5 July to 11 Jul 08

Chita to Khabarovsk is a distance of 2150km. Not much in this vast land. Of this, a few hundred are a bituminous surface varying from “good”to pot-hole alley. The remainder, about 1800km, is unsealed. To be more technically correct, the “remainder” is under construction. To put that in perspective, that is a construction site stretching from Brisbane to Melbourne. In the land of giants, even the construction sites are epic.



Chita, the end of one road at least.

A few dozen riders undertake the 12,000km trans-Russia crossing each year and, with a single ribbon of road crossing most of the land, it is inevitable that each rider will meet, or hear about, most of the others on the road at the same time. The meetings are often short and intense. Each rider, or team, keen to confirm that there are others who would want to do it and desperate for information about the road, fuel, accommodation, helpful contacts and places to avoid.

Most solo riders cover the 2,000km in about five days from Chita to Khabarovsk. We had intended to take six, out of deference to our seniority and common sense, but ended taking five. The story of why is really the story of our crossing.



Trans-Siberian Railway does all of the heavy lifting. It is amazing!

Routes M55 and M58 across Siberia all the way to the Russian East have been poorly built then poorly maintained over many years. The reason for this is that the road system is almost irrelevant to the economy and the lives of the people in remote Russia. It is the Trans-Siberian Railway that provides the all-purpose communications network that binds this impossibly big country together. The railway moves the great mass of every kind of resource or supply, around the clock, with impressive efficiency. Development has followed the tracks with a string of towns clustered along the line and sparse development elsewhere.



The road system has never had the capacity to take much commercial traffic.

The road has been strangely detached from all of this. It moved little freight in the Far East and did mainly local service and was almost impassable in numerous places from time to time. Four years ago work started on redevelopment of the road. The re-surveyed route took it further away from the railway and from the railway towns in many places. The surface varies greatly, but most is now gravel, deep gravel, unconsolidated road-base gravel, riding on marbles gravel, every bike rider's favourite. Gravel!



The road is like riding through a construction site in many areas.

On our way into Chita we met Polish couple Kamil and Izabela riding a Honda Africa Twin. This bike weighs about 50kg less than Elephant, but theirs was heavily laden and would have been no easy ride on the gravel. Our store of up to date information and our confidence grew. A few hours later we met Yasuhito Konishi, solo on an Africa Twin, who had ridden the road three years previously. The road was much harder now, he said. The gravel was awful. Our confidence flagged a little.



Kamil and Isabela on the road to Chita.

Yasuhito looking like he had done it all before.

On the morning of 7 July we solved the riddle of the maze and found our way out of Chita and onto the road east. We had met Charlie Honner, a lone Australian rider heading west, who had given us some good information on conditions so we blasted over the first 100km of tarmac then settled down to the rough ride.



Mike and Charlie in Chita.

For the first two days our ride went to plan. We made the towns we were targeting comfortably and, eventually, found a bed. These towns are desperately poor. Forgotten in the vastness of the Eastern Plains they are ground down by poverty, dusty and frayed. The log-cabin houses have no indoor plumbing at all and are heated by wood fires. No foreigners come here. No tourists get off the train. Nothing much changes.



The “guest house” in Chernishevsk. It took us an hour to find it. There were six beds in the house. Five were occupied the night we stayed.



A new log cabin house under construction.

We shared our accommodation with ordinary Russians; company reps visiting the small shops, delivery truck drivers, electrical engineers working for the power company. We ate in their cafés, discussed the road and the weather and answered, as well as we could, their ever curious questions about where we had come from and why we were there. The Russians we met started to have faces and names, jobs and families.



A typical roadside café where the weary traveler can get a bowl of cabbage soup (and other stuff).

On a dusty section of road we saw a couple of big bikes approaching and pulled Elephant over for a meeting. As they emerged from the dust we saw that they were all Harley Davidsons, all low slung cruisers. There were 17 in all from the Korean chapter of the Harley Owners Group! They had a support vehicle for all their gear with a trailer behind that had a bike on it.



