End of Roads
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
posted by Simon Buckley
Now i really started to feel like this was an adventure. The road disappeared again about 60km down, and we didn’t even see a dirt road let alone a made road for the rest of the day. We did see camels, and rivers and sand and rocks. We came across a bridge, somehow most of the tracks headed over this bridge, with no order on either side. There was some work happening on what looked like a road in the distance, but it was a long way off being ready.
We found a place to camp not far off the road, but as we soon learned, if it was a good place to camp, the locals would be there or nearby. Most of the land in mongolia belongs to the people, so they can run their sheep goats and cattle, and set up their camp anywhere they like. As nomadic people, they follow the seasons, living in dry river beds over summer and in more sheltered places in winter, living off meat and milk. Needless to say we had a visitor first thing in the morning. We had a game of charades and todd showed him his fancy camera, shook hands and off he went on his little horse.
We hit the road, and after a few hours of dirt came across a town. There was a gate with a police post manned by a drunk policeman. He motioned to us to do something, not too sure what, but when some locals pulled up behind us and the gate went up, we were off. I wouldn’t imagine the policeman would be too steady on his feet not having the booth to hold him up. Fuel, 2km of potholed made roads through town and we were back in the dirt. There isn’t much to write about riding in sand, dirt and rocks, picking up bits that fall off my bike and bolting, wiring or taping them back on. We ran into a number of teams taking part in the mongol rally.
The mongol rally is a non competitive rally, where teams get from europe to ulaan bataar in a vehicle no older than ten years, any way they like, and then give the vehicle to the organizers who sell it for charity. We saw the first three cars when we were stopped to work out a problem with my bike. It was running really rich, but i had cleaned the air filter only the day before so i was convinced it wasn’t that so i changed the fuel filter and that didn’t help. A few kms down the road and it was stopped again. We didn’t have much water so on one hand i was hoping it was a simple problem like that, on the other, i hoped i wouldn’t have to use my remaining water to wash out my air filter. It was my air filter, completely clogged.
On the road again we ran into a couple more italian bikers heading from Italy to Japan. Cool guys, they gave us the run down on where to get fuel and the condition of the roads. Bad. Not being able to pick up supplies wasn’t an issue as we had enough food to survive for two weeks, but the reality is that you come across at least one town a day to restock. We ran into a couple of aussie boys on the rally who stocked us up with vodka and an aussie flag. Todd packed the flag securely in his gear and i haven’t seen it since, but the idea was to take photos in key places. There was a couple on a very small yamaha motorcycle, and various other combinations of cars and crew. where possible we got into mongolian dumplings – meat. Otherwise we ate what we carried. We were down to about 250km per day, due to the condition of the roads and stopping at least twice per day for me to clean my air filter. I hadn’t been able to work out what was going on, I had squeezed silicone into every possible spot, apart from the dirty big hole i drilled in the side of my bike to get to the seat screws without fuss. I worked it out just as we got back into Russia and off the dirt roads.
This sort of travelling really starts to take it’s toll on you, physically it is demanding, riding over rough terrain and corrugated roads all day, and mentally it was exhausting, looking out for holes and ditches, picking tracks, constantly on 100% alert. When we did come across the towns they were like veritable oasis, something to eat for us, and something to drink for the bikes. Coming out of one town, altai a local toll ‘police guy’ tried to charge 5 times the usual amount for the toll. Tolls for roads in Mongolia are usually on the way into town, and you don’t mind paying because you get a short reprieve from dirt tracks, but this guy was charging us on the way out of town. We had heard on the grapevine that there was a good stretch of road out of this town, and once we established the amount we were going to pay (about $2 equiv), headed down the tarmac thinking ‘happy days!’. About 2 km down the road, around the corner and out of view of the toll booth the road ended at a hill. There was a choice of 50 tracks though! If something seems too good to be true it probably is!
