Hi everyone, Just a quick recap: Mark and Jane decide to do an OE. Instead of flying to Europe direct they buy a couple of motorbikes and set about riding 15,000 km's across Russia and Europe. We made a party at Grandy's house with live blues music, lots of Russian food and of course beer and Vodka. They are keen on their raw salted fish, delicious with a dash of wasabi. Alexey took us for a ride around Vladivostok, visiting the famous sign where we took our photo. There were also about 8 brides across the road getting their photos taken, later in the day we had a bride ask for a photo with the bikes. There sure are plenty of beautiful Russian women here just waiting for a dashing motorcyclist. We visited a beach but it turned out to be lots of old crushed bottles and ceramic plates, basically rubbish, we longed for our natural sand beaches on NZ. We had had an offer of a boat ride on the harbour the following day, but unfortunately the skipper had too much vodka the night before so instead we took the ferry to an island for $2.50 each. We even met a couple of fellow Wellingtonians! On the island we made a fire and cooked a few pork sausages. All of the Russian meat we've had so far is delicious, but ordering is always a challenge. On Monday we stayed at lake Hanka, only about 30 km from the Chinese border, but unfortunately we picked a camp site near the swamp. Fortunately the mosquito net we made with Jane's Nana and Aunty really did the job and gave us good protection from the hordes of mossies, some the size of birds!The heat that night was a real problem though and we struggled to get to sleep. The next morning we had a nice swim in the lake. The next night we bumped into Martin Tate again, the honorary NZ consul for Vladivostok, and ended up camping at this farm. Our Elacin earplugs have been more comfortable than we had imagined and make the tiring wind noise just a whisper in the back ground. A big thanks for Arno for donating a pair to us. The following nights we camped near a river to catch up on some washing and diaries. This time instead of camping near an open fire, we cooked our tasty Russian meat on our petrol powered Coleman cooker. The cooker has been excellent and we've been impressed at the speed at which is cooks our meals. The evening we arrived in Khabarovsk we were invited to a 30 birthday party which was a far cry from the mosquitoes and tent, It was almost like a dream. The party went late into the night and we made some lifelong friends (at least as long as the vodka was flowing anyway). The individual houses in the villages are built out of planks of unpainted wood and seem so run down and drafty that they could belong in New Zealand. On closer inspection though they seem to build a house inside a house with double windows instead of double glazing and an asbestos roof to keep them cosy. We are now in Birabadjhan and about to start the 2000km section of unsealed mud and gravel road. The main traffic is trucks and people buying 2nd hand Jap cars in Vladivostok and driving them west to sell. Our next big city will be Chita and we don't expect to see Internet before then so we will sign off for a couple of weeks and we will up date you on our adventures when we reach civilization again. We apologise for the lack of photos, due to lack of Internet bandwidth we have been unable to upload them. Thanks again for your interest in our exciting project. Feel free to reply at anytime Do Svidanya Please check our website www.russiantraverse.co.nz for recent diary updates. Mark and Jane. Russian Traverse 2007 ___________________________________

Hi Folks, Just a quick recap: Mark and Jane decide to do an OE. Instead of flying to London direct they buy a couple of motorbikes and set about riding 15,000 km's across Russia and Europe. After leaving Chita via the northern road, we thought we'd take a short cut. The road looked OK on the map, but soon we were stuck in a boggy swamp. We were in the middle of bear country too, so we decided to turn back and get out before the sunset. Unfortunately there wasn't any gas available in the nearby village so we had to ride all the way back to Chita. The cops at the road block wanted to see our papers, and advised us to take the federal highway. We didn't take their advice though and took the long way via the northern route, which turned out to be rutted and sandy, but quite rideable and very senic. We found a nice spot to camp near a small lake and it turned out to be one of the best spots yet, with minimal mosquitoes or gangsters. Next morning we made good progress to Ulan-Ude, but the sun was beating down fiercely, across the infinite rolling grass plains. Fortunately we found the Ude river and went for a short swim and wash. The river was cold refresing and drinkable this far upstream. We reached Ulan-Ude the following day and I called Alexey from Vladivostok, who happened to be having his honeymoon there at the same time! What luck. We met up near the big Lenin head (the biggest in the world they tell us) and followed Alexey and local beer salesman (very convineint) Sergey to his dacha, where, to our surprise, there was a New Zealand registered KTM in the garage! Turns out that Ian from Auckland was doing a trip to Mongolia, but had a small accident with a Volga (Russian car, only slightly better than a Lada) and twisted his forks.That night we had a real Russian experience - the banya - which is a very hot Russian sauna and involves naked beatings with birch branches. Slightly weird at first, but very cleansing. Next morning we got organised at a very slow pace and headed out to Lake Baikal, via an abandoned nuclear missile silo (the missile has been removed). The place had only been abandoned a few years earlier, but the construction method was obviously poor though and all the buildings was falling down without the aid of any US bombs. The road was OK in places and terrible in others, but we eventually got out to the lake by about 8 pm, giving us 3 hours of daylight to build a camp fire and set up camp. Another couple turned up later, and got stuck in a small creek.By this stage it was about 1 am and was properly dark. We managed to lever the car out though, but not until we'd ripped the front bumper off. Lake Baikal is a beautiful place. The lake is on the UNESCO world heritage list and is over 1.6 km deep, 650 km long and contains nearly 20% of all the