The Korean HOGs looked like they had had a big day out.

The HOGs were on their way to Germany on a grand adventure. They had had some bike problems and gathered around our heavily laden rig looking at the details of the luggage fit, the special knobby tyres, the long travel suspension and lots of other stuff. Elephant looked down that funny nose at the low slung cruisers and I must admit that I saw a certain rugged purposefulness in the beast that had eluded me on the freeways of Western Europe. Out here, Elephant looked the goods.



Mike signed the leg of several HOGs. This chap already had a dozen signatures!

On the third day it rained, and rained, and rained. We met Masayuki Goto on his Africa Twin looking cold and tired but showing the same sense of independence and determination we see in all the riders. We reassured him that the road ahead was awful and he did the same for us. It seemed the least we could do for each other.



Masayuki Goto in his rain gear.

The road turned to mud. Elephant slipped and slid and we were reduced to a 2nd gear idle. It took three exhausting hours to cover 40km. There was nowhere to stop so we pressed on throughout the day and into the early evening. We stopped for fuel in the early twilight and learned that there was a hotel in the town of Skovorodino not far up ahead. We set out to find it.



At least in the rain you can see the potholes before they crump your suspension...



...in the dry they just can't be avoided.

30km further along we found the sign for the turn-off to Skovorodino. It was one of those large white on blue signs and said turn in 300 m. We turned. The road went 25m and stopped dead. We went down the highway further, turned around and found a sign coming from the other direction. Turn in 200m it said but the side road remained a 25m dead end. This was Russian humour at its best and even after 12 hours on the bike in the rain we got the joke.



Mike starting to look like the day had gone on too long.

We continued east for another 16km wondering where we could find a bed before seeing a small track heading off in the direction of the town. It had no sign post but we followed it anyway. After about 10km a town of 30,000 emerged from the mist! The joke, it seemed, was on them. We had found Skovorodino.

We also found the hotel, a clutch of friendly, helpful locals who manhandled Elephant up the hotel steps and into the foyer, and a Chinese restaurant that didn't serve rice but did serve chips.

The road dried out on the fourth day and we made better time sometimes going as fast as 40 or even 60km/h! The day was hot and long, food and fuel were hard to find and there was no sign of accommodation in the place we had hoped it to be.

We pressed on further. The second accommodation option we had planned failed to materialise and, with the last of the afternoon shadows fading and only the twilight left to ride, we had 170km of bad road to the last option. We pressed on with some determination over some of the worst roads we had ridden. We made the distance just after last light to be told by the locals that there was no hotel or guest-house for a long way in any direction. Our information had clearly been wrong three out of three!



The roads in this section were very hard to ride. They were a sand base with loose river gravel up to 100mm deep. If Elephant wasn't skating on the stones, the front wheel was burying itself in the exposed sand.

We had dinner at a roadside café and headed Elephant east again on a stretch of sealed road. After about an hour in the saddle we found a small side road, then a track and finally a concealed meadow. It was midnight and we had been riding for 16 hours.

We organised an improvised shelter and settled down to get a few hours sleep in our “stealth” camp. Unsurprisingly we both slept well!



Stealth camping was not on the plan but we were prepared for contingency.

We had a dingo's breakfast and started early on the fifth day. The road got better, then worse, then better again. We met Edgar from the Russian Black Bears Motorcycle Club when we had only a few km of unsealed road remaining and he had the whole ride to Moscow ahead of him. We wished him luck with some sincerity. Then finally, late on the afternoon of 11 July we ambled into Khabarovsk and booked into a hotel with plenty of hot water and a double bed.



Edgar was solo on a light bike.

Throughout our 12,000km ride across this stunning land we have rubbed along with the ordinary Russians going about their lives. In the remote areas the only foreigners have been other adventure riders. The locals have been friendly, amazingly helpful, curious, cheerful and pleased that we have made the effort to come to their town.



The road stretches into the vastness of the Russian Far East. Khabarovsk is somewhere out there!

