ROUTE: RUSSIA
NUMBER OF WEEKS IN COUNTRY: 3
DISTANCE DRIVEN IN COUNTRY: 2,500 miles / 4,000 km
When we entered Russia for the first time on 1 August we had already agreed that I would be responsible for writing the newsletter. With that in mind I would desperately look out for positive things to be able to report upon. Three weeks later I was severely lacking in positives and decided to reserve judgement until we finished our second stint in the countrySorry, it's some time since our last newsletter. We've been caught up in heavy duty countries that haven't given us the luxury of time to keep our diaries up to date, let alone compose newsletters. We're still fighting fit, in fact Simon is a few kilos the lighter for the gruelling schedule and disappointing dismal food that Russia had to offer. It's all getting piled on again in Japan though - you'll hear about that later.

Positives = Baltika beer - there are some export varieties, strongly recommend you to try

Negatives = Read travelogue

When we entered Russia for the first time on 1 August we had already agreed that I would be responsible for writing the newsletter. With that in mind I would desperately look out for positive things to be able to report upon. Three weeks later..........ROUTE: RUSSIA
NUMBER OF WEEKS IN COUNTRY: 3
DISTANCE DRIVEN IN COUNTRY: 2,500 miles / 4,000 km

=================================

Sorry, it's some time since our last newsletter. We've been caught up in heavy duty countries that haven't given us the luxury of time to keep our diaries up to date, let alone compose newsletters. We're still fighting fit, in fact Simon is a few kilos the lighter for the gruelling schedule and disappointing dismal food that Russia had to offer. It's all getting piled on again in Japan though - you'll hear about that later.

Positives = Baltika beer - there are some export varieties, strongly recommend you to try

Negatives = Read travelogue

When we entered Russia for the first time on 1 August we had already agreed that I would be responsible for writing the newsletter. With that in mind I would desperately look out for positive things to be able to report upon. Three weeks later I was severely lacking in positives and decided to reserve judgement until we finished our second stint in the country after having completed our Mongolian trip. Two more weeks couldn't persuade me that this would be a country to rave about. Sorry Russia, but what I saw of you just wasn't worth the effort, and boy was it an effort. And here's why ...

We left it rather late in the day to cross the border from Kazakhstan into Russia. Normally we plan to undertake such proceedings early in the morning, but at 6pm we decided to chance our luck. Russian officials took no interest in our business visa, obviously loads of shabbily dressed biznizmen cross their out-in-the-sticks border on motorbikes. What were two more? All they insisted upon was an official registration of the bike. While Simon was doing this I desperately looked around for my favourite "deklaratsi" form which all previous ex-Soviet states needed filling in on entering and leaving their countries. On this I would declare in duplicate the exact amount of currencies we were carrying. This was becoming a laborious task and so I was
overjoyed, though a little dubious, that it was no longer required. Progress I thought. We
sailed through Customs and in record time we were in a new country.

Ahead of us lay a huge country incorporating 11 time zones, half that number of restaurant dishes, and 1000 times as many vodka brands. We entered Russia with 90 roubles to our name that Simon had smuggled out on previous trips, though we had no idea what this was worth. With no money exchange booths in sight we had to rely on this cash until we reached our first major town over 300km away. It turned out to be worth a staggering 3 USD and was used to buy as much 80 octane fuel as possible so that we could limp into Barnaul.

Since we were basically using Russia as a transit country to get to Mongolia, we decided not to invest in the latest Lonely Planet but would instead rely on some sections torn out from the guide book that Simon took on his trip to Moscow on his BSA in 1996. This painted a rather grim picture of Barnaul and suggested there was absolutely no reason to visit - except we were skint and needed a bank. Fearing the worst we stumbled upon a booming city that hardly matched its description.
Mightily relieved we became solvent again and went in search of a supermarket. Of course Barnaul's modern image was too good to be true and I entered the first of many shoplifter-unfriendly stores. I half felt that I was back in Victorian Britain at the grocers waiting to be served my every need by a single shop assistant. Wrong. Before me were a dozen independent counters behind which was a pathetic selection of produce, except if you were a fan of tinned sweetcorn. And everything had to be paid for separately - cheese, chocolate, "bread", tins. Receipts flew everywhere - one of President Putin's greatest achievements so far is to have introduced a working tax system that absolutely everyone is adhering to for fear of the mighty VAT police. Fresh fruit and veg were only sold by the sad looking old ladies squatting outside the shop. They had grown them on small dachas in the countryside. We picked up some gorgeous raspberries for only a few roubles.

Leaving Barnaul we delighted in the smooth dual carriageway believing this would carry us all the way to Irkutsk, an unknown distance away. Wrong again. The false sense of security was dispelled 10km out of the city, we wouldn't see roads like this again for a week.

The law in Russia says that a foreign visitor must register their arrival with immigration within 3 days. This can normally be done by staying overnight in a hotel. So after 4 particularly rough camping nights we entered Novosibirsk, the capital of Siberia in search of a cheap and cheerful
hotel. Our 'slightly' out of date Lonely Planet sent us to a hotel which had ceased to be, in
fact the whole block had been pulled down and new swanky restaurants had been built in its place.
Our third option, and the most expensive hotel in town, eventually accepted us despite our dishevelled appearance and smells and agreed to register us. A result! The bedroom got turned into a Chinese laundry and we went out into a bustling city to celebrate at the Irish bar. Pretty decent guiness on tap, an attempt at an Irish stew and the traditional (?) pike steak. We sat outside people watching. I couldn't get over the vanity and sexual overtness of the young women.
I know I'm not the world's authority on fashion but some of the leopard skin I found a tad outdated.

Our next goal was Irkutsk, the nearest city to Lake Baikal where we would spend a few days preparing for our trip to Mongolia. Unfortunately we had absolutely no idea what distance it was, it being far too complicated to work out from the road atlas. So after a couple of day's travelling it was both a relief and shock to see a sign stating Irkutsk was 3010km away. I didn't think it was possible that any place could be so far away. Based realistically on our average day's ride we calculated that we would probably get there in 10 days. It seemed a lifetime, ten long days of riding through pretty unspectacular countryside - massive fields of ripening wheat or sunflowers, followed by birch and pine forests infested with mosquitoes. We knew we just had to grin and bare it. We watched the kilometres count down on the signposts until we saw it suddenly jump from 2900 to 1850. Now there are typos and typhoos, but how can you mistakenly add 1000km onto a distance? Seemingly the Russian sign makers had and now our journey was shortened by 3 days!

By now we were far enough away from former Soviet nuclear bomb testing grounds and Simon allowed me to buy some wild mushrooms. Groups of peasants lined the trans-Siberian road selling the forests' naturally growing produce. In vain I explained the limitations of motorcycle riding and why we simply couldn't fit a 5 litre bucketful of fungi on the back. All we needed was half a kilo for tonight's meal. This went unheeded and I just had to choose the smallest container I could find for less than a dollar.

A few hours later we found a secluded camping spot behind a giant haystack where I prepared the mushrooms and fried chicken breasts over the stove. But soon our peace was to be broken by the unlikely appearance of a Lada driven rather unsteadily by a young woman. She was either being given a driving lesson by her elderly father who owned the field or she was taxiing him around his estate checking up on his precious haystacks. Either way we received a vociferous rant from him how just one spark could set the whole field alight. Simon politely asked if it was OK to camp there whilst I surreptiously extinguished the stove flame. Luckily the woman was friendly and managed to persuade her father. She drove him away still remonstrating.

The following day Simon became a school kid again. Constantly looking out for interesting scenery I spotted a yard full of railway engines. I thought nothing of it as I pointed them out, but Simon became immediately excited. We had stumbled across the maintenance yard for the back-up steam trains for the TransSiberian railway. We didn't know that such a thing existed - but that is what we had found. Our arrival caused all the workforce to down tools (or vodka) and appear at the front gate. Simon was determined to get in there and have a nosey but the bossman was having nothing of it. We entertained the troops with tales of our travels and feigned our departure.
One last plea and bossman gave in 'provided we don't take any photos'. And so for 30 minutes we got a private tour by a trio of excitable and enthusiastic engineers only too happy to show off their babies. Here were approx 20 steam engines and 30 diesel locomotives dating as far back as1953, mothballed and covered in grease just waiting for their call-up into action when disaster hit the TransSiberian railway. Whilst inside one diesel loco the guy fired it up, revved it with the handle of a hammer and suddenly we're moving - they're taking us for spin on this huge train!
Simon can't resist a few photos whilst backs are turned. And for all budding trainspotters out there Simon has the GPS coordinates!

The TransSiberian highway is the unofficial name that everyone uses to refer to the sometimes main road running between Moscow and Vladivostok. Whether this road is continuous and can support all types of road traffic is debatable but we were certain that our beast of burden would support us through the wilderness at least until Chita.

The tradition amongst overlanders is always to stop when you meet another overlander, so when I saw a couple of overloaded bikes just pulling out of a parking area we flagged them down. Two Czech bikers on a whistle-stop Asian tour which put our pootling along to shame but also accounted for the fact that the guy on the Suzuki had come off big time on the gravel road ahead - his front end was battered and screen shattered. So we were to look forward to pretty appalling road condtions ahead. The problem with the TransSiberian on the stretch between Novosibirsk and Irkutsk is that the Russians are currently ripping up vast swathes of it in preparation for resurfacing at a later date. We did come across smooth sections but for the majority Simon had to concentrate on swerving between the potholes, keeping us upright on the marble-type gravel and peering through dust clouds created by imported Japanese 4-wheel drive cars speeding through the taiga in convoy from the ferries in Vladivostok. No wonder we would both be exhausted at the end
of the day. And to finish the day off with a bang we had to fight non-stop with the mosquitoes.
They were the most blood-thirsty creatures we have come across. The locals had warned us about them beforehand, joking that they were so big you needed a shotgun to kill them.

Finding mosquito-free campsites became our mission - never to be accomplished in Siberia. On one ocassion we both spotted a likely site in a field away from the road. We waited several minutes, whilst the heavily-laden tractors returning home with hay were out of sight, and we pulled off the road onto a track. Whoops too late, we'd driven over a flying ants' nest whose occupants immediatley started to swarm. And once we'd stopped and taken off our helmets the mosquitoes
joined the attack. Quite a frightening experience especially when half a dozen beasts landed on
my forehead with proboscis at the ready. I had no idea this was happening until Simon frantically tried to remove them. At the end of my tether I announced that we couldn't camp here and so we togged up again and left. The only thing we could do was ride until sunset and hope that the drop in temperature would send them to sleep. We literally drove our hearts out and only stopped when it became too dangerous to compete against the thundering articulated trucks. Another night in the forest where I amazed myself by being able to still rustle up a scrummie spag bog despite our
new stove jets being covered in sticky raspberry juice and mince blood. It took quite some days
for Simon to fix that mess.

Along some stretches the highway would snake with the TransSiberian railway, dozens of crossings over rickety rails. Most of the traffic was freight containers and flat beds carrying timber.
Boy were we looking forward to putting our bike onto it at Chita and letting the train take the strain.

Each village that we passed through looked exactly the same. One main street (our road) and thirty or so wooden houses generally painted yellow with sky blue window frames. Invariably there would be a bench outside where the elders would pass the day chatting. With no form of plumbing, the water source was from one of many types of old-fashioned well. I'll never forget the image of bare footed children pulling trolleys behind them and then filling up milk churns with ice cold water. How could this be the same nation against whom we fought the Cold War?

Following numerous evenings fighting the mozzies (we still have the scars to prove it - at least my backside and Simon's private parts do) we decided the best defence would be to eat at a local cafe in the evening, then all we had to do was get into our heavy (mozzie proof) biking trousers, erect the tent and dive straight into it once at our resting place. But finding decent and nutritious food was neigh on impossible. One thing we could stomach was the local form of ravioli variously called manti, posi or pelmeni. Minced beef or mutton steamed in a heavy flour and water pasta casing. We thought our luck was in when we discovered a 'pelmeni restaurant' hoping to discover new variations. Much to our disappointment the menu in this deserted 'working man's club' merely consisted of pelmeni with tomato ketchup, mayo, broth or deep fried. We should have known really.

And before we knew it (lie) we arrived in Irkutsk just 8 days after crossing the border. We checked into a new and cheap hotel. Despite the fact that there was only hot water when the laundry was being washed in the basement and the hotel also served as a brothel, it was clean, comfortable and a blessed relief from camping au sauvage.

We quickly started our Mongolian visa processing then set off to Lake Baikal for some well
deserved R&R. It is the world's largest fresh water lake in volume and is 700km long. It's
popular tourist spot and there are various 'resorts'. We set off on Sunday morning and breakfasted at the only decent bakery in town and was amazed at how many people came in for their down-in-one 100ml (two double pub measures) shot of vodka. Not bad value at 30c. Was this hair of the dog or Dutch courage to face the day? The apparent level of alcoholism in Russia was frightening and would be a common theme for us throughout the country. It gets a bit tiresome when drunks avidly try to show you their Rolling Stones and Deep Purple tattoos when you tell them you're from England.

The road out of Irkutsk was littered with rest areas which usually meant drinking posts and disgusting weeing shacks. Both men and women would tumble out of cars, relieve themselves then open another tin of Baltika, usually offering us one in the process. Luckily most of the cars at least had a designated driver to ferry these drunkards around.

