Weld cast hollow aluminium, the shape of which gives it its strength? This is the only one to ever break, and there's a reason why it broke that I won't go into here. We'll have a chat about it over a cerveza.

Either way, we/Felix didn't have the time due to various other factors/work committments. As we couldn't ride the Old Summer Road due to the monstrous amounts of water in 2013, the New Federal Road was, in my opinion, a pointless exercise when you compare it to excellent parts of Central Asia/ Altai/ Mongolia/ BAM. Felix missed absolutely nothing of interest.

Ch 20, The end... or Brighty, Show us yer gulags...

Right chaps and chapeses

Let's make this the final instalment. Why?

• Why not? 20 is a nice round number
• I got a major monkey off my back, finally after all this planning and en route mishaps (adventures) actually reaching Magadan. This ride report is now taking an awful lot of time that I don't have at the moment. I need to plan this summer's trip and actually get out riding...
• There isn't really a lot to say. After the fun of Mongolia and the BAM, it was IMHO a pointless boring trudge riding the New Federal Road version of the Road of Bones to Magadan, solo and in sh!te weather and in a big rush to catch flight connections. I should have taken more breaks en route, but didn't have the time, due to work commitments. Oh yeh: The bike is virtually unrideable at less than 30mph/50kmh: No oil in either fork, and totally shagged steering head bearings. Felix had some, but I forgot to blag them off him.

Many thanks for reading this RR and even bigger thanks if you took the time to comment. Much appreciated.

See you on the road

Chris

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Friendly chap who helps me extract the snapped key from the petrol cap on the bike. He even gives me for free the screwdriver I now use to "lock" it






The situation I’m in




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Quite a pleasant view


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A bridge over a piece of water connecting 2 bits of mud…



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Luverly jubbly



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Drink driving?



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Sunset over the flooded fields



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The next ferry across the Lena River isn't leaving until tomorrow morning at 7am. So I sleep on the boat. The captain is cool enough to let me sleep in a spare cabin. For free. What a nice man



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The engine room


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In the morning they start loading other vehicles…



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…but we don't leave until noon when the mist/ fog has cleared. I've lost 4 valuable riding hours :-(



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A trucker and his wife



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I'm on a new bit of track that was carved out of the mountain side after a huge land slide. It took them 4 days



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Riding until well after dark every day meant I had the chance to take pictures of sunsets without getting off the bike. At 60 odd degrees north in the summer, it didn't get dark until very late



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The turn off for the Old Summer Road. In 2013 no motor vehicle made it from here through to Magadan via the OSR



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The fuel station at the turn off. Phil on the MZ had written his details here a few days ago. I add mine. I wasn't organised enough to print stickers before I left :-)



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The fuel station



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After a night camping at the cafe/petrol station at the turnoff: Amongst the crashed/abandoned cars and trucks. That black cloud in the distance was coming my way. I tried to race it, but it was faster than me :-(



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The highlight of my Road of Bones ride: Near Ust Nera, bumping into Pete Berry and Adam Lewis again. They had made it to Magadan, but transport for themselves and their bikes out of there, was beyond their budget, so they were riding back. Pete rode is XR400 all the way back to the UK. What a man!



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Landslides have been cleared. In the distance, centre right is where the road came from. This is me looking back. I've just ridden a 1/2 mile detour



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Lots of abandoned buildings everywhere on my journey. Now an abandoned town. No time to look round as it's getting dark







Ghost Town by The Specials (1981). The first vinyl record I ever bought

I don’t visit any gulags, so have no pictures to show. Lack of time, an unfit bike (remember 50kmh min speed…), solo riding and most definitely not in the mood


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After the ghost town I get to next inhabited town in the dark (11pm?), where my GPS unit says there's a hotel. It's closed. Bollocks. The janitor lady suggests I try elsewhere. They tell me to get lost too. So I head back to the closed hotel and persuade the janitor to let me sleep on the floor in the hallway. Actually, she lets me sleep on the benches in the gym room/waiting room.

The next morning the hotel owner lady arrives and sees me. She says nothing to me but gives the unfortunate janitor girl a whole load of grief. So I impress owner b!tch with my excellent grasp of Estuary English and head out of town. Only one more day of riding to go....