Long distance truck drivers in this place have a tough life. The extraordinary distances, appalling roads, extreme climate and almost complete lack of infrastructure make every trip an adventure. They form a sort of tough-guys brotherhood, proud of the difficulties they face each day. We have had many conversations along the way with them speaking Russian and us speaking English. They give us advice about the road ahead, the weather, where to get a bed and the cafes where the cabbage soup is as good as grandmothers (at least that's what I think they said).

When they see the bikes, with their grim faced riders skating around on the gravel, they acknowledge them with a series of horn blasts and a friendly wave. Some punch the air with a clenched fist in the universal salute of the undefeated; the exclamation mark of defiance.

We always acknowledge them with a wave and, I have to admit, occasionally a raised clenched fist. After all, we are all tough-guys out here.

29 June to 4 July 08

Closing up on the Mongolian frontier the day before we crossed allowed us to be second in line when the gates opened. We were feeling confident that we would be through and on our way to Ulaanbaatar in an hour at the most.

Five hours later, with both of us feeling dehydrated in the summer heat, the last gate was opened and a bored guard wished us welcome to Mongolia. If our two and a half hour effort to get into Russia was a black comedy, our exit had all of the style of a Greek tragedy including a chorus of Russian border clerks.

The “problem” was that the entry document for Elephant was only issued for a period of two weeks and we been in the country for a month. Since it was written in Russian we had no way of knowing that it was different from our three-month visas and three-month bike insurance! Our failure to pick up this clerical error was, of course, a heinous crime for which we had to pay. There was nothing else for it but to buy a table for 10 at the Policeman's Ball.



As soon as we were clear of the dusty border village, we needed a quick “pit” stop but where are the trees?

An easy run down to the capital Ulaanbaatar gave us a chance to cool down as we climbed up to 1500 metres. We had done no preparation for our visit to Mongolia but had no trouble changing some money, finding a good, reasonably priced hotel, and getting ourselves well fed. Fortunately, there was no cabbage soup on the menu!



This huge statue of Genghis Khan adorns the front of the Parliament building.

Mongolia is a vast country (about one sixth the size of Australia) but with only 2 million people. More than one million of these live in Ulaanbaatar leaving the remainder of the country short of urban centres. UB is a dusty (or muddy) crush of humanity that is full of energy and a little shambolic. Long term readers of this blog would conclude that it is our type of town!



There is a good level of development underway in Ulaanbaatar but the city still needs considerable investment.

Walking back to our hotel after dinner one evening we noticed a sign for the Mongolian Harley Club Bar and Grill. When we spotted a couple of bikes we went to investigate. We found one guy who spoke some English, and another who spoke German, and explained why we were in UB. Within a minute we were inside the bar drinking beer with a bunch of Mongolian bikers and swapping our stories.



I am sure they paid a licence fee to use this design!

One fellow turned out to be a superintendent of traffic police who gave us his mobile number as a get-out -of-gaol card. Another ran emergency coordination at the airport, played nice guitar and sang sad Mongolian songs.

The policeman had spent three years studying in East Germany, an experience he hated. He had been beaten by Neo-Nazi skin heads and been at the back end of some pretty bad discrimination.



Mongolian skin-heads are not noted for their violence.

The following day we took the bike out to ride around the sights and ran into Emil and Wolfgang, the two German BMW riders we had met in Irkutsk. They were on their way to the Russian Embassy to try to sort some visa problem. Later we walked past the Russian compound and found a group of Polish guys on a range of bikes who were trying to sort out their Russian visa problems. A pattern was starting to emerge!



Peter the Pole gave Mike some good information on the condition of some key roads. These guys had found the going tough.



We decided not to complain about how the Elephant looks fully loaded after seeing these set-ups.



Peter and Robert exchange information with Mike.

On the afternoon of 1 July, we were walking back from the central market when we saw a large demonstration underway in the central city area. Having always taken the view that there is nothing as pathetic as an innocent bystander, we passed by on the other side of the road and didn't stop to investigate. The cause of the demonstration was dissatisfaction with the results of a recent general election.

