Hey Pete ,nice work man ,hey my name is carlos ,Im also planning a trip for next year on Drz400 ,but just around Africa,2009 to 2012 me and my wife done a trip from Alaska to Ushuaia,we done around 115.000kms in 27 months on road,now we are planing for africa ,we leave 2 min from ace cafe just oposite stonebridge park station ,and i would like to know when u guys gonna leave ,and I would like to see your bike if is posssible?
if is let me know I come to your place my number is 07779587810 Carlos,would like to take some Ids about the bike coz im planning to use same bike next trip.
many tnx ,and good luck hv a safe trip


penaestradasobre2rodas

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Hello Pete,

Good luck on your trip.

Just one thing. The kick-start looks a bit iffy sat against the tank; if you move it round on the shaft a couple of splines, won't it "nest" nicely in the curve under the tank ?

All the best with your trip, looking forward to the reports. The bike looks great.

Hi guys.

Thanks again for all your advice and good wishes. We Finally managed to hit the road after a stressful final week of last minute to do's. I'm writing this now from Ukraine after really great few days in Romania.

Leaving the UK was not really the enjoyable experience I originally hoped for. Although the bike was pretty much good to go, working on it until the very last minute meant that I hadn't left myself any time to really consider what I was going to pack. Inevitably, I ended up shoving all sorts in at the last minute making the load on the back a ridiculous size. I felt more like I was mounting a horse not a dirt bike. We're using Wolfman soft luggage on the sides with a lifeventure dry bag on the top.Nevertheless, we set sail on the Dover to Calais ferry at which point we both realised there really was no turning back now.

We made it as far as Arras, France before getting our head down for the night. The roads were spot on. It was as if they had been designed with a sports bike in mind. We immediately wanted more power but reminded ourselves of the reason for choosing the Drz. We were and still are confident it will come in to it's own the further east we make it. We both already knew that we will be back in the Alps region on bigger bikes at some point in the near future so for now, the main focus was to get in the thick of it all in Russia and Mongolia. For that reason we powered on through the next day stopping for the night in Stuttgart before setting up camp in Prague. From Prague, we continued through to Bratislava and found a campsite just outside of the city. The campsite wasn't yet open for the season so there was no other guests or running water but the hotel next door was hosting a Miss Slovakia beauty contest so we could hardly complain.



It was here where we both decided we were sick of carrying so much luggage. There and then we both had a massive de-bulk session. I was impressed with just how ruthless we both were. Pretty much everything went other than a few pairs of boxers, socks and a couple of t-shirts. We also revisited the spares we were carrying and worked out what we could lose and what we could strap to the bike so we didn't need to cart it in and out of the tent or hostels each night and morning. In the Wolfman sides we have clothes and spares, on the top we have tents and cooking gear only. The tools have been strategically placed throughout the bikes and mainly in a lockable tool kit on the back of one bike and the big chain lock on other bike. The weight seems to be fairly distributed between the two bikes. I'm also now happy with the amount of weight we are carrying and no doubt the sub-frame is in for a better chance of survival. The following morning the bike felt like a completely different ride. It was a huge relief.



We took a quick detour to Vienna then on to Budapest and to Cluj Napoca, Romania. Yesterday we pushed on to here, Brasov.
I know there is already a million and one ride reports on this part of Europe so I'm conscious I shouldn't bore you with ride reports just yet until we hit the slightly more extreme areas but I wanted to write about our time in Romania as this was a real highlight.

The hospitable offers we have received from people on the on-line forums have been amazing. Our ride through Romania was the perfect example of this. A few days ago we rode with a guy called Mike in Brasov. As he lives there he knows the area and the Transfagarason road like the back of his hand. He saw a post I had put up on Thumper Talk and being a DRz owner himself immediately contacted me to see if we would be passing through Romania.
We met this morning and headed out for a days ride. It's a fairly long straight boring ride from Brasov to the beginning of the Transfagarason but definitely well worth it. Upon reaching the bottom of the road, we started climbing but quickly hit a concrete blockade preventing traffic from going any further. Mike explained that due to snow fall, the road does not open until later next month. I was questioning whether it was worth us riding all the way out there but when I asked him if we could go any further he responded with "Do you see any snow here?"
He just snuck through the barrier and popped a big wheelie on the other side. We followed, but conscious of damaging the bikes, without the big wheelie. This of course didn't have anything to do with our wheeling capability. :-)

We climbed and climbed, hairpin after hairpin and as the road was fully closed there was not a car in sight. There had been multiple landslides over the winter which were yet to be cleared but avoiding them didn't seem like too much of an issue for Romanian Mike so we just stuck with him. The views were incredible and it was excellent to get to grips with the bikes on such a road. We were eventually prevented from going any further as there was thick snow covering the entire road.

Mike had a little chuckle everytime we discussed the rest of our route around the world. When we questioned if he would ever want to do it, his reply was "On a DRz? ha, no chance."
He later took us on some dirt trails. The bike felt right at home. It will be interesting to see how the bike holds up.

For me, Romania was a real highlight and I would highly recommend it. A massive thanks to Mike. I'm sure he would be happy to show anyone else visiting this area around so contact me if you want to track him down.

All in all, the trip is going exactly as we hoped and the bikes feel superb. Choosing road tyres has been the best call yet. The bikes are handling so well on the good surfaces on Europe but we are looking forward to donning the knobblies in Moscow and finally getting the bikes on the dirt. We have a load of video footage which we will be editing and posting up soon.

