Our first ten days in Russia have been pretty busy and internet in Siberia has been weak to non existent so sorry if our silence caused some concern. Well that's my excuse anyway. I'll try to bring you up to date on what's been happening starting with the roads.
When you've only got two wheels, what's under them becomes vitally important. For the last two years, we have been trying to research this aspect and found a wide range of responses from "it's paved all the way" to Bob Higdon's report which called it "the pantheon of horrors". They were all right. Heading out of the port of Vladistock, we floated along on beautiful, fresh, new tarmack-for the first three hundred kilometers. Then came the construction. But, hey, it's not bad! Fairly hard packed dirt, some dust but doable. Yes, we're sharing one lane with oncoming traffic but after the initial shock, we learn to hug the side of the road while trucks speed past inches from our saddle bags. They had warned us that this stretch to Khabarovsk would be the worst but we found only about 40 kms of the 800 were rough.
The next leg was 2,000 kms to Chita and what a dream! All freshly paved through magnificent silver birch forests with hardly a car in sight. As a matter of fact, there is nothing in sight and accommodations are hard to find but we discover "trucker hotels"-cheap, bare bones rooms with god food. We spend two days in Chita before heading out again.
But now it's a different road. There's a lot more construction and it's bad! Miles of gravel, some sand and lots of trucks kicking up dust so thick you can't see never mind breathe. The worst of the worst is the 'pit run gravel'-2" chunks of rock which had just been laid! Where there is pavement, it's a series of whoop de dos that fling you off your seat if you hit them too fast or bottom out your suspension. As we get closer to Ulan Ude, the pot holes get bigger and Ross refers to them as "bath tubs"!
Accidents are frequent and disconcerting starting with the dead woman on the street who had been hit by a street sweeper as we came out of Customs. Next it was a transport truck mangled over an embankment and probably fatal. Then we came upon a jack knifed tractor trailer blocking all lanes and on fire! There was just enough room at the back of the trailer, which was hanging over top of an embankment, to ride around with one foot on the uphill and the other on the foot peg. I never wanted to join the circus but here I am!
Bad gravel!
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