only saying that an air head GS is a fairly simple bike to work on. Can only be a few things. Could be something with diode board or stator ... or broken wire somewhere in the harness, bad switch, faulty ground or intermittent short? Been there, taken apart on the side of the road ... in the dark. Coils rarely fail on air heads.

Oh, crystal clear! But wouldn't it depend on what the fault was on the bike?
One good thing about common, older bikes is sometimes parts are around or can be borrowed from other bikes. If the fault is a relatively simple one ... a local guy might get lucky, no?

If the piston's seized or it's sucked a valve or you've busted the case ... you're done. But sometimes it's just a blocked jet, torn diaphragm, bad switch, shorted wire, crud in fuel, clogged filter,
bad wheel or steering head bearing, broken cable, cracked frame ... sometimes the local guy can help with these minor issues .... Sometimes not.

Early in this thread I posted a pic of a KLR broken in half. Did you know that guy had a local welder in Baja weld up the frame? He put everything back on the bike, rode it back to USA. He then bought a used KLR frame, transferred everything over ... then rode the KLR back to Mexico, continued his trip.

It was a month long interruption ... and cost some money, but the welding was cheap and much cheaper than a truck ride up to the border. (1000 miles)

Some local friends here crossed Russia in a Ural side car rig. It broke down many times and locals always got it going. They were hit (rig mostly destroyed), bought all new parts for like $500, had it rebuilt. The girl is Russian ... lives here in San Fran Bay Area, so language was no problem. They had the ride of a life time, by their account.

From reading Walter's ride reports I got the feeling there are a few decent mechanics in Russia? Dunno. Africa? I think you're on your own there ... but you never know ...