Not far down the road, we stopped for a break, and a car pulled up a few tracks across (going the same direction). It wasn’t unusual for cars to pull up. They would stop, everybody would jump out, come over and proceed to push buttons and twist throttles. I got pretty good at managing the fact finding, especially in groups of kids. I always let one kid turn the key, one push the start button and let a few have a screw of the throttle. if there was time, these kids would be the best performers in the geography lesson i would give using the map on my pannier. It wasn’t just the children that would come for a poke and prod though, most grown men would love to have a button press or throttle twist. An interesting phenomenon, and for my part, adding to the personal diplomacy of the project where prostate cancer is so far from important. I digress…
So the group of about 8 people walked over from the car (not a big car mind you), and one spoke in perfect English. We got chatting to Tilek and had instant report, because not only did he speak perfect English (which was extremely unusual in my experience of mongolia), but he used colourful language in a typically Australian way. Instant mates. Tilek invited us to his family home, ‘just over that hill and on the way to olgi’ for dinner and a nights rest indoors. We followed the car is they weaved their way across the tracks and around the mountain pass.
The village was quite small, with a bording house for children to attend school run by a charity, a few houses, some goats and sheep. Stopping in at the boarding house to drop off supplies that they had picked up from town, we were instant celebrities. Until the staff yelled at the kids to get back inside anyway. Tilek was a school teacher who left the job to write a kazakh – english dictionary and pursue tourism interests. His wife worked as a kindergarten teacher and he had two little boys. it turns out he was very interested in motorcycles and was in the process of setting up a motorcycle overlanders stop in the area. He was an ex amateur boxer, mongolian champion a number of times, and worked as an interpreter and guide. Tilek and his dad both took my bike for a ride, i took some of the gear off to make it a bit lighter (they are not quite as big as me) and they took off around the village. When his dad went for a ride, he stopped in at home and returned with his wife on the back of the bike. Dinner was great, we talked about Kazakh and Mongolian traditions, about Tileks business plans and our trip. The house was small, two rooms and a kitchen, and the whole family vacated the bedroom, sleeping together on mattresses in the second room so we could have their beds.
After a breakfast of Mongolian tea and bread, we were off to get back to the ‘highway’ and head towards olgi . The directions were simple ‘just follow this road over the hill, turn left on the other side of the mountain and you will see a bridge. That is the main road. Of course the ‘road’ to which Tilek was referring would be better described as a track, and one which disappeared just over the hill. We found another track heading behind the mountain as he had described, saw our first snow capped peaks (we were getting high now), and followed the tracks all the way down to a river. “Well i assume this is the bridge”, we undertook our first river crossing and headed around the pass. The road was ‘very challenging’, diplomatic for terrible. boulders, shale, sand as deep as the axles… there was no way that this was the main road, yet we pushed on. About four hours down the track we came across the only trees that we had seen since ulaan bataar. Three of them. Two of them were dead. Still, trees!
The valley that had the last remaining trees in mongolia also had a picturesque river and a couple of gurs (yurts). We pulled over to ask someone where we were and where we were going, but first we had to get across the river. Failing to find an easy point to cross, we splashed through the river to have a chat to the woman who had come out of her gur to see what was going on. With some charades and map pointing, we were no closer to knowing where we were, only that the town we wanted was in the direction we were travelling. Done, that will do, so after crossing the river again and wringing out our socks we were off again. The track was getting smaller and smaller until it looked as though the last time the track was used was by a goat 3 months previous. Round a bend and there it was. The end of the road. Not in a good way, like ‘ahh, here we are, at the town at last’, but in a bad way like ‘oh, there is no more road, and what is this dirty big great rock face in front of me?’
There was a small shack with a couple of guys milking goats for cheese, and after a bout of charades and map pointing, we established that we had gone the wrong direction at some time in the last five hours. Five hours of ‘challenging roads’, on which I had been justifying being there at all by saying to myself over and over in my head “now this is adventure”, and “this is what these bikes are made for!” What did make the situation better was the gift of rock hard cheese afforded us by the farmers. This cheese is so strong and hard that if you could manage to bite a piece off your face would screw up like you had just taken a bite from a lemon. Unusual, and not being one to shy from unusual things, i took a bite, and popped it into my tank bag.
