Tag Archives: Adventure motorcycling
Chilling in hot Chita
Only 3000kms in 6 days since we left Vladivostok and when we see our accommodation in Chita, with air conditioning, we decide we need a rest: we are definitely no hard core riders!!! We are a little embarassed that our Korean scooter riders are only two days behind us. But that’s ok, we’re probably their grand-parents’ age.
Time for a good shower (our hovel last night had no running water whatsoever, no tap outside even – it’s funny how we much prefer camping to such places but the heat and horse flies put us off, especially after our longest day riding), some washing, money changing, blogging, a little exploring and resting. And a little shopping too: our hovel last night fried my power converter/recharger when we suddenly got power in the late evening – my mistake really.
Over the past week, it has been incredibly frustrating for me to realise how little Russian I remember. While I can make myself understood, often with the aid of Google translate, which I do manage to correct at times, I have no idea what I am being told! Although I did understand one poor woman’s frustrating retort telling me she couldn’t understand why I didn’t understand her!!! Anyway, some words and grammar are slowly coming back, and luckily I can still read Russian easily.
This luxury in Chita was only a little more than double our hovel the night before!
New engineering students on their graduation march through Chita
Proud parents waiting to see their children in the procession
Russian tv journalist reporting on Chita’s university graduation
Graduation speech on Lenin square, Chita
Lenin square, Chita
Chita – old and new buildings
Old home in Chita
No fur needed at the moment – 35 degrees days
Chita train station
Chita cathedral
The inside of the cathedral was breathtaking – I have no idea if photographs are allowed but I felt it inappropriate as everyone inside, young and old, were praying to different saints in different parts of the cathedral. We lit candles for our guardian angels.
Not much more news really. Loved walking around Chita and seeing the graduation march – great timing! Just wanted to give you a quick tour of Chita before we head into Mongolia in 4 days’ time. Using up our sim card data pack as wifi is near impossible to use here. As you can see, the weather has changed for us now: the winter gloves have been packed away, and it is 31 degrees as I write this at 9pm.
We will be in touch again when internet allows – could be 3 weeks, by the time we cross Mongolia, back into Russia and into Kazakhstan, so no panic. Just keep your armchairs oiled for our return…
– Anne
Four days from Khabarovsk to Chita
Where to start? Four days’ riding since Khabarovsk and one is slowly starting understand the immensity of Siberia and by extension Russia. We have ridden close to three thousand kilometres since our departure from Vladivostok and only seemed to have inched a small portion of the way back towards London. Our request for warmer weather has been answered with 35 degree Celsius days. Like all fickle voters we now want a littler cooler, but no such luck, we will have to live with this for the next couple of months.
You wouldn’t want to be a runaway truck needing this
Wavy road
Early morning mist out of Sbega
The trans Siberian highway, which is the term used for a number of roads linking St Petersburg and Vladivostok, is in surprisingly good condition considering some of what we have read and heard. We have seen little current major road construction so far, we are in Chita, but along the highway we pass many teams working on vegetation clearance, filling in potholes, rebuilding bridges and adding crash barriers. The summer is short and maintenance and upgrades have a small window in which to be completed. I have seen no evidence of the snow clearing machinery so common in North America, maybe it does not snow much, or the road does not get cleared. I will leave someone else to research this.
Just a few works in progress
Some stretches remind you how long this road is
Love those birch forests!
A significant amount of work has gone into the construction of the road we travelled on. Between some hills, very high embankments carry the road giving unsurpassed views over the treetops. In some areas the road has many undulations , I presume due to subsidence, possibly caused by the materials available as road base being sourced locally in the swampier areas. This has made progress easy for us, in addition traffic, is light. What we have noticed is that the tar finishes pretty abruptly off the main highway. Our one foray into a local town in search of fuel had us driving on gravel, dirt, through water in a tunnel, across a disused runway and through the local rubbish tip all on larger marked roads on the GPS and MapsMe. Many of the turnoffs just end in greenery and judging by the amount of water around in many places probably not too solid either.
