenya.  I was now down to just 46 degrees North.  Another 5 degrees south today.  We parked the bike up and Elista Lada, his workplace, and he gave the bike a good check over.  My starter button was non-existant.  I had been starting it for the last 24 hours now by touching two wires together.  Zhenya said we will get a new button and fix it tomorrow morning.  We went back to his apartment that he shared with a room-mate and dinner was prepared by his roommates girlfriend.

– – –

01.10.10

Zhenya woke early and headed into to work at 8am.  He works as a mechanic at the local Lada dealers service centre.  When I rocked up about 10am he had already been playing with my bike for an hour.  The chain had been cleaned and relubed.  And we jumped in the car to buy a new starter button.  The button was replaced and I eventually was escorted to the outskirts of town by Zhenya about 11:30am.  I said farewell and hope we meet again next year, then hit the road south-west, towards Stavropol.

About 70 km out of town I crossed into Stavopol region, via a serious police checkpoint with machine gun toting guards and concrete barriers – a reminder I was now in the North Caucasus, a volatile region on Russia’s southern fringe.  I chatted to the cops there and asked about the Dutchmen on quads.  They passed through at least 2 hours ago, was the reply.  I had some serious chasing to do!

I rode hard into a very strong headwind – I figured I would make good ground on the quads in headwind.  Their cross-section must be 3 times that of the bike, and they had a similar size engine to push it all.

3 hours later I passed the city of Stavropol, and decided to stop for some lunch.  I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet, and it was now 3:30 in the afternoon.  I found a good shashlik place on the corner of the Kavkaz highway and ordered a big portion.  As I sat and waited for my shashlik to be cooked up, a local came up to me and asked me if I was headed to Maikop.  Yes I replied, I am heading through Maikop.  He turned around and yelled to his wife “This guy is heading for Maikop too”.

I stopped him … what do you mean “too”?

“2 guys on tractors asked for directions to Maikop not long ago”

“How long ago?” I asked, knowing that was the Dutchmen.

“No more than 20 -30 minutes”

So I was catching them.  I set off after feasting on my shashlik, dodging traffic along the Kavkaz highway.  45 minutes later I caught them.  They were fixing a flat tyre about 100 km from Maikop.

We all rode into Maikop together and found a nice pizzeria.  We were all headed for Sochi, so decided to ride there together … but for today we would just go a short distance outside of Maikop and find some accommodation – I wanted a cheap roadside hotel and the boys were going to camp in the woods.  After failing to find a cheap hotel, I decided to join them – for my second camping night of the trip.

– – –

02.10.10

The road to Sochi was a twisty one, and surprisingly took us most of the day to cover the 260 km.  The quads are not as quick as the bike on the road and they need to stop often for fuel.   Mark looks concerned at this fuel stop.  He had a problem with one of the rear seals on his quad.

It was raining when we finally reached the Russian Riviera city of Sochi, and as expected all the hotels in town were expensive.  The boys resorted to a tactic that had worked for them several times in the past … go to an expensive hotel, talk to the manager, explain that they are doing their Guinness world record attempt and would like to stay at their hotel – if they can get a super duper rate.  A couple of times they had managed to stay at 5 star hotels for 10-15 USD a night.  The Radisson in Sochi whose basic room rate is about 250 EUR a night, was the target.  They got as far as getting the duty manager to agree to a 10 USD rate for the 3 of us, but he didn’t want to pull the trigger without confirmation from the general manager – who was away until Monday.  Close but no cigar.

And so we rode down the road to find a smaller hotel, where I did some sweet talking and got us some rooms for 1000 Rubles (25 EUR) each instead of the normal 1600.

A quick visit to the port told me there was a ferry leaving for Turkey in 48 hours time.  We had 48 hours free in Sochi!

Russia, Siberia, Sibirsky Extreme

Western Siberia

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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.

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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.

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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 26th.  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 27th 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!

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