I left Iwataki on June 1st at around nine and rode my motorbike all the way to Takaoka where I arrived seven hours later. I met the representative of FKK who was very helpful. He told me that I could park my motorbike in front of their building for the night.
The problem on the bike wasnt serious. Shustrik fixed it in no time. We even replaced my battery with a new Chinese one. The weather in Vladivostok was awful during the ten days I remained there.
After asking around during several days how to enter China with my bike, the answer finally came on June 11th. A German biker had successfully made it a few months ago but the people who helped him werent ready to take the risks they had taken at the time and told me that I would need to do it by myself.
After saying farewell to my bike at the Chinese border, I took a bus on June 16th in the morning to Mudanjiang, 150 km from Suifenhe, to board the night train to Beijing in the afternoon. The road was in perfect condition and was probably part of the new highway which was to be opened two days later between Haerbin in China and Vladivostok in Russia. Road signs in both Chinese and English could be seen as well as a few in Russian.
The trip is going slowly but surely. Im making small steps, never more than forty to fifty kilometers a day after leaving Beijing, and a bit more north of Zhangjiakou. Im trying to respect as much as I can the journey made by that woman in 1862 from Beijing to Moscow.
Ive got a new Chinese visa since yesterday and Im going to be able to go back to China, as soon as I leave Mongolia, to pick up my motorbike at the border near Vladivostok. The plan, after I have my bike, is to cross Russia all the way to Europe.
After arriving in Ulaanbaatar on July 19th, I visited some travel agencies to find a jeep in order to go back into the Gobi and complete the few stages Madame de Bourboulon had made150 years ago before reaching Urga (presently Ulaanbaatar). A bit south of Choir, her route went slightly east of the railway line and it couldnt be done by train any longer. After shopping around for a couple of days, I found an agency which was willing to let me make my own itinerary.
I went back to Vladivostok to pay a visit to Shustrik and prepare for the rest of my trip across Russia. I had heard about the very bad road between Birobidzhan and Chita and I had no intention of riding on it. My motorbike wasnt design for that type of roads, I was almost one month late on my schedule and Madame de Bourboulon had not taken that road herself.
Thats where Ive been since I crossed the Ural Mountains on September 22nd. I had left Tyumen the day before and spent the night in Yekaterinburg in Elias apartment, a local biker. This is the city where the czar Nicolas, his wife and children were murdered by the Bolsheviks. I was glad to have crossed the Urals. I knew that I could relax a bit more from now on; winter west of those mountains was still a few weeks away.
The aim of my trip is to follow as closely as possible the journey Madame de Bourboulon made in 1862 on horseback between Beijing and Moscow though Mongolia, and to stay wherever she stayed. She was supposedly the first European woman to have made such a voyage. Although she stopped taking notes after reaching Moscow, she continued her journey all the way to her château south of Paris. Im planning to end my trip there as well.
I left Vilnius on October 13th. From Vilnius the train in the summer of 1862 wasnt going directly to Warsaw yet. But the line had just been opened in March between Vilnius and Kaliningrad, formerly Konigsberg and then a Prussian city. Madame de Bourboulon couldnt have taken any other railway line and this is the line I followed to go to Kaliningrad on October 14th.