unfrozen fresh water in the world. The water is perfectly drinkable, and apart from the litter the shoreline is spectacular. If you ever make it to Russia we strongly recommend you make the effort to check it out. We got back to Ulan-Ude a couple of lazy days later and met up with Ian. It was nice to talk some Kiwi with him. He was pretty philosophical about the whole accident and despite waiting for three weeks for his parts (about 1/3 of his entire trip) he was still in good spirits. The last we heard his parts had arrived and he was on his way to Mongolia. All the best Ian. A few days, half a dozen coffees at Marco Polo (the only place that we've found so far that sells real coffee) and a couple of beatings in the banya later we hit the road, bound for Irkutsk. At Irkutsk our good fortune continued as one of the local bikers and only English speaker in town, Mike, was cruising the streets on his day off. He showed us around Irkutsk and even took us to a motorbike shop where they were selling secondhand Jap import bikes and some decent quality oil. The bike shop was closed though because of the sunny weather; the owner had decided to take a long weekend and head to Olkhon, a small island in Lake Baikal. We decided to follow him and after a feed of rather small tasteless hamburgers we hit the road. The ferry to Olkhon was a real Soviet hangover job. The que was disorganised and poorly managed, and, although the ferry was supposed to be drive-on drive-off the front door was broken, so we had to turn around twice and still reverse off! We disregarded the que and disgruntled bus drivers though and rode straight onto the ferry. A couple of local girls came over to chat up the foreign bikers, and were visibly disappointed when Jane took here helmet off. The island itself was very nice and it felt good to be surrounded by water again. We found a nice spot to camp with some of the locals (people and cows) and lazed around for a day. The next day we saw a couple of guys on dirt bikes, hooning around. It was too much for Mark to bear and he stripped off his panniers and went for a hoon in the mud. The DR felt like a different machine without the luggage and it was great fun. The next day we decided to check out the top of the island, and try to organise a fishing trip (which turned out to be impossible, despite all the ingredients being present, namely water, fish and boats). After getting a few supplies at the small shop we rode to the top of the island, which is about 70 km long. The views were spectacular and there were very few mosquitoes, which was a relief. After que jumping at the ferry again (a motorbike sure does have its advantages) we rode back to Irkutsk for a bike festival. Mike, our friendly guide in Irkutsk, had invited us to a bike and music festival which one of the local clubs had organised. The prospect of a Russian motorbike festival was to good to ignore so after riding through 3 feet of mud we eventually got to the festival site. A stage was being erected, made completely from wood cut from the forest and there was plenty going on. There was still 2 day before the festival proper so we hung around and helped set up where we could. The generosity of the Russian people eventually got the better of us though and we both ended up with a nasty dose of food poisoning which ended up spoiling the whole thing a bit, but we still had a very good time. The music and atmosphere were great and we made some great friends. The local TV station even came and interviewed us for one of their evening magazine shows. The festival wrapped up after three days and we had plans to make short work of the 1100 km to Krasnoyarsk where a couple of fresh Continental tyres were waiting for us. The plans didn't quite work out though and we ended up making slow progress over 3 days through rain and axle deep mud. We saw a party of 6 German adventurers all riding very large BMW's (and struggling in the mud) and stopped for a chat. We eventually go out the other side of the mud section though and saw another German couple. Jane was very excited to see another girl riding a bike and we ended up having a long chat and also sorted out our German accomadation plans. We finally hit Krasnoyarsk at about 5 pm. Just as we were figuring out what to do about accommodation Jane hit a very large nail, which made short work of her thinly worn back tyre and let the air out. Getting the air back in would require a bit of work, so we set about pulling the wheel out and popping the tyre off. Just as we were finishing up a couple of Paul Teutul look-alikes (in character too!) turned up on cruisers. Nikolai and Sergey. "Lets go" they said and we followed them back to Nikolai's Mercedes-Benz workshop. What absolute luck - Nikolai gave us unlimited use of his workshop for overnight bike storage, maintenance and tyre changing. Most importantly he had a large air compressor as we were really dreading pumping up four tyres with our tiny pump. One of his mates also organised for the TV media to come along and do another interview, which Jane did rather successfully, but Mark made a hash job of because he was covered in filth and grease and sweat (somethings never change) from the tyre changing job. Nikolai then took us down to a cheap local hotel. "Impossible - non-Russians cannot stay at this hotel." After 45 minutes of negotiation in high speed Russian Nikolai checks himself in. He takes off and we take the room! What a victory over the red tape. So with new tyres and a through maintenance job we should be ready for the next 7000 km. Photos to follow... Da Svidanja. Mark and Jane Russian Traverse 2007.</p> <img src="userimages/image/travel/12Road side camp-1000.jpg"><br><br><img src="userimages/image/travel/13Que jumping-1000.jpg"><br><br><img src="userimages/image/travel/14Olkhon camp-1000.jpg"><br><br><img src="userimages/image/travel/15Olkhon rocks-1000.jpg"><br><br><img src="userimages/image/travel/16Olkhon road-1000.jpg"><br><br><img src="userimages/image/travel/17Russian camping Olkhon-1000.jpg"><br><br><img src="userimages/image/travel/18Olkhon Island-1000.jpg"><br><br><img src="userimages/image/travel/19Irkusk biker party construction-1000.jpg"><br><br><img src="userimages/image/travel/20Before the party-1000.jpg"><br><br><img src="userimages/image/travel/21Biker party-1000.jpg"><br><br> </td> </tr> </table> <br> <div style="margin-left: -8000px;"> </div>