It only took two or three hours to get back to where we missed the turn off – silly me, there was a track that went another direction. How bloody obvious! We were up on the other side of the mountain now, and could see the main route in the distance, at last.
We found our way to town and rode around looking for somewhere to stay. I noticed a sign in English out the front of a café and stopped to ask for some advice. As it turned out the café also had gurs for rent out the back! Awesome, last night in Mongolia and we got to stay in a gur. For those uninitiated a gur, or yurt, is the round tents that Mongolian people live in. I would have said traditionally if I hadn’t seen for myself just how many people still do. There are suburbs of them around cities, and they were in every good camping spot along the tracks. They had to be warm and comfortable. We threw our gear in the gur and headed into town to get a feed.
It was dark by now, and we were looking for a Turkish restaurant I had heard about on the road, so I stopped a local guy to ask directions. He wandered around with us for about half an hour until we found the place so I invited him to join us. He ate and left, but was waiting outside when we were heading home. After walking with us the whole way back to the gur, we bid him farewell and retired into the coldest gur in Mongolia.
It was only a couple of hundred kilometers to the border from Olgi, so we were set to be there before the lunch break and be well into Russia by nightfall. The road ended about 80km out of town, at the bottom of a mountain. When I say mountain, I mean hills and snow and all. The part of the drive where a road would have been great was where it ended. It had snowed the night before and we were making a mountain pass in mongolia in the snow. If that isn’t impressive enough, I got a flat tyre, on a mountain pass, in mongolia in the snow! After changing the tube and getting a miniscule amount of air pressure using my hand pump, we headed down the other side of the mountain in the snow. I rode around the village at the bottom of the mountain looking for an air pump, and had some luck when a mini mongolian took me to see his dad, who had a friend with a pump. Problem solved. Border ho!
We arrived at the border at lunch time, and surprise surprise, another flat tyre. There was something funny going on here. What was funny was that I was out of tubes, so the guy from the café gave me a hand fixing the blown ones. This time I actually found the nail that had probably caused the last three punctures and removed it. While I had the bike in bits fixing the wheel, the polish crew we met in altai whilst I was getting a shorn bolt removed and they were having some welding done to their roofrack turned up heading our way.
From the other direction three Aussie guys on two ural motorcycles with side cars turned up, they were heading to Magadan on their bikes, Charlie and Ewan. I am not entirely sure how it all started as I was head down getting sorted, but Todd and the Polish girls got into a snowball fight with some local kids around the same time. It was all happening at the border. Bike fixed, a last feed of mongolian dumplings, some paperwork and we were out of Mongolia and in no mans land heading for Russia, again.
Into the Wilds of Inner Mongolia
Wednesday, October 7th, 2009
posted by Simon Buckley @ 06:13:27 AM
We turned up at the Russian side of the border to a huge queue, but it turned out it was for trucks and vans, and we slipped around the side to the motorcycle line, and making Russian side of the border quite easy. Two forms, a very meticulous examination of our passports and we were through.
The Mongolian side was like a pinball machine, bouncing from counter to counter, getting stamps on a little piece of paper like bingo, and when your card was full you got to go through. I took mine out to the bike with me and was promptly sent back for the last ‘GO’ stamp. Again, they weren’t really sure about the Carnet, but we got through. Again, very friendly people. I met a Russian guy who ran fishing and hunting tours, and was heading too Mongolia for a break. We arranged to meet at a café “you can’t miss” on the way out of town, but we missed it!
Our next stop was Ulaan Bataar, the capital of Mongolia, from where wwe would head west and hoped to hook up with our Russian support team at lake Havaskol on our way west. The scenery changed as though someone had drawn a big line across the earth and now we were in Mongolia. Whoever drew the line also turned down the tempreture, it was freezing. I was wearing everything I had and still had to stop at every road house (about every hour) for a coffee and warm up. At least there were roads, only problem is that instead of dipping headlights, Mongolians flash you in a kind of ritual celebration that they are driving past you. Very kind of them to welcome us like that!
