Catch it while you can, 'The Gap' is getting smaller.Into the gravel for real now.Originally the Zilov Gap, the westerners name for the unformed road from Khabarovsk to Chita, was 1200km of hell. Since reputedly 60% of the roading budget has gone into completing the paved road from East to West, the gap has shrunk and the gap that remains is a effeminate facsimile of it's former self.
The road from Kahbarovsk to Never (the mid point) is wide, straight and drivable in a Toyota Starlet. They haven't paved a lot of it, so the road is degrading as fast as they make it but there is a sound base this time. Easily covered 500km a day in these conditions.
The scenery is mainly flat birch forest with some lovely streams and rivers. There are large swamps as well so if you intend camping, take the first good camp-site you see or be prepared to drive for another 100km until the next good one.
There are detours off the main road as they work on sections and these are interesting, passing through small rural villages. The houses are generally constructed like a log cabin except with squared logs, with fibrous caulking in the gaps. The whole thing rests on some huge logs with flooring across. Roofs look like bituminous paper and bituminous shingles. These are houses built to withstand the very cold winters, the design being common to further north where they get -50C to -70C in winter.
Camped near Magdagach, almost to the turn-off north to Magadan (Stalin's 'road of bones'). I have decided to ride to Yakutsk 1200km north to attend the summer festival. This decision has not been prompted by a fascination with pagan festivals but rather to burn off time until my riding partner Bill arrives. His plans were thrown into chaos when the airfreight company refused to take his bike, stating that it was overweight, despite being given sizes and weights. He will be delayed by at least two weeks which is just time to nip up to Yakutsk and nip back. It isn't really 'nipping' like to the local shops, the roads will be worse as will the weather and it will be three days each way.
Lunched at the roadside cafe at the turn-off. My cunning ploy of "having what he's having" when ordering in restaurants backfired or was misunderstood. In any event I ended up with a huge meal of several courses and then the proprietor brought some Armenian pork kebabs as well. People seem mightily impressed by what I am doing even though I have only just started. Either that or they think I'm a basket-case, it's hard to tell.
Waddled over to the bike and off to Tynda. Tynda is a town of note, being greatly enlarged in the seventies as a centre for the BAM projects. BAM was the name for the plan to exploit the untapped timber and mineral resources of the Russian far east. Don't you love those terms 'exploit' and 'tap'. The old terms were 'pillage' and 'lay waste' and Genghis Khan was damned good at it! This explains why the valley floors look like somebody with a huge shovel inverted all the valley floors. There are huge ponds and mounds of gravel and the trees are trying very hard to get a root-hold.
The BAM projects also explain why the populace of Tynda seem rather dour. The BAM projects were state-funded and with the fall of the USSR, the state became not so good at funding anything.
The flashest buildings in Tynda are the Russian Orthodox Church and the railway station. One to pray for better times and the other to escape via when the first doesn't work. There is a huge LED signboard in the station easily capable of displaying the three trains that leave each day.
Rode north in rain to camp. Unfortunately, this was one of the 100km swamps and so I turned back and found the hotel. I did use the singular and it was largely indistinguishable from the other modular buildings in Tynda.