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It stopped raining enough to kick up some dust



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The only fuel station in town



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I is dirty too :-)



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A bloody long way to ride to get a picture at a road sign. Bashplate/skidplate, silencer and auxiliary fuel tank are all held on and in place with fencing wire (probably a few cows have since escaped en route...), cable ties and bungee cords



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I rolled into downtown Magadan at about 10.30 at night. In the rain. (Did I mention it rained a lot?) "Great, there's the hotel", I think to myself. I get off the bike in front of the main entrance and while I'm trying to remove my helmet, this rabid drunk man is preventing me by every means from getting to the hotel door. Oh joy...

I'll spare the details, but I did "assert" my right to enter the hotel prior to the police taking him jail.


And I leave you with a song:

I loved that Russian song ... is that deep sense of melancholy (so evident in the song) perpetuated throughout the culture? Is it as palpable as it appears in the song? Does it "rub off" on your out look while your there? :confused1:
Is it the Vodka? :rofl:

I hate obnoxious drunks. I think I'd rather camp out on the outskirts of town ... but probably all a toxic pit? Serious environmental degradation there ... worse than anything I've ever seen anywhere in the world. :(

The Shed MK 2
I know you mentioned it in your report somewhere ... but I've forgotten ... did you buy the X Challenge from your buddy? Or just borrow it?

In the end, what are your thoughts about it? Would you own one? (if you don't already) Is it a worth while bike to put money into? :confused1:

I remember your joy when you first got it ... and the comparisons to your Transalp "Shed MK1". :smartass: But here at the end seems the BMW is kind of falling to pieces.

So what is your verdict? Keep the X Challenge? Go back to a DRZ400? or something else?
What's up next for travel?

Thanks for the great report!
bier

I was running the same ride report over on advrider. Felix has now described what happen.

See post 149 at Mongolia to Magadan: Any which (the hard) way - Page 10 - ADVrider

[QUOTE=chris;468846
Wow, a local biker. Nope! Phil Kirk from Australia on a 1983 Jawa 250 2 smoke. Riding from Magadan to London to attend a conference. His Australian employer was paying his transport to get there. Most use the money to buy an air ticket. He used it on freight from Brisbane to Magadan as well as petrol and 2 stroke oil!

Hi Chris, about 50 kms after I met you guys I hit rain. A mixture of dust + rain and increasingly slippery road had me camping for the night on the side of the road. Next morning hit some very slippery stuff going on the run to Yukutsk. Even more slippery then it looked but the MZ just chogged along in 1st gear barely above idle and got through.

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You and Felix had one hell of a trip. Looks great. Hope we catch up again in the future!

[QUOTE=Krixos;475122]Hey Phil
Great to hear from you. Hope you're well.

I'm meeting Felix in the Pyrenees in Spain tomorrow and will pass on your regards. He lives on Majorca. We're riding some trails down there. Same bikes as in Siberia last summer. His bike is fixed. I've ridden from Albania to France in the past 3 weeks, a lot of it off road.

Please drop me a line when you're again in the UK.

If i understood correctly, the main highway road from yakutsk to magadan is more or less a regular gravel road, without any needs to cross swamps, collapsed bridges etc?

You understand correctly. Just one ferry. Anything and everything can and does do it.

Correct about road conditions, but I don't agree there is nothing to see/enjoy. In fact landscape is super and partly with great mountains. There is indeed only 1 ferry to take over the Aldan rivier (not Lena!). There is the state operated one and a private company. They take off when full, no timetable. Normally 3 to 4 times a day. Big price difference for our truck, 1000(state) or 4000(private) rbl.

Apart from the landscape there are a few museums about gulag, some gulag locations etc. If you speak Russian it is very interesting to go some deeper in peoples living conditions, politics etc etc in this region because its quite specific. There is also a big difference between the Yakutian and Russian population. There are even some villages with allmost 100% UA population.

We did Yakutsk Magadan last August/september.

GRTZ,

JP

The reasons for my perceived lack of enjoyment is described in post 47. Each to their own.

The ferry I took was free for me on a bike. They also allowed me to sleep free on the boat over night.

The coolest picture ever-brilliant!
It takes яйца to carry that off!

It's either, as you say, Kahunas, or :blushing: