Irkutsk to Yakutsk, Part 3

After a good night's rest in Never, I got up early the next morning, had breakfast with the biker from Ufa, and set out around 09:00. This would be the hardest part of the trip; up until now I had been riding on excellent asphalt on roads which I had been on before (at least until Chita). From now on was more than a thousand kilometers of gravel, with unknown gas and hotel stops (waypoints were also basically non-existent for this part of the trip, although by looking at a map I'd figured out where the fuel was).

Here is the sign right after the turn off for Yakutsk; a little past the sign you can see where the pavement ends and the gravel starts:

The road was not that tough, although I had forgotten about some of the tricks to riding on a gravel road, such as the fact that cars swerve like crazy even on a straight stretch of road, to avoid potholes, etc. As a result, I was almost run off the road a couple of times before I got my act together. I pulled into the decrepit fuel station in Tynda and encountered one of the very few unpleasant people I met on the whole trip: the witch who worked at the fuel station. I could not figure out the 1940s technology they used at the station, and she started screaming at me about something or other. I've been in Russia long enough to know that the appropriate response is to simply scream back, so was finally able to fill up and get on my way. A few minutes later I passed a much more modern-looking gas station on the north side of town, so next time I'll go there!

As soon as turned on to this road at Never, I thought my GPS had broken, because in place of the usual distance to the next turn, it was only showing "---". I soon realized that it wasn't broken, it was just that the GPS could not display distances with more than three digits, and I was more than 1000 km from Yakutsk. I could just picture the engineers at Garmin sitting around thinking "haha, who would ever need to see four digits to the next turn, where is that even possible, hahaha?". Shortly after leaving Tynda the GPS display finally gave me a number:

There is really not much to say about this stretch of road; it is long, straight, and boring. The quality of the road is not too bad, but varies very much from almost like asphalt to rough, large chunks of gravel. Because road conditions vary all the time and without warning, you really can't go too fast, I was probably going about 70 kmph most of the time, but often slower. Here are some pictures:

Well, you probably get the idea…the road is pretty tedious, although I was (unpleasantly) surprised to find the mountains (with snow!) in the middle of the journey. The weather was pretty chilly in the first place, and I was really not dressed for the mountain temperatures. Somehow my research had failed to reveal these mysterious mountains.

The dust clouds in some of the pix are from trucks that I am about to pass. The trucks are probably the biggest danger on this road; most of them are slow as hell and would be easy to pass, except for their tendency to swerve to avoid potholes, and the fact that they kick up huge clouds of dust which make it difficult to see the truck itself, much less oncoming vehicles when you try to pass. Passing can get super-dangerous if you are not careful, as you are basically riding blind into an impenetrable cloud of dust hoping that there are no oncoming trucks. Another danger is when passing, you really have to crowd the back of the truck in front of you, and if it brakes suddenly you often can't see it because of the dust and can ride right into it. Quite scary… That said, like everything else in life, you soon figure out more effective strategies (such as just waiting for the wind to shift, or the truck to slow down even more because of a hill, etc., which reduces the dust) and can pass more safely. I had a couple of close calls, but nothing too scary.

I had planned to make it to Aldan to spend the night, which was I think a bit more than half-way to Yakutsk. By the time I got there I was totally exhausted from the ride; again no waypoints so I had to stop and ask for a hotel. The first hotel I found was full, so I kept going, and soon found another place which had a very expensive room (3000 rubles, or about $100!), but I was too tired to go on, so I took it.

The hotel manageress was like a caricature from of a movie, gruff, kind of greedy, etc. Kind of hard to explain. Anyway, I was able to park my bike in the lot behind the hotel, although she insisted that I park it in a muddy corner full of broken glass, because "you know, you can't take the space that some truck driver will pay me to park his truck in." The hotel was not particularly nice, but not too bad, and it had a cafe and a little shop right next door, so I was able to have dinner and buy some beers. And lo and behold, what kind of beer did I find in this god-forsaken place? The King of Beers!

I was very surprised to say the least, but it was not the last time I would find Bud in Russia's Far East.

JUNE 15, 2011

I was in a good mood the next morning; I got up early, and it looked like I would get to Yakutsk by about 15:00—excellent! So I aired up my tires with the pump I always bring with me, and set out. The road was more of the same, maybe bit rougher, just tons and tons of vibrations. I wasn't sure about the fuel situation in this stretch, so was a bit worried about that; while in theory I had 500 km range with my big fuel tank, I had never gotten the fuel to flow right and always seemed to be running out much earlier, with a bunch of fuel unusable in half of the big tank. Of course I could put a lot of this fuel to use by tipping the bike on its side, I wanted to avoid this because I would probably have to take off the bags, etc. to be able to tip it over on its side and pick it back up.

