The Russian side of the border was as officious as the previous time, but we managed to get across in a couple of hours. When the other Simon and Monika came through a few weeks later, they got held up for 3 days, as the Russian customs officials demanded a licence for their GPS - only the intervention of the British Embassy in Moscow got them out of that trouble.After the superb time we had in Mongolia, the prospect of going back to Russia was less than appealing. We would have to get up every morning to go out and fight our way through a bunch of problems. The trip had suddenly turned into an unpleasant job rather than a joyous holiday.

But at least now we had a useful deadline to aim for - my brother
(Pad) was planning to visit us in Japan so we had 20 days to get through a region of impenetrable swamp, ride to Vladivostok, sail to Japan and ride to Kyoto where we were to meet him. This would keep the pressure up and force us to get through this naff stage as fast a possible.

The Russian side of the border was as officious as the previous time, but we managed to get across in a couple of hours. When the other Simon and Monika came through a few weeks later, they got held up for 3 days, as the Russian customs officials demanded a licence for their GPS - only the intervention of the British Embassy in Moscow got them out of that trouble. Our ploy of removing the GPS when going through borders and describing it as an "electronic compass" when questioned by police seemed to be vindicated.

Remembering our previous visit to the border town (a grotty dump existing only to serve the border post and the huge military base) we decided to head out of town and camp rather than using the only hotel in town. Just outside town we met a Czech couple on mountain bikes - they were planning to ride through pretty much every country on earth, which they reckoned would take 4 or 5 years. All powered by their little sun-tanned legs - makes our petrol-powered undertaking look pretty trivial!

Next morning we were back in the land of bewildered looking people, drunks at 10am in the morning and terrible food in the cafes. Our first cafe experience set the scene; we ordered 9 posi (pasta parcels filled with chewy meat) and gave the cafe staff a 100 rouble note (equivalent to $3). They couldn't change it nor could they send out for change - they told us that we could only buy whatever food that we had correct change for. So we changed our order to 7 posi and then suffered 20 minutes of the local drunk who seemed to think we'd like to have our hands kissed repeatedly. Let us out of this horrid country!!

Probably the most upsetting thing for us was the lack of smiles to be seen in Russia. We had mentioned (I had ranted) this to an American we had met in Mongolia. She had worked in St Petersburg for a couple of years and she too had been worn down by the Russians withering looks. If you've not had this, imagine being a normal westerner seeing an unknown person in the street or maybe an assistant in a shop. You flash them a smile to say "I have recognised that you exist, I have no immediate reason to talk to you but I am a friendly person". You usually get a smile or nod back - it's a cave-man thing
- I think the sociologists have a theory about it being necessary part of day-to-day existence of a social animal. But not in Russia. Here the look you get back is a mixture of "piss off and die" and "you're the man who killed my puppy". Really horrible! It all became clear when it was explained by the American girl. It seems that our presumption that "we're all good friends" is completely contrary to the Russian one of "we're not friends unless we really know each other". So our innocent smiles were really offending and worrying the Russians who are thinking "who is this person? how dare they presume that they have a relationship with me? what are they after?" So any softie westerner who wants to survive in Russia should try to have the same attitude as a British football hooligan "oi, what you looking at!?"

Back on the road and on with our plans to jump the Zilov Gap - the area of Siberian marshland that has a mythical status amongst overlanders. As Georgie mentioned in her previous Russian despatch, the well-known fact is that the Trans-Siberian Highway has never actually stretched all the way from Moscow to Vladivostok. The railway goes all of the way, but there is a stretch of about 1000kms which has no road. If you make further enquiries, it turns out that there are dirt tracks right the way across, linking remote villages that otherwise have to rely on the railway to deliver all their needs. More research with the besbook shopsailable in western bookshops confirms that the roads end and the only way across is on the train.

A few hardy souls have ventured through the Zilov Gap on motorcycles, struggling along those dirt tracks, fighting their way through swampland, through metre-deep river crossings and when all else failed along the gravel and sleepers of the Trans-Siberian Railway tracks. All very adventurous - the sort of adventurous riding that I normally delight in.