Her petrol station does not work, she showed us the way to one that does
Will we drop our bikes as the non-petrol lady said?…
Is this the right way out of Magdagachi?
Lovely riding through a birch forest
Outside Magdagachi – the detour was worth it
Back from our tour of Magdachi after a 564km day – Anne is spent
The scenery has been surprising in vivid nature of the greens, and not unreasonably given our changing latitudes, quite varied. We started with silver birch forests, moved to more open, possibly cleared land then pine forrest. It does become dryer and farmland starts to predominate.
Typical village
Larger wildlife is almost in invisible, roadkills and signs of, so familiar in Australia and North America are almost nonexistent, my assumption is the lack of traffic gives quiet passages of time for wildlife to cross safely, unlike more congested roads that force the wildlife to take risks.
Smaller wildlife is much more obvious, early morning will see the polite small mosquitos that wait to be asked to feed off you and their larger more obnoxious cousins who just dive straight in. When they retire after a hearty breakfast they are replaced by the swarm of 50-100 horseflies that appear before engine off regardless of the location. Quick on and off the motorbike is practiced and I will be contacting one glove manufacturer about the pervious nature of their product. Luckily as we have progressed West the magnitude of this problem has diminished although the motorbikes bear the marks of all the unfortunate insects that have met their demise at the windshields of Streak and Storm.
Lovely to be out in the open again!
Sorry butterfly 😦
Fairly constant companions in this sparsely populated region have been the steel rails of the Trans Siberian Railway and the transmission towers bringing electricity to the towns en route and supplying the locomotives hauling the myriad of wagons and passenger trains. So many seem to haul what I assume to be empty looking open wagons in both directions, do they do this for fun? The railway runs alongside the road in some places, we cross from time to time and there are many intriguing but rusting sidings leading to long abandoned factories, likely from the Soviet era. We see dormant smokestacks, idle factories and abandoned apartment blocks poking out of the forrest, a testament to the changes that have occurred since centralised planning was abandoned following the collapse of the former Soviet Union.
Had to folow the tradition of this cafe!
Typical road side cafe with car and tyre repairs
Delicious Siberian dumplings
It would be wonderful to travel at a slower pace and take some of these side-roads and explore more, but we have to remember we only have a limited visa time in Russia, plus we set off to circumnavigate the globe in the Northern Summer of 2017. We will always miss opportunities, such as a motorcycle rally in Blagoveshchensk, but then that decision allowed us to meet the wonderful and generous Tanya at her Cafe. Tanya and Alexander and his family whom we met at lunch one day are the lasting memories we will carry on this trip, always back to the people. Life is choices, and we are happy with those we have made.
Alender, Tamara, Aliona and Dimitri
Tanya’s cafe, Krasnoyarovo
Lovely, generous Tanya in her cafe near Krasnoyarovo
Fuel, accommodation and toilets are day to day necessities and the location and quality of each varies. We have mostly be lucky at the end of each day in finding a reasonable place to stay and have included photos of couple of the more quirky fuel and accommodation stops. Internet modesty rules do not allow me to publish any photos of some toilets, that and the fear of dropping the iPhone.
We emptied the tank on the right, trying the next one now
You take can you can get! Semiozernyy
No power, no running water whatsoever but better then sleeping with Horse flies
Someone has a sense of humour in Siberia
– Anthony
Vladivostok
Two hours out of Vladivostok, the sea is as still as a mill pond. We are outside on the top deck, wondering if we can see land yet. The fog is thick, a lone seagull is following us: land cannot be far, yet I see nothing. We have slowed down. It is beautifully eerie. The stillness belies the excitement I am starting to feel. We are told docking will be delayed due to Russian war ships ahead. Then we stop and I can now just barely discern the grey outline of islands. The excitement is suddenly palpable: a young girl skips towards her mother as soon as she too spots one island, a young man re-enacts the famous Titanic pose while his friend takes a photo of him, Russians returning home start moving their bags to the exit.