Anyway, here is the little town of Verkh Amga, on the banks for the Amga River. While calling it "picturesque" might be a stretch, it was certainly nicer than most parts of this dreary road. I was already pretty cold, so I stopped at a cafe for some coffee and warm food.

Not far out of Verkh Amga my rear tire started feeling funny, and when I pulled over to take a look saw that I had a flat tire, my first one ever! Not good, I was pretty much in the middle of no where… I tried to pump the tire up, just to see if it was a slow leak, but it turned out that the pump did not work, even though it had worked fine in the morning. Within a few minutes a truck pulled up; the driver asked if I needed help, I said yes, and Pavel proceeded to help with changing the tire. Here are some pix:

Pavel was a real pro, he said he got a lot of flats on the road, so had to do this alot. His truck was carrying a load of Coca-cola to Yakutsk. The old tube was supposedly heavy-duty, but it had a u-shaped rip big enough to fit my thumb through, so no patching that. We put in my spare tube, but it turned out that it had two holes in it, so we took it back out, patched the old one and put it back in. Actually, Pavel patched it and put it back in, I mainly got in the way. We finally got the wheel back on, and we agreed to meet at Ulu, about 20 km ahead, for a bite to eat. I got there first and had the old tube vulcanized, just in case. Anyway, we had a quick lunch, fueled up, and got back on the road; it should only take me a few hours to get to Yakutsk from here (I think about 300 km away), but it would take Pavel until late that night or even the next day, because the trucks drive so slowly on this road.

Everything went pretty well at first, I rode a couple of hundred kilometers and stopped at Kachikatsy, where there is a ferry across the Lena, for a Coke and some chips. Only about another 100 km to the end of the Tynda Road at the ferry at Nizhny Bestyakh! Then, about two kilometers out of Katchikatsy, I got another flat, the patch didn't hold. Luckily, the tire went flat just as I was passing two trucks on the side of the road, so I pulled up right next to them. This time I was probably back on the road within half an hour. After fixing that flat, I finally made it to the ferry in Yakutsk, I was really happy to have made it…

I got to Yakutsk just as it was getting dark, and had a hard time finding a hotel, but finally got a room at the Sterkh Hotel. The first room they gave me did not have any water, so I had to ask for another, but finally got a hot shower. I found a decent pizzeria down the road for dinner and went to bed, very tired.

JUNE 16, 2011

I had heard a lot about the Lena Columns, a geological feature on the Lena River, so decided to take a two-night cruise up the river to check them out. Being there in mid-June was a great time for seeing the "White Nights", when it never gets dark. The fourth picture down was taien at about 1:00 am, the fifth picture, with the moon, was taken at the same time, facing in another direction. All in all, a cool trip and a good way to relax after the ride, I highly recommend it.

Irkutsk to Yakutsk, Part 2

I pulled into Ulan Ude in the early evening; I had been there before, so knew a good hotel (the Baikal Plaza) and followed the GPS right to there. I checked in, got unpacked, and started walking around town. Ulan Ude is actually pretty nice, with a pedestrian zone and some decent stores, restaurants, etc. Here are some shots of downtown Ulan Ude, including its main claim to fame, the "Giant Lenin Head":

Anyway, I walked around town, had dinner, and went to bed, was exhausted because I had hardly slept the previous night…

JUNE 13, 2011

It took me a while to get going in the morning, I woke up kind of late, had breakfast, and then spent more time than usual getting packed up, I was not really used to me load plan/baggage yet. Met a nice guy in the hotel parking lot, chatted for a while. Then of course went for the obligatory picture of the bike with the Giant Lenin Head:

I finally hit the road, got gas, and started out, following the GPS' directions. I got about a hundred kilometers before I realized that something was terribly wrong—I was headed the wrong way! Since there is only one road between Ulan Ude and Chita, I didn't think I needed to babysit the GPS, but I was wrong—it had directed me down a road from which I would have to take about 100km of dirt track to get back to the main highway. Since I was alone, and since I had just repaired the bike, and since I had no idea about the condition of the track, I didn't want to risk it, and decided I had better turn around. So this little detour cost me 200 km (100 km there, and 100 back). A major waste of time!