We hit Ulaan Bataar about midnight (high beams and cold hands slowed us down), and found a hotel were we appeared to be the only guests. Given that we were the only guests, we had all of the staff to ourselves. They were going too keep an eye on the bikes for us, and the next day Enke, who had just pulled a 24 hour shift, and her friend Anna came with us to the local motorcycle market where Todd was hoping to find another chain.
Not much happening in terms of Japanese motorcycles in Mongolia, in fact I would like to severely chastise all of those people who told me that a Japanese bike was the way to travel through Asia. “You will get parts anywhere Simon, no worries”. They don’t even have parts for the bikes in Japan! The rest of Asia they almost fell over when we asked for parts. My advice, carry consumables and order ahead, especially if your bike has unusual size tyres or anything else! So if it aint Russian, it aint there. Anyway, there was a chain that was close so he grabbed that one and a chain breaker and off we went. Back in town I headed into a yurt that was set up in the main square to see what was going on. The guy there was serving fermented horse milk “female horse not male horse” he assured me. I really enjoyed the sour taste, but wasn’t too keen on the horse stomach accompaniment. Gave it a red hot shot though!
A funny thing happened when we headed west out of Ulaan Bataar, the roads ceased to exist. Funny strange that is. There was a road for about 80 km, and then it stopped and fell into a series of tracks that stretched across for a few hundred meters. Just tracks in the sand. It was pretty amazing, and what I expected, but to see it for yourself was amazing. I hit a ditch, well I tried to jump a ditch because there wasn’t time to stop and it bent my top box, but that was all.
We stopped almost every truck and car we passed and asked for directions to Moron, ironic really, but no one seemed to know where we were of where we wanted to be. It was like these people drive across the desert, but don’t know where they are?
Needless to say, the morons never found moron, when we finally found someone at a petrol station who knew where we were, we had passed it by about 70 bone jarring kilometers, and we weren’t going back! Our intelligence had led us to believe that the road to the south was the better road and we decided that seeing as we wouldn’t be able to see the boys at the lake, then we should take the better route to save our vehicles and some time.
How wrong we were…
Mother Russia
Wednesday, October 7th, 2009
posted by Simon Buckley @ 04:06:04 AM
Let me begin by explaining the sluggish updating of the website and blog. My romantic notion of a ride through Russia and Mongolia had me setting up camp in the twilight each evening and taking time to write of the days events and keep everything up to date. This would be followed by a leasurely camp dinner and bed, before rising with the sun to continue the next day. The things I failed to take into account were the physical toll of riding on Russian roads, but more importantly ‘Russian Hospitality’ – allow me to explain.
We made it to Russia safe and sound. They don’t use the Carnet for international registration here in Russia, so we were able to roll on to the ferry from Japan, but not off the ferry into Korsakov, Russia. Bizzarre system, but even after everyone we met at the ferry company and even on the ferry telling us it was impossible to organize without an agent we pushed on. Our first interaction with Russian authorities was unexpected. We were ushered into an old passenger bus from the ferry, and told that we would be able to pick up the bikes from a bonded yard when we had cleared customs and made the nessessary arrangements.
The customs staff on the ferry and at the immigration post (which was an aging crumbling building hidden amongst some similarly dilapidated warehouses) were amazing. I expected harsh and dodgy, what I got was the opposite. Although no one spoke English, a smile, handshake and kangaroo hop managed to break the misunderstanding and we were filling out paperwork with the help of an interpreter and customs officer. Passport stamp and we were through. It was about 7pm and the main customs office was closed for the day, so we headed to the only hotel in town to bed down for the night.