Our crossing to Vladivostok was so calm!
Half an hour from docking, we see the culprit of our delay going the other way – maybe he was docked in our spot.
Vladivostok port is huge, so many freight carriers, cranes, tugs, the activity is on either side of the port is fantastic – to think that we are at the southern tip of Russia, so far from the capital! The famous bridge is barely visible, then we see the famous Vladivostok sign above the ferry terminal. What can I say? My excitement cannot be contained. Everybody is taking photos, selfies, photos for each other.
Why were were delayed a Russian Navy Sovremenny-class destroyer the Bystryy (715) – Быстрый -Quick (or Rapid)
Tugs preparing to lead us into Vladivostok port
Jong and his lovely wife
Vladivostok ferry terminal
One of the ferry staff had told us, the group of 12 motorcyclists from Korea plus the 3 Japanese motorcyclists who joined the ship in Japan, to wait in a particular area. Pretty impressive how he tracked us all down! It turns out that all motorcyclists and car drivers, ie all the passengers who just brought hand luggage on board, are to disembark first.
We are here dockside in Vladivostok
Immigration and customs security is painless and as we enter a ‘holding hall’, we are greeted by a cheerful and welcoming Svletlanya, our agent Yuri’s partner. There are 5 of us on her list as all the Koreans are being handled by another agent, 3 Japanese and us. One is missing and we wait over an hour for him. It turns out that he is travelling with a car and a motorcycle (?!) and wanted to leave a minimum in his vehicle… At least we had time to sign the dozen pages of customs forms each which Svletlanya had prepared for us by the time he arrives with the largest suitcase I have ever seen and boxes on a makeshift trolley!!
Yuri, from Links Ltd, picks the 5 of us up in his van and takes to our respective hotels. It is an interesting introduction to Vladivostok, driving past an unfinished Hyatt hotel, unoccupied for the past 5 years for some reason, up steep narrow muddy paths to a hostel to drop one of our Japanese (he changed hotels the next morning!) and manoeuvering in rush hour traffic remind us of the Russian road ‘rules’. Then once we have all checked in, Yuri takes us to a bank to get Rubles, and a telecom company for Sim cards. We bump into our Korean friends there!! It feels like we have met up with long lost friends. It is amazing how the travelling community bonds so quickly! Yuri recommends a place nearby for dinner, Republic, a chain of restaurants in Vladivostok, and the 6 of us trundle off there and we invite 3 Koreans to join us. No more Kimchi!!! I will not miss it… I don’t think…
Communist era mural – Vladivostok is far but still ours said Lenin
Yuri
Vladivostok train station
Inside Vladivostok train station
The next morning was an incredibly efficient customs process: Yuri and Svetlanya had everything in hand between them, like a well oiled machine. She was already at the customs office when Yuri brought us over just after 9am, having started the process for us before we arrived and Yuri then drove and took us here and there, to various offices, getting more forms signed. By noon, we were all done and ready to leave the port on our bikes. As always we will write up the border process on our blog, but for now, I would like to say that we highly recommend Yuri. All my communication with Yuri over the past few months and once we arrived has been fantastic. Anyone needing to ship to or from Vladivostok should contact Yuri Melnikov, Links, Ltd, email: ymelnik@links-ltd.com or yuri.melnikov.links@gmail.com, web site: http://www.links-ltd.com. And he goes out of his way to help in any way. When we left him, he was going to take one guy to a hardware store, another to buy a motorcycle jacket and the other somewhere else.
This Japanese carried his new motorbike in his new car
Some days back, I had asked Yuri if he could recommend someone to take us on a tour of some of Vladivostok’s tunnels. Well, there again, he went ahead and organised it for us and our 3 Japanese motorcyclists joined us. I am glad we had time to bed down our new Heidenaus in Korea as the fog is so thick today, it is like rain. The convoy of Yuri, the Korean in his van and the 4 motorcycles wend our way through Vladivostok traffic up to Fort 7, not before turning off the road up a windy muddy track. Our first bit of off road on the Heidenaus – it feels so familiar so quickly.
Following a Japanese car following Yuri through Vladivostok
Russia acquired the area that contains Vladivostok in the 19th century: China and the Mongol empire had controlled the area first, but China, afer a war with Britain felt it no longer had the resources to control the area and overestimated Russia’s military power of the time so agreed to hand the area over through the Treaty of Aigun in 1858 rather than risk another conflict. Vladivostok was initially created as a military outpost. Considering how far it was from Russia’s political political centre, and due its proximity to Japan, Korea and China who all eyed Russian territories, Russia had to fortify the peninsular. The first fortifications were built in the 1870-1890s. A series of 16 forts and several hundreds of smaller structures were built on the Peninsular and Russian Island and comprise 140kms of tunnels. We visited Fort 7, which is now a ‘museum’, open for tours. It was built in 1910, has a network of 1.5kms of tunnels, of 5m thick walls. Interestingly, while Fort housed 400 military personnel, had stores and ammunitation that could keep them underground for 2 years, the forts and tunnels were never required to be used to defend Vladivostok. A sometimes creepy feel, especially as you walk along uneven terrain, down steep long passageways, in total darkness apart from your personal tiny torch, it was nonetheless fascinating to visit.
About to visit Fort 7, Vladivostok
Map of Vladivostok’s 16 forts
Fort 7 tunnel which has a network of 1.5kms of tunnels
Part of Fort 7, Vladivostok
Fort 7 original canon, Vladivostok
On Fort 7 outside wall
Time to leave Vladivostok fortress, still foggy at 2pm
2 hours later, it is time to bid Yuri farewell and godspeed to our fellow travellers as we head out of Vladivostok and they return to town. A brief but memorable stay in Vladivostok for us.
Communication from now on will be intermittent but we’ll do what we can. Better get some sleep now before our first long day.
– Anne
“I am sailing, I am sailing”
We look out of our hotel window eastwards as the morning sun climbs higher over the Sea of Japan, which, in a few short hours, we will set sail upon. Today is the first day of real adventure on this trip according to Anne, I however feel that when we set off from Vladivostok, we will be on our way back. Interesting that we each have different views on how we perceive the road ahead, but both agree that then last two months have been very comfortable, certainly reflected by my expanded waistline.
View from our hotel in Donghae, Seoul
Which way to Donghae passenger terminal?
We had scouted the location of the Passenger Ferry Terminal on arrival yesterday since highway 42 ended at the main port entrance where we ascertained our entrance was around the corner. A five minute ride in non existent Sunday morning traffic had us entering the port and being directed to join a group of four motorbikes parked outside what we learned was the ferry logistics office. Other travellers, who what where: questions in our minds as we park alongside a mixed bunch of bikes, all really loaded, including spare tyres. We quickly learn that three of the four are Korean brothers setting off on a six month journey that will take them across Russia, Mongolia to Europe ending in Spain in December. They all speak good English and over the next half an hour, we are joined by another six motorbikes and scooters all with Korean riders. We have a small army of adventurers with everything from BMW1200GS to 110cc scooters, maybe a motorcycle enthusiast can identify all the models, I could not.
Some of our band of motorcycles
All new Korean Facebook friends
Almost all are carrying replacement more off-road oriented tyres, their current road ones are all partially used. We have no spares but put new, what we think are, long life tyres in Vancouver, Heidenau K60 Scout. It would be interesting to do a comparison on how we all ended up. Ours must last until Turkey some 10,000 miles / 16,000 kilometres distant, which, based on previous experience, should be doable. We shall see.
You call that a top box? THIS is a top box!!
We have become so used to seeing western adventure motorcyclists in our travels, online and in electronic media that we forget that others, ie Asian, have that thirst for adventure as we do. We exchange blogs, look at each other’s bike setups. Anne and I are taken with the mesh seat covers which create ventilation passages for air to flow. Our Scotoiler attracts some interest as did our panniers and spot lights.