Once I got back on the main road, it was a nice ride, a nice road. The scenery to the east of Ulan Ude is very pretty:

The weather was not particularly good, but it only rained for a little while, so I kept going. I finally pulled into Chita about 20:30 or so, and went back to the Panama City Motel, where I'd stayed last time. This time the little motel cabins were all closed due to "fire code violations", so I had to stay in the main building, which was more boring. Went to the restaurant next door for a rather mediocre dinner. When I asked for some butter for my baked potato, they really went to town:

After dinner had a beer in the adjacent bowling alley, but in general everything was pretty quiet and boring, so I went to bed early.

JUNE 14, 2011

The next day was into terra incognito—unlike the Irkutsk-Chita stretch, I had never been here before. My goal was to make it to Skovorodino, which is where the main highway intersects the road to Yakutsk. The ride was pretty uneventful, but the road east of Chita seems much more desolate than the road further to the west—most of the towns are a couple of kilometers off of the main road, so you just don't see many buildings at all. Anyway, I stopped for lunch (a coke, a water, and some chips) a couple hundred kilometers from Chita at this garden spot. The weather ahead did not look very promising…

This stretch of road is one of the few areas where I did not have good waypoints from Walter Colebatch and others—basically I was flying blind and didn't know where to expect fuel, hotels, etc. At one point during the day I decided to check my GPS for hotels near my destination—this is a useful feature I use all the time in European Russia as well as Western Europe. This time I was in for a surprise; here are the places it listed:

For those of you who don't read Russian, it says "Winter shack", "Hunter's shack", "Winter shack" and "Barn", all of which were more than 200 km from Skovorodino. Not an encouraging sign at all!

Anyway, I kept going, this stretch of road is brand new and in excellent condition, so I made great time. By the time I was approaching Skovorodino, it was getting dark and I was really hoping to find a place to stay. Finally, a couple of kilometers past the crossroads to Yakutsk, in a town with the great name of Never, I found a normal-looking hotel with a cafe, right next to a gas station—perfect! But when I walked into the reception area, there was a big crowd of people waiting, and the manageress was saying "I'm sorry everyone, but there are no more rooms…" The disappointment on my face must have been visible, because just then the manageress pointed to me and said "Except for you, we have a room for you." And she basically kicked out one of her workers and I got to stay in his room.

The cafe was pretty good, and I was able to have few beers before going to bed. In the morning I met another biker who had also stayed at the hotel—a Russian guy from Ufa who was riding to Vladivostok and back. He was a nice guy, told me the story about a couple of years ago, a biker from Nizhni Novgorod was riding out this way and had stopped to camp near a cafe on the road. I heard a couple of different stories (generally involving a girl/waitress and her brother/boyfriend, etc.), but the bottom line was that the biker was minding his own business and was shot in the back and killed by some local lowlife, who in an attempt to hide the crime threw his body into a pile of burning old tires. A couple of days later some of the biker's friends came looking for him, figured out what happened, and found his charred bones in the still-burning pile of tires. Shortly thereafter the cafe and all of the surrounding buildings were burned down by vengeful bikers. Its a tough place! Apparently the murderer was arrested and is doing big time.

Irkustk to Yakutsk, Part 1

JUNE 11, 2011

The xChallenge arrived in Irkutsk a few days before I was supposed to fly there, so that worked out well.  I got a taxi at the airport and went straight to the freight company's warehouse.  In no time at all they were uncrating the bike:

It took me a while to hook the battery back up, because I've got to remove the tank, but by noon I had filled the tank and was ready to go:

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So off I went, out of Irkutsk and then along the southern shore of Lake Baikal.  Nice ride, here is a view:

After I'd ridden a few hundred kilometers, the bike started acting up:  the control panel would blank out, and the engine would run rough, and then it would be normal, and then the same would happen again.  After a few minutes of this, the bike died altogether, and I pulled over on the side of the road.  Shit!  This wasn't part of the plan!  I tried several times to start it, and it would start and run fine until I put it into gear and started to move, then it would die.   Over and over again.  I tried to figure out the problem—side stand switch?  Fuse?  a bunch of other things, but no luck.  Finally I called Tony P on my cell, described the symptoms to him and asked that he post them on ADVRider to get some advice.  While Tony did that, I kept making futile efforts to fix the bike.