And then you get to Russia and find that the actual situation is different. The first shock comes when you buy a Russian map book.
These are now widely available in Russia, have normal things like an ISBN number, and are very accurate. More surprisingly they show that there is actually a well established (though poor quality) road all the way across Russia. Rather than taking "shorter, logical" route alongside the Trans-Siberian Railway the road wanders up round the north of Lake Baikal following the BAM railway line. If we'd known that before we set off we might have allowed time for it.

And now there is another alternative - the Russians have decided to actually link up the far east of their country with a road all the way across. And while we were in Mongolia, they finished the gravel bed of a road parallel to the Trans-Siberian railway. We had heard about this road from some Aussi bikers we had met in Ulaan Baataar.
They had followed the new road 6 weeks before and found that all but a 2km stretch was pretty ridable. That 2km stretch was still an uncrossable bog, unless you're an enterprising Russian with a tank.
While the road builders were laying the road foundations other Russians who just happened to have a tank laying around (!) were offering rides across the swamp to anyone who wanted to get a vehicle through. Only in Russia!

By the time we rejoined the Trans-Siberian highway, it was evident that the gravel road had been completshinyhe road that had been full of shiney cars heading west (used cars bought cheap in Japan and destined for markets in various FSU countries) was now full of very dirty cars heading west. Obviously the car importers had changed from using the expensive railway to using the cheap but water-logged gravel road.

We looked at the maps again, considering the new option of riding all the way across the continent. What a terrible prospect: the distances involved were still great and it would take us about 5 or 6 days to get across this dreadful stretch. We would have to fight the transit drivers for road-space all the way and worst of all there would be no real achievement in riding the full distance because "you can do it on a road now"!

So we decided to go on the train - and once that decision was made, we took another step "let's go to Ulan Ude to see if we can get the train there, and cut out the 2 day ride to Chita".

Ulan Ude is less than a day's ride from the Mongolian border so we rolled in there later that afternoon. Straight to the railway station and some really pleasant people. Yes we could catch the train from there, but the bike would have to go on a special baggage train and travel separately from us. This sounded very unofficial and haphazard; putting the bike on a separate train and the expecting to meet up with it 3 days and 2000kms later! More worrying was the fact that the station staff hadn't shipped bikes before and they wanted us to remove all the fuel from the bike before loading. No, it seemed that we'd need to ride to Chita which is the traditional place for loading practisedtrain. At least there they would have well practiced procedures.

Before riding out into the wilderness again we decided to stock up with food intime-warptre of Ulan Ude. The town seemed to be in a timewarp, with a huge bust of Lenin (supposedly inspired by the bust of Karl Marx on his tomb in London) looming over the main square.

Thankfully the next 2 days' rides were on good roads through some twisty, hilly countryside - we actually were enjoying the ride and were making good progress. The first frosts had killed off most of the mosquitoes so we managed to camp in typical birch copses without being eaten alive. The locals had harvested the last of the hay and the countryside was dotted with old-fashioned hay-stacks. We were glad that we hadn't missed this part of the road.

One thing we noticed particularly on this stretch were the rubbish dumps by the side of the road. Georgie wants me to rant on about the locals apparent lack of pride in their environment, just turning any piece of ground a short distance away from their houses into a dump. But insteadserviceablepoint out how amazed I was at the number of perfectly servicable side-car bodies that had been dumped. Over our whole trip in Russia I must have seen about 50 bodies just lying in the open, as though waiting for the return of their owners. The blue or green steel shells were from Urals and the red fibreglass ones were from Jawas and Eeshs. Observing the locals' bikes it was apparent that some of them had been liberated from the burden of towing a sidecar around, but more had been covered to a simple "flat-bed" sidecar, used to transport heavier loads for farmers.

Into Chita - a more modesurprised than Ulan Ude. Straight to the station again where we were surpised to find that we would have to employ the "separate passenger and baggage train" approach that we had rejected at Ulan Ude - bugger, we had ridden 2 days for no reason. In fact the trains bore the same train numbers (Numbers OKand
904) as we'd been offered in Ulan Ude - but hey, the ride was ok and surely the guys here would be all geared up for shipping bikes (can you guess what's going to happen later?).