An hour later, while we were having dinner, the demonstration turned ugly and then degenerated into a riot. The authorities were caught flat footed and by the time police reinforcements were on the scene the headquarters of the ruling party was on fire along with the Modern Art Gallery.



The burnt-out headquarters of the ruling political party the morning after the riot.

In the end, five people were killed and about 300 injured. The government declared a four day state of emergency including a 2200 hr curfew and put troops on the streets. It was all a day late and a dollar short and, to make matters worse, a ban on the sale of alcohol was included for good measure.



Unfortunately, the Modern Art Gallery was also damaged in the riot and some valuable manuscripts were lost.



The city was locked down at the start of the four day State of Emergency. There were lots of soldiers, but they looked as though they weren't sure what they were supposed to be doing.



The western media turned a few burnt out cars into “streets lined with burnt out cars”!

We kept ourselves safe and out of harm's way throughout all of this, but one bright spot was a phone call we received from the Australian Consulate in Beijing. They just rang to check we were OK. We thought it was a good service and well worth the effort of filling in the on-line registration form to let them know our rough itinerary.



We were not sure what the locals made of these dramatic events but there did not seem to be the level of discussion and self examination that accompanied, for example, the Cronulla Riots in Sydney two years ago. Considering five people died, we were surprised that the events were off the TV and out of the papers after 24 hours.

Throughout this time we got some reasonable intelligence on the road conditions for bikes in the areas in which we were interested and confirmed that the route we planned was possible two up on our heavy bike. What we couldn't confirm was that the Russians would let us back in through the remote border post we were considering. This posed a significant problem as we would not have the time to retrace our route if we were unable to get through.

After the bad experiences we have had at every turn with Russian bureaucracy, we reasoned it might be better to reenter Russia through the main crossing. This would short-change our Mongolian side-trip, but getting Elephant stuck in Mongolia didn't seem like a good idea either. While all of this was going on, the skies opened and we had two days of torrential rain turning the city to mud.



Even within the city, many people live in a Ger. With a stove in the middle and well insulated with thick felt, they allow the seasonally nomadic herdsmen to follow the grass. I loved this one because of the satellite disc outside.



Horses grazing on the steppe is a classic Mongolian image. With a large percentage of the population still engaged in nomadic grazing, horses are still central to Mongolian life.



Mongolian cowboys. Heavy grazing during the short growing season ensures that the landscape remains barren and trees in short supply.

In the end, it was the state of emergency that did for Mongolia. Two more days without a cold beer was just out of the question. Elephant was packed and pointed back up the road towards Russia. By mid-afternoon we were though the frontier and enjoying a late lunch of cabbage soup. Yum! You don't know how lucky you are boys. Back in the....

22 June to 29 June 2008

The end of the road on our transit of the Siberian Plain was the town of Irkutsk, the start of the Russian East and the gateway to Lake Baikal. 400 of the last 600 km of roads leading to Irkutsk were very poor and we had stretched ourselves to keep up our average daily distance. Had it not been for an inadvertent 850 km day, when we miscalculated the location of accommodation, we would have fallen short of our ten day target from Moscow to Irkutsk.

By the time we arrived at Irkutsk on 22 June, it was raining steadily and we were keen to get settled in some decent accommodation for a couple of days lay-over. We found some fair digs at a hostel, or should I say they found us, when the owner leapt out of his car and apprehended us as we were about to try our luck at the cheapest pub on the our list. We had the place to ourselves on the first night as another other couple due to arrive phoned to say that they were in hospital with food poisoning from the Trans Siberian train. This confirmed our view that rail is a dangerous form of transport. We enjoyed an evening playing house and cooking a simple meal in the kitchen. Meanwhile, it rained steadily through the night.



The landlord's son Nikita was a precocious 3 year old who kept Jo entertained on rainy afternoon.