By now it was getting towards dusk, and I had to decide what to do.  Right in front of me there was a sign for a "tour base" two kilometers down a dirt road running to the left off the highway.  It was not an appealing prospect to push the heavily loaded bike two kilometers, but I figured I didn't have very many attractive options.  So I started pushing.  Unluckily for me, the dirt road ran through a swamp and was swarming with mosquitos.  Also, storm clouds were heading my way, so things didn't look very good.  I kept pushing and had reached some kind of village when someone stopped to ask if I needed help (quite a few people had ridden by). 

This was Zorig, who would be incredibly helpful in the next 24 hours.  He started, however, by almost killing me by offering to tow me to his tour base a couple kilometers further down the road.  It was only a couple of kilometers, but getting towed down a gravelly road on a motorcycle was pretty terrifying, thought I was going down several times.  Finally we pulled to a stop in front of his place, and I push the bike into the courtyard.  Unfortunately his place is full, but he kicks out one of his workers, and I get to stay in his tiny room (not sure where he went).  The tour base was pretty small, and I guess there were about a dozen people there.  They were all very friendly; I bought some beers, and they grilled up some Olmul, the delicious fish from Lake Baikal.  In the meantime, I fired up my laptop, plugged in my wireless modem, and was very happy to see that I had wireless internet access.  The guys on ADVRider recommended that I check several things, with a leading candidate being the wiring to the ignition block.  Zorig had locked the bike in his shack for the night for security, so I would have to wait until morning to check things out further.  Here is a shot of the tour base:

 

Everyone was very interested in my trip, but they no one seemed to know what lay out that way.  I guess you know you're on an adventure when you tell people where you are going, they respond by saying either:

• "You know there's no road there, right?" and
• "I will pray for you."

 

JUNE 12, 2011

In the morning I took off the ignition block, and sure enough, that was the problem:

Even though the bike only had about 7000 city kilometers on it, the soldering on the ignition block had broken on the bumpy road from Irkutsk.  The good news was that all I need to fix it was some solder!  The bad news was that I was on a tour base in the middle of no where on a Sunday morning—where was I going to find some solder?   Zorig was gone, but I talked to one of this helpers, who said that Zorig might have a soldering iron in the storeroom; the storeroom looked like Mr Magoo's closet, full of all kinds of junk, but after about half an hour, he found the soldering iron….but no solder.  Zorig was gone for a couple of hours, and when he returned he started looking for solder in the storeroom, and about two hours later he finally found some.  Then he spent another couple of hours soldering the ignition block, did quite a good job.  Here he is at work:

By now it was mid-afternoon and time for me to go, because I wanted to get as far as possible after losing a day for repairs.  During the morning several cars of Chinese tourists showed up at the tour base.  It was pretty weird, this group seemed pretty organized and well-off, and they were driving from various points in China to various points in Russia (Moscow, St Pete, Murmansk).   was very curious how they ended up at this rather out-of-the-way and rustic tour base.  Here is a shot of the group, and one of the cars showing one of their routes:

Just as I was getting ready to leave, a fancy SUV roared up into the courtyard, and some local bandits got out looking for a place to stay. The bike attracted their attention, and they soon invited me to lunch.  Spending any time with these clowns was about the last thing I wanted to do, so I politely declined, several times, explaining that I had a lot of miles to cover.  Finally they accepted, and one of them slipped a 100 ruble note into my hand so that I could buy myself something to drink later…how touching!  

Anyway, finally I was off, although I hadn't decided yet you far to go that day, it was already after 15:00.  Ulan Ude was only a couple of hours away, but I was hoping to make more progress, although past Ulan Ude there are not any real cities until Chita, and I was looking forward to a decent hotel and dinner after my recent trials and tribulations.  By the time I got to Ulan Ude I decided I'd stay there.

Siberian Adventures: Preparation

I'd been planning a trip from Irkutsk to Magadan for some time, and had quite a bit of work to do. The bike I planned to take, the BMW G650 xChallenge which I bought last summer, was pretty much a city bike and need some stuff done before I'd feel confident taking it to Magadan. Here is a picture of it in its native habitat in Moscow:

I installed a bunch of new parts, won't bore you with the details. Also had to figure out the load plan, here is my first attempt in the parking lot of my apartment building:

Finally, I had to take it on a test ride, so decided to go to Yaroslavl again. Here I am parked by the monastery in Rostov Veliky again:

I was pretty much set, next I just had to ship the bike out to Irkutsk, which I did at the end of May.