We all have to undergo the same customs process and this is detailed in our Visas and Borders section. We do get to ride without helmets, at 30 kph, to the customs inspection area. It is always a nice experience to have the wind in your hair, even for a couple of minutes, but I would not risk it on the highway. We spend a couple of pleasant hours, mostly waiting before the Customs inspection is complete and we ride into the bowels of the ship to leave Streak and Storm to their slumbers.
Riding around Donghae port, wind in the hair
Waiting for VIN inspection and x-raying of all our belongings
We have to then go in reverse through immigration, security, and customs to collect our hand luggage and then return in the opposite direction. We had a booking made for us, but still had to pay and collect tickets so we joined a somewhat chaotic scrum at the booking/ticketing counter that shared the same space as the access to customs/immigration. Still it all worked out and half an hour or so later we have passenger tickets in our hand as we climb the gangplank onboard the ‘Eastern Dream’. We are told our cabin is open, we do not have to collect our key? Open the door and guess what, we are sharing! Our advertised 2 person cabin now has four floor mats jammed in so closely that the outside mats are bent upwards by the wall. Even in the 90 person room you get a curtained off bunk. Not what we are paying USD$200 pp for! Our Russian roommates kindly leave to allow us to change from our motorcycle gear and then Anne feels a visit to the information office is warranted.
Our private 1st class cabin, really?!
We are told that four to a room is company policy for first class, even though the advertising pictures show two mats per room. We are told to come back at 15:00, but shortly afterwards we are approached by a staff member to be told the other couple has vacated our room, hopefully to one of their own and we have our own place. All I can recommend is that you are probably better off in a cheaper bunk bed than pay this amount for a shared room where the sleeping mats run up the wall to fit. We would do that if we came this way again. We find different maps onboard rating these rooms as first and second class cabins, company greed at work here I think.
In preparation for departure we are treated to a lifejacket demonstration, unlike the airlines I have flown with, they show the light works and test the whistle. I think the airlines could learn something from this. Now where is the cupboard with our lifejackets?
As we get underway I can hear playing Rod Stewarts ‘Sailing’ over the loudspeakers. For mostly Korean, Russian and Japanese passengers someone has a sense of humour, I wonder how many people get it. We sail out of Korea having only spent a few days glimpsing this intriguing country. We have so many questions, what is Korea’s history?, why are roofs and walls painted blue? We both agree that we would like to return, not on motorbikes, and see and learn more, probably as a stopover on the way to Europe one day. As always, we have met kindly and generous people whose paths we will never cross again and their actions cannot be returned by us. It reinforces our view of the positive nature of people around the world, not just when major tragedies strike, but everyday kindness that exists worldwide.
As I am writing this blog, Anne plays a Dido song which has the words , “I will go down with ship” ha… I prefer Rod Stewart “Sailing” any day, it has an upbeat floaty appeal to me. Must stop looking at the lifejacket cupboard.
The sea is calm, a big benefit for fair weather sailors such as ourselves, may it last the full 22 hours of the journey across the Sea of Japan. Hey, is that not the place where what’s his name lands all the missiles he fires? Maybe a moving ship is like being on a motorcycle in a lightening storm, keep moving and you are insulated by the tyres. Must stop looking at the lifejacket cupboard. At least we have four.
On the ‘Eastern Dream’ ferry from Donghae to Vladivostok
I think there must be a good couple of hundred passengers and we have not seen most of the motorcyclists again. We have meal vouchers, the benefit of being first class passengers, interestingly at meal time, the majority of diners are Korean or Japanese, the Russians seem buy the instant noodles and eat them in their rooms or on deck.
We wake to calm, thankfully but misty views as we plough on towards Vladivostok. Breakfast and lunch pass without the low cloud lifting, we must pack to be ready for arrival.
All ready to pack, now if I can only get those lifejackets in the top-box…..Stop it
– Anthony
2slowspeeds 