On the morning of Monday 23 June, businesses were open for business and we set out to find the automotive souk to buy some specialised oil to service Elephant. We found the right place without difficulty and were pleasantly surprised to find one of the best automotive markets anywhere. About 200 traders had individual shops gathered inside a single large building. All the shops were modern and very well laid-out. It was easy to find what you needed and to compare prices. Once again, Siberia surprised us.

All I needed was four litres of fancy oil so I had no excuse to linger with Jo standing in the rain guarding Elephant. I shouldn't have worried. By the time I got back, Elephant had gathered the usual handful of admirers and Jo was having a conversation with one handsome young gentleman about the geology of Siberia.



A young man outside the car souk tries out Elephant's seat for size.

Elephant got a service, but only just. Half way through the rain started to bucket down and, with no shelter, it was hard work to get the basics done. Nevertheless, fresh oil, filter and plugs is a good start on these bikes and we were pleased that Elephant checked out OK after a tough 12 days.



Two minutes later the rain started again and didn't let up for two days.

The first treat of Irkutsk was a chance meeting with two German bikers Emil and Wolfgang who had come through Kazakhstan and were on their way to Mongolia. It was a great chance to compare notes on Russia and intelligence on Mongolia and to reassure each other that we are all perfectly sane!



Emil and Wolfgang flagged us down as we arrived in town. They were BMW mounted and had already been to Kazakhstan.

Emil and Wolfgang were planning to go back to the west from Ulan Baatar. A few days later in Ulan Ude we met a Russian biker who had just come over these roads. When we asked him what they were like his one word answer was: “Hell!”. He had fried the clutch on his Transalp Honda and ended his trip to Ulan Baatar in the back of a truck. He looked pretty used up by the time we met him.

The second treat of our Irkutsk stay was back at the hostel. We were not looking forward to sharing with a group of strangers arriving on the train, but we needn't have worried. Chris and Jess turned out to be a delightful young American couple traveling with some of their family and taking a break from teaching in Korea.

We don't meet many English speakers on our travels and often go for long periods with only each other for company, so the young Americans were shanghaied to the kitchen where tea was made and stories exchanged. Hopefully we will catch up with them again, perhaps in Korea on the way home.

It continued to bucket down and, as Irkutsk had already established itself as one of our least favourite places to stay in the rain, we decided to head out to Lake Baikal regardless of the weather. A planned early departure turned into a late departure as we fussed about with our wet weather gear and hoped for a break in the clouds.

None came and our discomfort was made worse when we took a wrong turn and exited the city the wrong way only to circle the town and ride through the centre to get onto the right road. This, combined with torrential rain, heavy traffic, and a twisting, poor quality road added up to a three hour ride for the 100km to the first lake-side town. It had only one ancient, run down hotel but we were not in a choosy mood. We booked in, spread out our gear to dry, found the basics (food and beer) and waited, with the lake barely visible through the rain and mist.



Wet riding gear hanging on every available place in our decrepit hotel room.



This hotel also had the largest bathroom (shared) ever. Shame about the plumbing!

The next day we rode on into steady rain as there didn't seem much point in being lake-tourists in such poor weather. This was a shame because Lake Baikal is worth visiting. The lake is not only huge, it is also deep. Deep enough to contain about 20% of the world's surface fresh water or more water than all five of the North American Great Lakes combined! But, as the rain continued, our plans for a few lazy days seemed as elusive as the sun and we splashed up the east coast of the lake heading for Ulan Ude.



Lake Baikal as it greeted us, barely visible through the mist.

The rain had left the unmade sections of the road very muddy, slippery and slow but as the day dragged on the rain lessened and then stopped and we arrived in Ulan Ude in a blast of sunshine and humidity. We found an affordable room in the old Soviet era hotel, that was unrestored to the extent that the original single-station radio was still on the wall, and settled in for three nights.

Top of the to-do list for UU was to fit the Metzler knobby tyres we had brought from Moscow and to find a small engineering shop to do a welding repair. We gave Elephant a bath using a public standpipe near our hotel.



Drawing water from a public standpipe in a city street.

Even in larger cities in Siberia and the Far-East, many houses are not connected to mains water and people still draw water from public standpipes. Our final indulgence was a haircut each; the first since Hungary.



These should do the trick for the bad roads in Mongolia and the Far East.

Ulan Ude is the centre of Mongolian Russia and the look of the people and feel of the place was very different from the Siberian towns we had visited until then. The town itself has the vestiges of a faded 19th century glory including a huge opera house and some elegant public buildings. It was a scrubby, rough and ready sort of place but a good place to enjoy some sunny days and catch our breath.



Ulan Ude's elegant opera house was a reminder of more prosperous times in the 19th century.



Ulan Ude also gets an award for this huge head of Lenin. We were already joking that Russia is a land of giants because of the number of larger than life-size statues that can be found in every town, but this head of the famous Mr Vladimir Ulyanov takes the cake.

On 28 June we rode down to the Mongolian border and the frontier town of Kyakhta. This garrison town (there appeared to be an Infantry division straddling the road on the way in) had its hey-day before the advent of the railway when it prospered from the caravans bringing tea from China. Today it is another of those dusty border towns full of the characters and desperadoes that seem to gravitate to these places all over the world.



The ruins of the Trinity Cathedral, built in 1817 on the wealth of the China tea caravans, were an interesting find in the dusty border town of Kyakhta.



This border-town desperado thought he would earn a fee by helping us get through the border. He got a photo op for his trouble but no payday. We have been through this too many times.

We prepared our papers to cross into Mongolia the next morning. We were less well prepared for Mongolia than for any other place we have visited and the Russians had done a good job of frightening us with stories about the roads and broken bikes. But, as always, we were keen to work it out for ourselves.

12 to 22 Jun 08

Our return to, and final escape from, Moscow coincided with the first two days of a four day holiday weekend for Independence Day. We asked every Russian with whom we could communicate, from exactly what or whom was independence being celebrated, but no one seemed to know. I considered looking it up on the web, but thought, in the end, that if they don't know,why should I. The holiday actually fell on the Thursday, but the cunning Russians had all worked a previous Saturday as a normal workday so they could have a long weekend.

Whatever the reason for the holiday, the consequence was an extraordinary amount of traffic on the roads, much of it “weekend drivers”. As we went back into Moscow it was going the other way so we had a dream run. But on Friday the 12th we were in the thick of it all day. Not that a long weekend was needed to make life difficult on the road.

The Russians are world class when it comes to creating traffic chaos even on the freeways which are a mass of dodging and weaving vehicles that results in many accidents. In a single day we saw 14 accidents on the run from Moscow to Nizhniy Novgorod (450 km). This is more than the total for the 10 preceding months on the road!



Another three vehicle prang blocks the road

Each day was a similar story with a dozen or more accidents in our path. In the built-up areas, each accident created a little more congestion and slowed traffic further. This had a bad effect on the ageing fleet of Ladas and Russian trucks that expired at inappropriate places creating further chaos. All of this made for a stop-start drive of crazy sprints between mauling jams.



Traffic jam endurance test for visitors.

To be fair, some of this was caused by the number of extra vehicles on the road for a holiday weekend. But even 4000 km east of Moscow, where the highways are mainly used by long distance trucks, accidents are a daily sight. Statistically at least, this put the Russians way ahead in the worst drivers stakes.

We had set ourselves the target of riding 500 km a day for 10 days to get across to Irkutsk on Lake Baikal. We also allowed 5 rest days for sightseeing and to allow us to service the bike and wash off the road grime before crossing into Mongolia. With two of our rest days used up in a return to Moscow, we didn't have a lot of fat in the schedule.

Now, 500 km is not a big day back in Oz. Here it is hard work. In addition to the road conditions and drivers, Russians also have to put up with some of the most heavily policed highways in the world. Police check points are every few km pulling over vehicles for offences, real or imagined, or just to check documents. We have been generally lucky with the police, but it was our 10th day on the road in Russia before we rode a full 500 km without being stopped.