We will shortly be in Moscow where we hope to change tyres to something a little more knobbly. If anyone has any advice or contacts we can use to acquire some new sets please do let me know. Any advice would be massively appreciated.

Pete.











Me and Mike on his DRz SM. What a legend!!

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The person used in Moscow by many travellers, includin me, is:

Best regards, Denis Panferov.
buy@motorezina.ru ICQ:645-2793
Tel: +7-495-507-9530 +7-495-507-9530 ; Cell: +7-925-507-9530 +7-925-507-9530
http://www.motorezina.ru - Tyres for motorcycles
Моторезина в наличии, консультации, доставка по Москве, отправка в регионы.

Denis can also arrange to ship tyres east across Russia so you can pick them up elsewhere. Shipping charges were a reasonable 250 rbl (about $10) a tyre last year.

I don't know what your exact route is but if you are staying on the highway in west Russia before entering Mongolia at the western end I would suggest (if your current tyres are holding out) talking to Denis about shipping tyres to Novisibersk (theres at least one good bike shop there). That way you'll save your dirt tyres until you need them.

By the way Denis speaks / writes good English.

Hope this helps and enjoy the trip.

Excellent. Thanks so much. I'll get in touch with him now.
We don't know the best route to take yet. We're keen to go through Mongolia and then perhaps on the Road of Bones if it is not too early in the year but your suggestion of using the highway to get to Novisibersk then switching tyres at that point sounds like it could be ideal. We're always open to route suggestions so let me know if you have any good advice.

We're on full blown road tyres at the moment but they have plenty of life in them. If it's tarmac as far as Novisibersk then they will be fine.

Thanks again.

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Right, so I left you in Romania after our excellent experience with Mike in mountains. I am writing this now from Ulanbattar, Mongolia. It's been one hell of an adventure but more on that later. So much interesting stuff has happened over the last few weeks here in Mongolia and Russia that I want to share with this community that in order to bring this blog up to date, please excuse my brevity for the time spent between Romania and Moscow.

On the 9th May we crossed into Ukraine and rode to the captial, Kiev. Immediately after crossing the border we were waved down by the fed, a big stern looking and very determined copper. He waived his arms and shouted at us for a while, but without speaking any English we had no idea what he was saying, I’m guessing we were going too fast, standard. He began filling out a form, and I chuckled as he noted down the details from an old India visa in my passport. When I pointed out he was using the wrong page he screwed up the form, gave me back my passport and sent us on our way. A lucky escape considering we didnt have any currency at that point!

We decided to give ourselves a day off in Kiev, and Jon managed to convince me to give any site-seeing a miss and to head straight for the boozer. It had been a long few days and we desereved a Kiev pub crawl! Spitting feathers the following morning made the pack up harder than normal, and the ride was long and straight E101 to Russia, as straight as an arrow! I haver never seen such a long straight road with no changes in scenery. It may sound silly but it was only at that point that it dawned on me that my life for the next 8 months is sat on a motorcycle, often without music and attempting to sing to myself for entertainment.

As we approached the Russian border we were hassled to buy motorcycle insurance before entering. This appeared to be a 3 man job as they ushered us into a small hot cabin to convince us this was legit. At first they wanted €100 each for 3 months cover. We only had €100 between us so we offered them €50 each, which they quickly accepted. Inevitabely we feel like we have been mugged off and that we should have bartered harder!

The rest of the border crossing was fairly straight forward. None of the officials spoke any English, so we just noded and said yes to all of their questions, then if they started shaking their heads we would switch to saying no, this seemed to work. Even the decleration form was all in Russian with no English translation, so we gave it our best shot by copying an example form. We have no idea what we declared, but it seemed to be ok and we entered Russia on our business visas, happy days! They had a good look at our bikes, prodded a view parts, but we didnt have to open any of our luggage. With almost a smile, and a small snigger the guard spoke one line of English to me, “Welcome to beautiful Russia”

Our first night in Russia was spent in Bryansk, 200km from the border and 400km from Moscow. The town felt like a rough council estate, and we struggled to find a hotel. We finally managed to find one by 10.30pm, and I drew the short straw for the check-in process whilst Jon waited outside with the bikes. With a complete language barrier the check in process took 45minutes, we were very tired and it was a stressful process with the grumpy lady scanning 6 pages of each passport. To top it off, Jon had to entertain a complete waster who would not leave him alone, banging on at him in Russian and trying to wear his crash helmet.

Feelings of apprehension were building at this stage as we both knew the real tough miles were about to commence when we entered the wild of Siberia and Mongolia.

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I used the AD-TEK sump guard on my DRZ from UK-Capetown..

Be careful not to over tighen the bolts. The aluminium bends REALLY easily and will begin to shear. Get some large rubber washers with a metal one over it to stop it happening.

Also, hope you've locktite'd your stator and pickup ??

Make sure you have case covers and and proper rad guards too...

Check the oil OFTEN.......Nothing will kill a DRZ faster than letting it drop. Change oil every 3000 miles too if not more.

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Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

Excellent suggestion. Thanks for your input. We have done as you said and it now sites nicely under the tank.

Pete.

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Carlos.... I'm so sorry. I just read this message now. I'm already in Ukraine. I guess that may be a little far for you to pop round? :-)
When do you leave? Perhaps you can check out the bikes on our return home to the UK. We should be back by January of net year if that helps?

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