Death and destruction was rife on that particular journey - one recently dead horse with its legs rigid in the air, a few kilometres on a pool of blood on the road, then a little further a delightful horse's head in a ditch. And every so often we would spot another roadside memorial to a car crash victim, normally this was accompanied by a piece of the offending vehicle - usually the steering wheel.

There were various ways of getting to the shoreline of Lake Baikal, so in true McCarthy/Simmonds style we took one of the dirt track routes ending up in what I hoped to be a picturesque village though my diary extract reads 'since it's Russian it's a dump'.

The following day we rode the worst washboard surface in our lives to reach the tiny ferry that would take us to the island of Ol'Hon. It was a small RORO - roll on, reverse off, but at least the 10 minute crossing was free. Not wishing to drive much further we chanced upon a deserted bay that would become our home for 3 nights. Simon erected an awning between the tent and the bike using the tent's flysheet and our infamous Turkish bootlace. We needed the shade so we could catch up on our diaries out of the glare of the sun.

Batteries recharged we returned to Irkutsk and miraculously met up with our two biking friends Simon and Monika Newbound who are undertaking a gruelling 105+ country round the world trip on two BMWs. Our catching up session however was rudely interrupted and dominated by Pavel, president of the local bike club, who decided he would sit with us whilst he waited for 2 German bikers he had arranged to meet at our hotel. It didn't surprise us that they failed to turn up based on his interpersonal skills. He particularly ruffled my Simon's feathers when he slagged off the capabilities of Simon N's bike claiming it wasn't an enduro bike. Wasn't it enough endurance suffering Russian roads with the gear that he was carrying? Pavel was like a bad smell, no amount of being rude to him would get rid of him or his offers to go riding with us.

A few days later the two Simons, Monika and I set off together for Mongolia. It would be interesting to see how we would all get on considering our different riding styles - the hare and tortoise comes to mind. I have to say it was a little strange riding in a group since we had been solo and independent for 4 months already. Nonetheless we pottered down to the Mongolian border in record slow time for them and then experienced the most frustrating crossing ever.

This particular crossing had only recently been opened as an international border for vehicles.
The Russians had built a swanky new building that unfortunately that day was swarming with top brass. I'll never get over the patience of locals waiting at this and other borders. They put up with so much shit, like 4 Brits jumping the queue, but everyone seems to accept it and expect it when you're on a bike. In fact the Mongolians loved it and were prepared to wait a few extra hours to make their fortune selling the toilet roll and cooking oil stacked high on the roofs of their clapped out cars.

Once the border reopened we were the first people to be ushered forward. First administration was the 'deklaratsi' where I dutifully filled in our 470 USD and 74,250,000 Turkish lire (guess which is worth more?) 'Madam, please show me your entry deklaratsi'. Of course I didn't have one as I described at the beginning of this newsletter. I told my sorry tale but was informed since I had no proof of the source of the dollars I would have to return to the bank and change them all into roubles! Quietly she told me that I shouldn't have declared them in the first place. 'But what happens if you were to search me?' 'Oh we wouldn't do that'. 'Then perhaps I have made a mistake on the form, I would like to fill in a new one'. 'Sorry that is not possible. We have a very important Mongolian delegation about to cross the border, that is why there are many officials hanging about watching us. They would be very suspicious. Now please go back into town, wait there for 15 minutes and "change" your dollars.' Extremely annoyed we turned back and left the compound. In town we hid all the dollars in our body belts and calmed down for quarter of an hour. As usual we jumped the queue and I filled in the form again. 'Madam, last time you were here you declared 470 dollars and you haven't declared any more roubles. What has happened to the
money?' Pause, I knew this women was on my side. 'Perhaps you have given it away?' 'Yes
officer'. And with that little charade she stamped our forms and sent us to the next stage of interrogation. Simon and Monika were still having their bikes strip searched like there was no tomorrow. We couldn't wait. They were just about to process us when all hell broke loose.
Attention!! The Mongolian delegation had arrived and all work stopped on our side as the customs staff processed the Mongols officials and women dressed in traditional Russian clothes stood
ceremoniously offering tea and a big cake. We were highly amused, but the Russians slightly
embarrassed to keep us waiting such that by the time they were allowed to concentrate on us again they simply waved us through without examining our luggage.

So on a vaguely positive note we left Russia dreading our return one month later. Mongolia and Ghenghis here we come marauding ...