And this loneliness wont leave me alone, listen
Two thousand miles I roam
Just to make this dock my home, now
Otis reading
Rain Pain
I'm punching away at the keyboard in a tiny hotel room in Barnaul Russia listening to the rain still hammering on the window. Ron lays on the bed opposite mumbling dribble and stabbing away at the telly remote. Shalom and Beth are in the hotel restaurant phoning and emailing Bmw dealers all over Russia in a futile effort to find someone who speaks English to order headstem bearings and oil filters. The room reeks of fresh rubber from a stack of new tyres sitting by the door for Mongolia waiting to be fitted when the rain finally stops and is decorated with filthy bike gear and hanging washing everywhere. Hmmm.... a bit over five weeks to get from Barnaul, through Mongolia and over to Vladivostok with the bloody rain sapping time and maybe making northern Mongolia impassable..........hmmmm
Barnaul is a pretty tidy city. Lucky the sculptors considered the weather and put a coat on the big guy!
This is Sergai's repair and tyre fitting shop in Barnaul. He's a great guy and tyre fitting etc was divided up between him and the boys at Bikeland down the road.
This reminds me of the European vacation film where the Griswalds visit a family and when they leave they, like The Bikeland lads here, think something like.........
"who the f!@# were those guys"
Mmmm This is a T34 Russian Tank. The Russians build a lot of junk but this was a beautiful thing....if erm 76.2mm armed twenty six ton tanks are your thing!
(Thanks Wiki)
Good guys with blue teeth!
When I had my accident on the way to Astrakhan one of the victims was the Sena SMH10 bluetooth unit on my helmet.....bugger. It got a serious smack on the toggle button which gave it's little electronic brain a bit of a headache. Now this little gadget has been a favourite of ours on the trip so while I was laid up I pulled it apart and got the sand and stuff out of the toggle and after fiddling with the reset button the little fella flashed back into life but most of it's functions were non existent. I emailed Steve at Mr Mobile in Australia for some advice on bluetooth CPR who then put me onto a gentleman in Paris named Sang-jin Kim from Sena headquarters. Sang-jin had a squiz at the blog, liked what he saw and offered to send another out......this is seriously great service! Sang-jin contacted Dmitriy from ATV imports in Russia who arranged to send the unit to our tyre guy Andrew and I am now the proud owner of a new Sena SMH10. Now remember folks, this is 2014 where everyone normally likes a winge online, so when someone gives great service for no tangible gain make sure you tell everybody!
Thank you to the team at Sena!
We're on a road to nowhere
Come on inside
Takin' that ride to nowhere
We'll take that ride
Talking Heads
No Altai-natives
Trucks boom past in the wet making the DR sway as I'm parked up just out of Barnaul digging in my saddlebag for a map of Russia with the serious shits on. Ron, who has been given the task on the trip to look elsewhere and say nothing when I've got the shits on looks elsewhere and says nothing. The b!@#$% (blessed) GPS is trying to take us on a twelve hundred K trip to a place only eight hundred away. Ever since Georgia the OSM map while being reasonably accurate as a rolling map has been untrustworthy when asked to choose routes. I figure the way, turn the GPS off, and away we go, into one of the best rides of the trip!
Imagine this
You head out for a ride on a cool showery day. You rug up from the start, you've got fresh tyres, fresh oil .....erm a slightly bent bike, and a full tank of cheap ninety six octane. You head into green rolling hills which turn into forested mountains following fast flowing rivers on a perfect strip of bitumen, with no cops and minimal traffic. At lunch you drop into a cafe, knock over a couple of coffees and a strange hot tasty pastry filled with kebab meat. (which repeats little reminders all afternoon!). You remount and spend the afternoon in serious mountains with forests, valleys, snow caps and alternate between fanging the corners and ogling the scenery. Around fiveish you stop at a lonely restaurant and have soup followed by ploff and another coffee. With over five hundred K under your wheels you scope out a camp site well off the road with a bit of off road challenge by a cold fast flowing river and camp for the night. You get up early and take a constitutional out in the wild with no one around......oooh yeh does it get any better? Well yes, the road further on just gets tighter and higher before dropping on to a wide bare plain with snow peaks on each side. You cross the plain, stopping for lunch at a town in the middle with another kebab flavoured repeater before crossing the Russian Mongolian border. After the border it gets seriously cold, and an incredible vista of bare brown-yellow mountains and hills opens before you with gurs dotted throughout and yaks and camels, goats and horses randomly wander the roads. That night you sleep in a gur hotel a couple of towns into Mongolia and think.....seriously....really......well yes!
Ok let's get this perfect ride started.
Seems almost wrong to take a leak here.....
Stopping for dinner at a lonely restaurant.
About to knock over some ploff and soup.
Perfect campsite with no mossies or neighbours.
Back into fanging it and ogling it mode next morning for kilometre after kilometre.
Had to wait at a landslide for an hour or so. Around the corner are two guys hanging on ropes halfway down the cliff clearing loose stuff.
At lunch down on the flat plain before Mongolia. It's getting seriously cold here.
This is the Russian border. We had to wait and hour while the staff had lunch in the village behind and then wandered back.. ...for the three vehicle rush!
Into Mongolia after getting insurance and changing money at the border. This little mite loves the bikes but isn't sure about the big people in funny clothes!
Aaah Mongolia so hard to capture.
This one taken as we scoped the road for the next stage whilst waiting for Beth and Shalom.
Apologies to the Shangri-las but ok gang let's sing to the leader of the pack music
"I met him at the Olgi bazaar....he was on a chinese bike who could ask for more"
"I'll never forget him, his crashbars and red hat"
"Crashbars and red hat, outside the bazaar, crashbars and red hat, outside the bazaar"
Shalom and Beth arrived late Saturday and brought a new gang member. This is Jamie from the UK on a one thousand Vstrom.
I went down to the crossroads
Tried to flag a ride
I went down to the crossroads
Tried to flag a ride
Nobody seemed to know me
Everybody passed me by
Robert Johnson
Reality Check...
We're about to head off into middle Mongolia.....not sure but maybe fifteen hundred K's of dirt roads of all kinds, with very vague GPS coverage. Now I hate dirt riding as I'm crap at it and I'm still nursing a football sized lump on my hip which wont go down from the accident (yep I still cant put stuff in my front left pocket!) and my top rib is only just starting to let me sneeze in comfort. It's a comfort having some more people along to share the load buuut do you think I'm a bit apprehensive.....shit yeh! Time to hammer the comfort zone yet again......Yep I know I'm alive!
Next across Mongolia
Might be a while till the next blog...not too many gers with wifi!