A Japanese guy I met on the ferry, who was taking his bike over to ride around Sakhalin Island for a couple of weeks had enlisted the services of an agent and he had his bike out of customs and ready to go when we get to the hotel. We also met a couple of Italian Bikers on their way to Japan on new XTZ Tenere’s, which pretty much explained why the CEO of Yamaha in Australia stopped emailing us about a possible sponsorship opportunity after the offer last year. The Italians had come across from Italy from the other direction and we arranged to meet for dinner by the port to pick their brains regarding route and helpful hints and tips. Takashi picked up the bill for our traditional Russian fare and beers as his little sponsorship and we were back to the most expensive hotel in town (had the market cornered).
The next day we hit the customs office with our paperwork, had to head to the insurance office to buy insurance, back to customs, bonded yard and we were on our way. No issues, no bribes, no nasty people. Next stop – Khomsk and the ferry to the Mainland.
Arriving in Khomsk about 11pm, we headed straight for the ferry port. It was raining and dark, and I was walked up to the booking office to arrange the ride to Port Vanino on the mainland. If you have seen the movie ‘Hostel’, you would appreciate the atmosphere of the area, but the woman in the office was lovely, more Kangaroo impressions and in between yelling at other people coming to the office we were ready to go. The ferry left at 11am, and by now it was close to 1am in the morning so we headed to the nearest hotel for a kip (sleep).
At the front doors of the hotel were a bunch of Russian guys who greeted us with what was to become pretty standard “You are crazy”. They invited us out for a little drink, whilst flicking the side of the neck like “what I really mean is I’ll get you in the car, take you to a secluded spot and cut your head off”. Nevertheless it was late and I was tired, but a ‘little drink’ with some locals sounded like an interesting plan. We had to check in, park and change, but they waited right there at the front door of the hotel for us, and when we arrived 45 mins later, there they were, neck flicking and ushering us into cars.
We ended up at a local bar where the boys obviously knew the owner (for reasons that will become apparent) and they cleared the corner of the bar for us. There were about 12 guys, Dimitri, his driver and a few ring ins, and it wasn’t long before we knew we were drinking with the local Mafia. The bar closed at 3am and we spent the next hour or so picking up sly beers from various flats, driving around the streets of Khomsk in a brand new Audi listening to ‘Russian Music’. Every time we were close to the hotel a new song would start and Dimitri would shout “Russian Music” and his driver would cut another lap. Todd wasn’t too well by this stage, but we eventually got back to the hotel in one piece, for a couple of hours sleep before heading for the ferry in the morning.
Needless to say we were running pretty late for the ferry, arriving about 3 hours after we were supposed to; however in true Russian style, people were still waiting for the ferry to go. We were the last vehicles on the ferry, and we found out later that the check in woman radioed to see if we were too late when we turned up, and the captain said it was ok because we had ridden all the way from Australia to get it!
The ferry was an old clunker, smelly and damp, and we had a cabin in the depths of its smelly bowels. Needless to say, I wasn’t too keen on spending too much time in there, and I headed up the deck to read my book. On the deck I met Marcus, Serge and Genya, three Russian guys who were heading to Mongolia for a week of camping on Lake Havaskol. They had seen our bikes and the map, and were keen to see if we wanted to travel to Mongolia together. I ended up spending the rest of the ferry ride with them, and retired late, about 2am thinking the ferry got in at 8am.
At 3:30am, the crew was knocking on doors to wake people up. A little tired and disorientated we headed for the garage and disembarked about 4:30am. The guys had some trouble with paperwork, and we got straight through (I think we were in the ‘too hard’ category for the guards, they asked us for something, I spoke quickly in English, they looked confused, I was confused, the gate went up and we drove through. Too easy. It was dark, cold and raining and we waited under a bridge for the guys to get their paperwork sorted and rejoin us.