We found out prices for us and the bike ($45 each and $27
respectively) and that the train departure time was to be 9.30pm the the next day. The baggage (bike) check-in was just down the platform and I confirmed that they could take a bike - the price quoted for the bike was based on it weighing 200kgs (rather than the 300ish it really was) - ho ho. The tickets would have to be bought the next day because there isn't a proper reservation system. With 30 hours to kill we decided to buy some food from a fab deli we'd found and find a campsite somewhere outside of town. Good plan, well executed, nice meal cooked and eaten next to a huge electricity sub-station -hummmmmmmmmmm!

Next day we made a leisurely start and decided to head for the station at about 2pm, so that we'd have plenty of time to buy the tickets and work out where to load up. We arrived, bought our passenger tickets and headed for the baggage office. Then the clear procedure sort of broke down. The ticket office insisted that we go to the porters to get the bike weighed - they asked what the bike weighed - we told them 200kgs (they couldn't actually weigh it with the scales that were half a meter off the ground). They asked us where we were going and I said "Krasnoyarsk" - which confused matters for about 20 minutes until Georgie realised my mistake and told them that we were actually planning to go to "Khabarovsk". Then all hell broke out. Once we managed to get past the language barrier we realised that the baggage train would depart at 3.30pm (even though we had been told that "it follows the passenger train". So everything hwaffling processed immediabenzene

benzene were further confused by some miserable woman woffling on abaggage#34;no benzine, no benzine". Then we discovered that the platform for loading the bagage is 1.5 metres lower than the carriage and they don't have a ramp. So we had to get all the porters together to lift the bike onto one trolley, then onto a taller one and finally into the train. Then things took a really nightmarish tack when the head porter refused our tip of 100 roubles and demanded 400. His demand was equivalent to half the cost of the ticket for the bike, so we ignored him. By 3 pm the bike was loaded up and we were free to wander around town for 6 hours, amazed at our luck in turning up far too early and actually catching the baggage train.
The hours were frittered and the passenger train arrived - painted Russian red, white and blue, each carriage bearing a plaque with the name "Rossiya" - yes it was the real Trans-Siberian train that had come all the way from Moscow rather than one of the more common "local long-distance trains". Two days of train travel lay ahead of us with someone else driving and nothing to do but stare out of the window, eat, drink, sleep and try to write up our journals.

We found our carriage and were greeted by our carriage attendant - a small, energetic woman who would look after us for the next few days. Each carriage is run like its osuper-heatedouse, with a boiler at one end (stoked with coal!) and an electric samovar to supply superheated water for tea and pot-noodles. Each carriage has a dozen or so compartments, each containing 4 people. We shared our compartment with a young Russian couple who were on their way to Vladivostok.

To celebrate our new found easy life we cracked open a bottle of Russian "Champangskoyo" - which didn't taste as bad as I remembered from past bottles - we had asked for the the driest one the deli could find - which was still sweeter than any sparkling wine you'd find in Europe.

And so to bed, with the ghostly shadows of deserted forests and cold railway platforms trundling past outside and the mesmeric clack-clack of the Russian rails lulling us to sleep. The Russian rails make a noise which is noticeably different to the clickety-clack of Britishtrain-spottert be something to do with the wheel spacing or the speed the trains go. I can be a bit of a trainspotter but I don't know about every aspect of Russian railway technology.

There's a funny epilogue to the horror story at Chita station. When the other Simon and Monika came through the same way a couple of weeks later they too put their bikes on the train at Chita. They met the same porters who we had "crossed swords" with. When the porters found out that S&M were English they refused to help them load up the bikes onto the train or even sell them a ticket. S&M had to press gang a load of passers-by to help lift the bikes onto the train. Whoops - it seems that we may have caused problems for other people coming through. Or maybe the porters aren't doing their job, or maybe they need a ramp!! Whatever, any overlanders coming this way, either use the new road right across, or load up in Ulan Ude (best idea), or pretend that you're not British.

Back to the train journey... The Trans-Siberian railway is a a weird thing - one track in each direction - with odd sidings here and there
- but essentially it's a pipeline. So all trains are limited to the speed of the slowest train on the tracks so even the pride of the fleet can only do about 60kph at best, and usually only 40 or 50kph.
Thankfully the train just keeps going (they must have 2 or 3 drivers on board) and so it can cover the distances faster than road vehicles.

