Found him !

Wasn't too hard, he tried to hide behind a hill, but it wasn't big enough.

Pretty impressive structure on the edge of a plain, not far from Ulaanbaator.

So, that is it. The farthest east point for the trip. Time to head west now. Pity a lot of it has no road for the next two weeks.

Bike stuff.

Jean's radiator is still holding out, the rad seal is still working.

My bike however has an oil leak, from the gear shift shaft seal. I'm losing about 300ml every 1000 kilometres. An extra 2 litres is now stowed away.

Antipodes

Around the globe there are a small number of (near) antipodal cities. Cities that are on the exact opposite side of the world. We have now managed our first pair. Ulan-Ude (Russia) and Puerto Natales (Chile).

Our hope is that they also have an opposite effect on the bikes. It was in Puerto Natales that Jean's suspension snapped, and that is the bike I am currently riding.

Ulan-Ude has furnished us with everything that we have asked for; spare oil (I'm burning it), spark plugs ( the one spare was used over a week ago), new tyres (pre ordered and arrived 3 days before us), plastic metal (for extreme radiator repair), tea tree oil, and Dove soap.

Despite this modern day list, we were in a city, in the second most powerful country on the planet, where people still had no running water and street hand pumps were in use less than a mile from the centre.

Driving east across Siberia towards Irkutsk we noticed driving standards deteriorating, especially over-taking. Then I noticed the increase in right hand drive cars. I had forgotten that many people import cars straight from Japan to Vladivostok and drive them west, as it is much cheaper than buying in Russia. So to overtake they have to move most of the car into the other lane to get a view. A snap survey while at lake Baikal showed over 80% were RHD. This explained some near miss comedy overtakes we witnessed.

Ulan-Ude is a relaxed city by Russian standards and fairly small. It is not enclosed by high rise buildings and has a motorcycle dealer who used to be an English translator.

With the random way of the world, as we unpacked our bikes at the hotel, a man wandered up an introduced himself. Pretty normal, we are used to that. However it turned out he was a friend of Boris from Chita (700km further east) who Mike and I stayed with 4 years earlier on our RTW. 

With all our business concluded in the home of the biggest Lenin head in the world, tomorrow we will head off for Mongolia. A new country, new roads (or dirt tracks) await us.

Warming up

The rain and cold seem to be behind us now, even the mechanic changing our oil in Novosibirsk commented how abnormal the weather has been.

That was after he had washed, or maybe disinfected the bikes.

And now that it was hot, Jean's bike chose to spring a radiator leak. I spent ages translating bottles of fluids to make sure they contained coolant and then assessed the situation and options.

We know from prior experience that brazing or soldering these ones is not an option, the aluminium is too thin.

The initial obvious choice was to try radiator sealant, if we could find a shop selling it and be understood. As luck would have it I took a wrong turn and as we pulled up to check the route we were sat outside an auto shop.

The woman behind the counter was amused but understood our request. She then presented us with two bottles, one Russian and one English. I managed to ask which was best, she smiled and pointed at the English one.

Early the next morning before breakfast we set about adding it to the radiator.

As this point I would normally have a picture of me working on the bike, but my photographer had the day off. So here is the view from the motel.

It has now held for 1000km. It had a severe test on one city bypass, 11km of gravel, ruts and pot holes that could swallow a truck. 

But we don't trust it to do the full trip. The obvious thing would be to get a new one, however there is a 6 week wait just to get them in the UK.

But I have another bike back home, with a decent one on it. Time for it to become a donor. Once more our friend David is coming to our aid. He will strip it off and post it. We have a contact in Barnaul, back by the Kazakhstan border, who will hold it for us. We will still go to Mongolia, ease the bikes back east and switch the radiator over.

Great. A plan. Now we just need to think about my bike burning oil.

In the meantime we have arrived at lake Baikal.

And our new tyres are waiting in Ulan-Ude.

Bears еncountered

In to Siberia now.

We have crossed the Urals and left the European​ continent. We had expected to see some sort of sign marking the divide, but failed to do so. According to the guides there are many, just not obvious ones.

The Urals were very pleasant. A bit like Wales, green, wet and full of people I can't understand. They were also home to our first road/bridge wash out of the trip. 

Fortunately we were waylaid by a local before we had gone too​ far, he then helped us plot the 150km detour we needed to do. Across sand covered roads through the forest, with signs warning us not to stop due to "high bear density", and holes big enough to swallow the bikes. All in the rain. (Note I don't take pictures in the rain even in the absence of bears).

After a week of riding it was time for a little break. We opted for a couple of days in Yekaterinburg hosted by the Black Knives bike club.

I would like to say I'd managed a week in Russia without vodka. But I failed at the first hurdle, it would have been rude not to.

One of the club, Dmitry gave up his time to show us around the city, of great interest to us was the War Weapons Museum. Row upon row of tanks, jeeps, planes, rocket launchers, armoured trains, ships and a submarine.

Yes, a submarine. Yekaterinburg is thousands of miles from any ocean and they have dragged one there.

The interestingly bendy roads of the Urals eventually gave way to  long flat straight ones in  Siberia, which we would be crossing for the next 3500 kilometres.

The tedium is broken at odd times by animals wandering in the road. Cows, dogs and a wolf.

While no bears have wandered across , so far, we have encountered two in a roadside motel. On show for passing motorists. Caged, they don't look happy.

Bear dodging

We had a 5 hour long border crossing (a new record that has surpassed Central America) from Estonia, which was mainly caused by the Russians processing slowly. This gave us the opportunity to discuss our planned route, and we changed it. We dropped the idea of going into northern Kazakhstan and decided to put our heads down and head straight for Mongolia. We will be passing through Kazakhstan twice later any way (unless we change plans again).

I know Moscow is fairly north, and has harsh winters. But I really thought with it being June that it would have been warmer. 11c to 13c seems to be the best we could have hoped for. There has been a constant high wind, freezing rain and hail storms.

Maybe further south would have been better.

We are finally starting to meet people who want to talk , even though we have different languages. 

Accommodation has been roadside motels, cheap and cheerful but always with a 24 hour cafe attached.

Gregory, a motel owner, asked us to visit his home to see how real Russians live. He was waiting for us at breakfast the next day. He hijacked a young lad, Sranislav, from the petrol station because he had a phone with Google translate, and we could use both of ours to communicate.

We were shown around Gregory's village, no asphalt, some very broken houses. One person had abandoned their house and converted an oil tank to live in.

By contrast some traditional ones remained in a well kept condition.

At the back of his house was the remains of an old collective farm and machine factory. After the disbanding of the USSR the funds and infrastructure were taken away. All the jobs went. He was very angry about the new regime and corruption.

We left with a lot to think about.