It doesn't take long to work out why the railway is the most important mover of freight and people.

On the second day out from Moscow we got mixed up in the vehicles competing in and supporting the Trans Orientale Rally. This is a Paris – Dakar type event, although in this case the event goes from St Petersburg to Peking.



St Petersburg to Peking Trans Orientale Rally competitor.



There is a serious investment in running a team in this event.

We got a chance to chat with some competitors and support staff at a few lunch and overnight stops but lost a lot interest in ever getting involved when we converted some of the costs to Aussie dollars! After a day and a half of riding together, the circus turned south for Kazakhstan and we headed north east into Siberia.



John van Rakinzen was with the Dutch team We found out he was born in Ringwood, Victoria, but we didn't hold it against him.

The country itself has been quite different from what we expected. The first 1000 km to the Ural Mountains, the area often described as Western European Russia, is green rolling hills much like rural Victoria, but seemingly endless. The Urals, when we did get to them, were a disappointment. They are not much of a range, at their best rising only 2000 m at the high point. Where we crossed, they were no more than some low hills.



There is lots of green because there is lots of water.

The romantic moment I had imagined, sitting on the watershed, with the West behind and Siberia and the East in front, passed unnoticed between morning tea and lunch without changing out of top gear.

Beyond the Urals, the country drops down onto the Siberian Plain. The Plain is more than 4000 km across and is low and swampy. The Spring melt-water doesn't drain away in the summer, leaving the water-table close to the surface or exposed. It also makes road-making very difficult. Most of the main road is bunded above the surrounding plain for vast distances.



It is often hard to get off the road because of the amount of water.

The roads vary between four lanes and a good surface (very occasionally), to badly deteriorated single lane where first and second gear are the best we could do, and we did better than any of the cars making about 40 km in an hour. In general, the roads have continued to deteriorate as we have traveled east.



Roads are of “variable” quality.

The fuel itself has been relatively cheap ($1.10/litre), but many stations only sell 80 and 92 octane, and this is poor feed for Elephant. The local cars seem to run fine on 80 or even 76 octane but we have found that this causes Elephant to fart a lot and lose interest in proce(e)ding(s).



Local cars seem to run OK on 80 or 76 octane fuel but Elephant doesn't like it much.

Any area that is above the water is cultivated and any area with tree cover is wet and, therefore, not cultivated. The area of arable land is breathtaking. We have ridden 5000 km through rich black-soil country and only now, at the eastern edge of Siberia, have we found some higher ground and sandier soils. One consequence of this is that it is difficult to find somewhere to pull off the road for a piss, without stepping off the road and into a swamp, and our usual roadside lunches have been out of the question.



Now, where is a dry tree to hide behind?

Instead of roadside picnics, we joined the brotherhood of long distances truck drivers and started to frequent the truck stop cafés and hotels. These places generally have a fuel station (they couldn't be called service stations here as all they do is sell fuel), a café and and a hotel. We have lunch at the cafés of soup, salad, bread and tea for about $4 each. We stay overnight at the hotels from $25 for the room ($5 extra for a shower) with dinner and breakfast equally good value.



A typical truck stop with accommodation upstairs and cafe down.



The decor in the cafe left us in no doubt where we were!

Obviously, services of all kinds thin out as you go east. This led to one longer than expected day when I failed to take Jo's advice and stop a suitable pub claiming we needed to ride an additional half hour to make our schedule. Four hours and 250 km later we were running out of time and options when we finally found an old Soviet block-house hotel in a provincial town. We arrived in time to see the town's mid-summer fire-works display, but not in time to find anywhere to eat. We were at least 200km ahead of schedule.

We have passed through many very poor rural villages in the last ten days. Most have no indoor plumbing of any kind and for many, wood burning is still the source of winter heat. The countryside is desperately poor and life seems tough.



In the poor rural villages log construction is still used.