Over the next 2 days I reckon we did over 1600kms. That just about equates to the speed of a decent sea ferry. And that was what we were using the train for - to ferry us from one place to another.

Our supplies of food seemed to be a lot posher and more extensive than the other couple in our carriage - rich capitalist pigs that we are!! And we seemed to be continually eating, whereas they seemed to take a day or so before they ate anything. The exertion of riding leaves you hungry for a long time after you stop.

We met a nice girl (Julia) on the train - wearing a one shouldered 'boob-tube' for most of the trip - a bit odd, as though she was just going to a disco. She turned out to be a trainee journalist, and she said she'd like tinteresting interview for us with the local TV station in Khabarovsk. Sounded fun so we agreed.

The first day on the train was interestiing - being able to watch the forests going past, without the fear of falling off the road or hitting a pot-hole. But as we predicted, the novelty soon wore off and we just got bored by the monotony of the countryside. Actually the scenery was worse than we had expected. The hilly twisty sections all seemed to be behind and we were into flat open areas of festering bogs - proper Zilov Gap material which made us even more relieved that we had taken the train rather than riding.

The time rolled past pretty slowly. The provisions we bought got eaten and we started to buy stuff from the platform vendors who appeared at the stations to sell to the train at the longer stopping points. One "dish" which I remember clearly was large potato filled ravioli covered in oil and garlic - weird, cheap and tasty - only in Russia!

On the second evening, the train got delayed - and we woke up the next morning about 3 hours behind schedule. Then the train seemed to run even more slowly than ever, with more stops in the middle of nowhere - obviously we were travelling outside of our time-slot and having to slow down for some local "stopping train" ahead.

Eventually we rolled into Khabarovsk about 5 hours behind schedule. It was dark and raining and we had no bike and no hotel reservation.
All we had to do was to find the baggage train and get the bike down onto the platform which, as ever, was 1.5 metres lower than the train. Then, as the Americans would say, "we lucked out". I was enquiring about the baggage trains arrival in front of a local bloke who wanted the same info. He befriended us and showed us to the platform where the baggage train was just arriving. And joy of joys, he had a lorry around the corner with a crane on it!!!! Now if that's not luck I don't know what is. He was there to pick up 6 pallets of bus windscreens being delivered from Moscow on the baggage train. So I just rode the bike onto the truck and then we craned the bike onto the platform. In return I helped him and his lads to off-load the windscreens. Job jobbed without the intervention of the grasping, miserable local porters - big smiles!

Our new mate even pointed us at the best local hotel, which turned out to be so good and cheap that it was full. So instead we went to the $75 Intourist hotel. As we cruised round in the rain looking for the hotel we got propositioned by a pissed up prostitute - in fact Georgie got propositioned while we sat on the bike at a set of traffic lights - very amusing.

Another disappointingly short stay in a nice, warm hotel and we were off to our first TV interview. Very interesting too. Julia turned up and told us that her boyfriend (an unemployed crab fisherman and another sleeper on the train) had just got his call-up papers. Then the TV crew turned up in a beat up car - straight into the interview. I got all the heavy-weight questions about what we're doing and why and how.... By contrast Georgie was asked about her age, former profession and then a hugely long question that went something like "Russian women would want to do this trip with a man that is strong and decisive - is Simon that sort of tough guy?" We were both dumb-founded and Georgie did her best to give a straight answer. BOK later as she fumed about being asked such a patronising question I told her that if such a question came up again she could answer "yes he's ok at riding a bike, but when we get home I'll trade him in for one that's good in bed!"

The filming was done outside the local sports centre/park. So we were filmed with the local kids getting ready for ice hockey training, and sPolaroide on a 2-stroke race bike who wanted to be filmed wheeling - but he couldn't do wheelies and the film crew told him to bugger off.

Then loads of polaroid photos of the kids and the girls before we shot off into the countryside for 3 days riding towards Vladivostok.