2 hours at 50kmph due to the rain and dark, and the guys pulled over and suggested they make room in the Titan for us to get in and have a sleep. Mind you, the car was full of camping equipment, and we were both soaked. For those of you who think we are riding around having a good time, the reality of the ride is when it’s wet you are wet, when it’s cold you are cold, when it’s hot you sweat, when it’s muddy you get dirty, when you are happy you take pictures. I digress…
So Serge piled a whole lot of gear on himself and five grown men, two of them very wet, tried our best to get some sleep in one car.
After a few hours we were away again, the roads in this part of Russia would have been absolutely terrible and difficult if they were dry, but they were wet. It was still raining, so you had no idea how deep the pot holes were, and the mud was as slippery as ice in some parts. We both managed to stay upright the whole day, and arrived later that evening into Khabarovsk.
Nestled right over on the East of Russia, you could see China across the river, Khabarovsk reminded me somewhat of a small European city. It was late, and we were tired, but we went for a little look around town, through the park and back to the hotel.
My bike didn’t start in the morning, and the boys had managed to track down a small motorcycle market to find a chain for Todd. I bypassed my side stand switch and Todd found a dodgy Russian chain that just fit and we were off. The next few days had punctures, roadside hotels and kilometers. Of course the nightly ‘Russian Hospitality’ meant the boys cracking out a bottle of Vodka, and me bolting something back onto my bike. The headlight upgrade (making my headlight brighter) I got from Sunnys in Malaysia had given me nothing but trouble, flattening the battery, loosing wires, just not working for unknown reasons.
I got a flat tyre the day after Todd had two, and, and instead of waiting around for us the boys lent us their electric pump and went ahead to find somewhere to camp. Good plan, but I got another flat only 1km down the road, at 100kmph, and spent another hour changing the tube. We still hadn’t reached the guys camping spot by nightfall, but we pushed on dusty gravel roads.
Stopping at a tyre ‘shop’ – an old train carriage that was sat on the side of the road and a guy and his wife fixed tyres for travelers having bad luck along the road. The state of the road ensured there was no lack of business! They were lovely, fixed a couple of tubes (so we had spares again), made us tea and were genuinely lovely. There was a young family getting a tyre fixed at the same time and I gave a mini geography and English less on to the kids in return for some handy Russian phases. In return for the hospitality of the couple at the tyre train, Todd dropped his bike on their two tea cups, probably their only two, I had to giggle.
We pushed on thinking the boys would be around any corner, but it was about 4 hours later, covered in dust and grime, and when I had given up finding them and was looking for a place to camp myself, we rounded a bend and there they were, all sat in the Titan, hazard lights on the side of the road waiting for us. They had done the best to polish off a couple of bottles of vodka whilst waiting for us, but there they were. They were convinced we weren’t coming, but never the less had organized somewhere for us to sleep under cover at a café (which was closed), and hooked into cooking us dinner when we arrived. It was at this stage when I started to consider that they may well have been sent by our parents, or the Australian Government, or maybe even the Russian Government to keep us in line.
We bid farewell to the fellas the next day as they were heading to a border we couldn’t use, and we were heading for Ulan Ude to get our Mongolian Visas organized. Again we met some local fellas in Ulan Ude, and spent the day we were waiting for our visas getting travel advice and having a look around town. We stopped at a kiosk to grab something to eat, right at the time a homeless guy collapsed, cracking his head on the pavement. Witnessing some dubious first aid – like the lighter in the mouth, I popped the guy into the recovery position and let them continue with head wetting and mouth lighting.
The following day we were heading to Mongolia. Yee ha! A bit of a dampener on my mood when I noticed that Todd had lost the same sub frame bolt I had lost and stopped in at a hardware store to find a replacement. Whilst there I noticed the same issue on my bike and a local guy, who must have just been buying gear at the store came to the rescue. ‘Russian Bolts’, he proudly exclaimed ‘strong, no problems now!” I dared not tell him that the broken bolt he was replacing was a ‘Sturdy Russian bolt’! Anyway, with a new bolt rubbing on my chain and one on Todd’s, we were heading south to the Wilds of Mongolia, only a few hours down the highway.