This is not to say that Siberia is a backwater or even backwards generally. There is a resources and development boom underway here and big fortunes are still being made. The cities that are at the heart of the boom are thriving with new middle-class suburbs sprouting like mushrooms and construction cranes filling the sky. We have been into supermarkets out here that were as big and well stocked as any in Australia or Western Europe. Expensive cars and fashionable clothes are everywhere.



A skyline full of construction cranes is testament to the boom underway here...



...as are the residential projects in the big cities.

The agricultural sector has been left behind and those cities and towns that were built under dodgy Soviet central economic plans are struggling. Those cities hooked into the new economy are booming.



There is coal to burn in Siberia, which is exactly what they do with it in some very dirty power stations.



Siberian locals (and Russians generally) have been amazing. A request for directions often results in a local driving to the destination in his car while we follow or, as in this case, four pages of maps printed off the business computer to make sure we didn't get lost getting out of town.

It is hard to sum up our feelings on Siberia. Our antipodean minds have an innate understanding of the tyranny of distance. But this place, like much of Russia, flows out over the edge of our imaginations.



...and did I tell you how big this place is? The wheat just disappears over the horizon and continues to do so as you drive hundreds of km.

10 to 12 June 08

We bolted out of Moscow on 10 June having calculated that this was the last day to leave to make a comfortable run to the Mongolian border 6000 km away if we intended to stay on our schedule. We navigated out of the Moscow megopolis with relative ease and headed east towards the industrial town of Nizhniy Novgorod 450 km away. This was to be our first overnight.

We were on one of the major commercial highways in Russia, the traffic was heavy and the road conditions varied from motorway to goat-track. On the good sections of road we made the best of it and ran hard. On the bad sections we ground out the kilometres using the Elephant's acceleration to blow past other traffic at every chance. We made the 450 km out to Nizhniy Novgorod by 1600 and started looking for a hotel.

And that's when the wheels fell off. We tried 5 hotels and none would accept us as guests. They all claimed we had visa irregularities. We were sure of our ground and Jo (who is responsible for organising accommodation) pointed out that we were complying with the new, 2007 regulations. She was told at one hotel that the new rules were fine for Moscow, but in Nizhniy Novgorod they were not applying the new rules and we would have to comply with the old ones.

If there is one thing we can do it is take a hint. They clearly didn't want us in this town. With the daylight starting to fade we got out of town in a hurry looking for some place to stay. In a small village 25 km away we rocketed past a café that looked like it might have rooms and had U-turned and stopped out the front in a few seconds. Jo was already off the back of the bike and looking for the way-in when I noticed that the place had a staff of about 8 girls, all dressed for “work”. A couple of the girls came over to talk to Elephant.

All seemed to be going well when Jo returned with a room key and the barman to open a storage shed for Elephant. We unpacked and carried our gear in past the disco room complete with mirror ball and the bar. We had a room in the quiet corner of the accommodation floor and with the madam positioned behind her disk and ledger at the top of the stairs, we were confident of not being disturbed. Although, after 12 hours on the bike, the thought of a back rub did cross my mind.

We were sure to get a sound night's sleep with sheets like these!

Whatever the activities of the Helping Hands' Motel, we had a quiet night and slept soundly. In the cold light of the next day we assessed our situation and decided that whatever the “legal” position, we needed to sort out our visa problem before we continued. There was nothing else for it but to return to Moscow. I pointed Elephant back down the highway and, with rain clouds forming, got down to the business.

Six hours later we were back in Moscow, just a little wet, and two hours after that we had the “unnecessary” paperwork in our possession. Pizza, beer and a good night's sleep helped us to reconcile the two days and 1000 km we had just burned.

With an early start and the benefit of having done it before, we were out of the city in under 40 minutes on the morning of 12 June so we stopped for a breakfast of pancakes and coffee. With a full belly to set us up for a long ride we rolled Elephant into the river of traffic and let it carry us along. I looked down at the GPS to check our navigation. The message on the screen was simple enough. “Go East” it said, and so we did.