Two and a half hours later we pulled into a cafe for some lunch. And whoo, one of the locals walked up to us and said "aren't you the people who were on the television?". What a slow news-day it must have been in the Russian Far East. The film crew had rushed back to the station, edited the film and put us straight out on the telly - excellent but weird! Perhaps we were the good news story at the end of the bulletin.. "and finally a heart-warming tale of a young woman's blind infatuation with a much older man..."

As we travelled towards Vladivostok the weather warmed up noticeably. More miles, and a night in a field with no mosquitoes.

Next day we tried to go and see the Chinese border acrosweirdiver, but the border guards wouldn't allow us into the village that lies on the banks of the river.

Another day of wandering south - getting warmer and another wierd lunch-stop - this time at a cafe with a hunting/shooting/fishing theme. The cafe had dead stuff all over the walls, and the car park was full of the skulls of bears and wild boar, all sporting jaunty sun-hats. And hell - there's a live bear and a wild boar in cages in the car park - right behind the cage full of cute rabbits. We saved some bread from our lunches and fed the beasts - you don't get to do that at a Happy Eater!

A pleasant night's sleep in another bugless field and then into Vladivostok - a special moment - the end of this land-mass - "the end of the earth" and the smell of the sea again.

As usual our first thought was on our escape - so straight to the port to find out the departure time/date for the ferry. We arrived on a Thursday and the ferry was to leave on Monday. OK, a weekend to kill.

Next get a hotel for the night and then try to find the bike club (the Custom Club) which an internet contact told us about. There was the prospect of a bit of socialising and more importantly some free accommodation at their clubhouse for the rest of our time in Vladivostok.

We checked in the expensive (but pleasantly luxurious) hotel and then out into the Vladivostok night. Fast traffic and too few road markings, but at least we had a map to get to the (unattractively
named) Snegovayetsa street. Then how to find the club-house. Snego was a grotty place - there was a quarry at one end and its gravel and pot-holes seemed to have swept over the whole street. We ploughed through the gravel past various factories and scrap yards but we couldn't find the Custom Club. As is common in Russia, there were no numbers on most of the buildings. So we used our experience to decide that the building must be up and behind one of the un-numbered blocks. Yes there is was, past several buildings and car breakers guarded by barking dogUK- all very scarey in aoily;back end of Salford" sort of way.

The Custom Club turned out to be a motorcycle breakers yard run in an old building. Very similar to breakers in the uk - tatty, bent bikes, oiley floor, various outcasts hanging round, drinking beer and playing with bits of bikes. The shop was owned by Andrei who lived there with his buxom daughter Anya and his young son (the mother was never mentioned). Also living there were several surly cats and "Diesel" the dog, who proudly wore a collar made from duplex drive chain with the boozyd and piston from a 250cc bike hanging from it (which allowed Andrei to grab the dog and manoeuvre him round). The Custom Club was run by another bloke (who's name was always lost in a boozey haze) and was conveniently using the breakers yard as a club-house. It was explained that Vladivostok has 4 bike clubs - the Iron Tigers are the best known and concentrate on choppers and regalia (we met one Tiger - explained that "at weekends we are usually all away"). The custom club seemed to be aimed at souping up bikes to go or stop quickly.

The accommodation available was the mezzanine area with a cooker and TV and a couple of grotty sofa beds. And blow me if Georgie decided that she'd like to spend the next night there - "as it could be an interesting experience and it would be rude to refuse".

So that night we stayed in the hotel and next night we planned to visit the bike club again and stay there.

Next day we also went to the submarine museum - which appeared to be an old submarine, lifted onto the shore, promising to be full of oily, smelly machinery and things to bang your head on. What a disappointment; just the hulattendantsubmarine was left - all the interesting stuff had been removed and the hull was full of photos of submariners - Georgie was horrified when I turned around and demanded my money back and the attendents were so surprised that they actually gave me it!

The evening came and we boupigeonoad of booze, snacks and breakfast for consumption at the Custom Club. The evening was spent looking at bits of scrapped bikes and pre-war Harleys, drinking beer round the bonfire and talking pidgeon English and Russian.

Later we bedded down whilst one of the Custom Club members rebuilt an engine downstairs - music blaring. I managed to sleep through it, but Georgie suffered, not getting any peace until he finished at 4am
- ouch!

After breakfast Georgie decided that another night here would not be a good idea. We made an excuse that we were going to spend a night or 2 out in the forests and then we headed straight back to the hotel.

We planned to go and see the shop owner and his voluptuous daughter race go-karts the next day, but we couldn't find the track. What we did find was a housing estate high up on a cliff where were could look down on a Russian Navy site full of small submarines and beefy looking torpedo launches.

One night was spent down along the promenade with Russians letting their hair down. A few beers and some tasty shashlik made and served by Uzbeks!! There was an aquarium with whales - but we avoided that.

The guide book recommended a visit to the local museum. More stuffed animals! However, I finally got Georgie to realise what a Hoopoo is. For the uninitiated a Hoopoo is a bird, about the size of a large black-bird, mainly brown, but with striking white and black plumage on its wings and a large black and white crest on its head. I'd been pointing them out all the way from Uzbekistan, she's been spotting them flying along with us, and I'd shown her them in at least 2 previous museums - but even in the Vladivostok museum she still professed to never having heard of them!! Now she has seen them, but maybe they're just too boring to remember.

Finally Monday came and we started getting out of Russia - again. A
10am meeting with the customs people - as if by magic Diana the girl from the shipping company turned up to sort out things for us and couple of other people. That will be where the $30 payment we made to her (off the books) went. Then to the port to queue up for boat.
There didn't seem to be (and actually wasn't ) an official way into the port - so we rode the bike in through a foot passenger gate - most odd, with no security - people were just wandering in and out!
So we waited on the quayside and watched the last of the freight coming off the boat - including 7 tigers in cages - part of the Moscow State Circus - not part of a planned release program as we originally thought. All very cute and in various sizes. The performing poodles also came off - yappy and grey coloured.

We got onto the boat and tied the bike down - along with 2 other bikes from Japan. One bloke (Nobuhiro) had done the BAM road up to Yakutsk, and then down the Lena river to Irkutsk (or some other
place) on a cement boat - about $60 for a 6 day slow boat ride. He'd also got mugged by a couple of Russians (just west of Irkutsk) who took his tent before a police car happened by. To add to his misery the bike engine's big-end failed and he had to get another shipped out and fitted which delayed him for 2 weeks - a big adventure on a 250 Djebel. The other guy (Yoshitaka) spent 10 days in Vladivostok and Kamchaka with a Japanese friend - he was on GPZ750.

motor-launchnother 12 hours on the boat before we left - at 3 pm we left the dock and we then sat in the harbour while the ship staff did the immigration and customs stuff. Then we had the Russian Immigration people came to the ferry by motorlaunch to process all the passports. Eventually we got away - at about 10 knots to start with. We were out of Russia - great - let me into a normal country.

Two nights passed and we got into a routine with meals. The rule in the restaurant was "the first table you sit at is the one that you'll sit at for the rest of the voyage". But the first night we managed to sit opposite a really obnoxious, over-friendly, getting drunker by the minute Russian with a nervous cough. At breakfast the next morning I refused to sit at the same table explaining that I was sick of suffering the attentions of drunks. Space was found at another table.

The boat's swimming pool got filled and slopped everywhere - a couple of hardy Russians bravely tried swimming in it and came out a few minutes later looking seasick.

That afternoon we sat in the lounge at the rear of the boat, planning our trip to Japan (nothing like being prepared well in advance!). A slightly drunken Russian came running into the lounge and started shouting something at us in Russian. "I can't understand a word you're saying" - I couldn't be bothered with the Russian version of "I don't understand"pursers face went blank for a second and then he shouted "BEEEGG FEEESH!" and beckoned us outside. We ran out to watch dolphins swimming alongside the boat.

On the boat we met the most normal and pleasant Russian of the whole trip. The ship's pursor had worked on cruise boats around the world and had worked out that smiling, being nice and not treating people like shit was the way forward. She also knew that she was in a good job. Every week she'd sail to Japan and be able to buy small luxuries for herself and her friends. Top of friendly this week were Japanese eggs - she liked them for their bright yellow yolks - and Japanese pet food - "they even have cat-food with squid". She was a breath of fresh air and a good transition between the miserable, ill-mannered Russians and the ultra-freindly, hyper-mannered Japanese.

What a shock were about to face!