The bike was sitting downstairs in the parking behind Godzillas. I had a bit of a problem to get out of bed, as I knew we will leave Moscow today. But when thinking about Erik, I got up quickly and had the last breakfast in the hostel.

Scott came to join us and we talked for the last time. I enjoyed the conversations we had, and hope to see him one day again. This is what travelling is about, not only meeting new places, but also new people. We were fully packed and happy to wear our bike suit again, although they are both very dirty by new. Can you imagine how they look and smell after being on the road for more than 100 days and not having had them cleaned properly? It will be a task for when we get back to Belgium.

All three of us went downstairs and loaded the bike. Scott waived us out and we were ready to hit the traffic in Moscow again. Honestly I prefered sitting on the bike in the traffic than going in the busy subway, walking in mini paces and being squeezed.

Today was a special day for Moscow as it is its 866th birthday. Military planes in the morning disperse the skies to make good weather on this day. The traffic was pretty much good though. It is only a bit difficult to turn around when you make a navigation mistake as a lot of roads are single direction.

After half an hour or so we got to the MKAD. This is the final big ringroad around the city. We were now on the M4 with direction to Rostov-na-Dony. Following this road we would need to ride about 1200km to get to Donetsk in Ukraine, but it is the better road.

We had a few showers but the road was ok. I was pretty shattered by 8.30 and we decided to stop in a roadside hotel and call it a day. Tomorrow would be our last ride with about 700km left to our son.

We finally got the call that the bike is ready and waiting for us in Moscow. We had a bit of mixed feelings. The price we paid was really good, but the timing of course was bad. It took double than projected. So to conclude you could say if you don’t mind waiting a few extra days in Moscow, go for the train solution.

As said before we had to go to Sibline, which is north of Moscow towards the MKAD to pickup the bike. As it was pooring down again today, we decided to get a taxi. It was an experience itself riding with this taxi 12 km through the city. I had to open a window!

We arrived at Sibline and saw the bike immediately in the box next to the railroad. A tajik guy came out with a hammer to help us open the crate. After 10 mins all wood was removed and we could put on our bike suites again. Actually I was really happy, because it would no more wet and cold feet. We had only packed some summer clothes on the plain, and it had been raining almost for the 10 days we spent in Moscow.

After connecting the battery the bike started up fine. I saw they had fooled around with my windscreen and not assembled it like it should. Some screws were even missing and I could not adjust my windscreen. Luckily I found the missing screws by remoIving a plastic, they had fallen behind them and were luckily not lost.

We made a stop in the McDonalds right next to Sibline for some burgers before heading into town again. I texted Tony P and he told me some guys were in town who attempted Road of Bones.

I rode back to Godzillas to drop off Larisa and then headed for Standard to meet the guys. I heard to their stories, and heard it was not possible due to the rain. Even the main roads sounded like hell, and I even heard a story of a guy who died on RoB this year by drowning.

In the evening I went back to meet Larisa in Scotland Yard, a pub close to our hostel. It was Scotland – Belgium on tv but unfortunately they only could show Northern Island – Portugal. Well it would be our final night in Moscow. Tomorrow we leave the capital and ride South-West to the Ukraine!

Today I got up early thinking we need to undertake some action. The train people had promissed us to give us a call when the bike would be here. But so far no news, I think we could wait another month here. So we packed our small backpack and headed out for the Yaroslavskii vogzal.

Like always we use the metro to get somewhere when it is a bit further. In our case it was around 9am. It was interesting to see how many people are on the subway at this time. Commuting like this every day does not seem like the easiest thing.

We got to the vokzal or train station and went looking for the bagage service. It was not so easy as in Irkutsk or Krasnoyarsk this time as the station is big and people are less friendly I find here. After half an hour asking about and walking around, we finally got to the bagage service and to the desk we needed to be. We asked the kind lady behind the desk and showed us our form we got when shipping the bike. But she shook her head. They did not know about the wagon where it could be on. Then another guy came in and suggested it would be in another station closeby named kazinsky vokzal. Another person said it would be still in Krasnoyark.

We were not sure, so we called the Krasnoyarsk station. There they told us, it should be in the Yaroslavskii vokzal for sure. After Larisa and the girl calling around for an hour or so, there was news. The company Logistika we used had used another company to do the transport. So we called this other company. They said us that the wagon indeed was here but could not be opened here as the wagon is sealed and to be opened only by this company. The goods would be ready however, only from tomorrow at this other company. Nice, but this other company is quite some distance from our stay, near the MKAT ring. The bike should pop up there tomorrow.

It was not too good for our stress levels, but what can we do… We will call the other company tomorrow and check if they have found our goods…

We are now almost one week in Moscow. But still no bike… It should be here, but the bagage people in the trainstation are still trying to find it between the bagage. At least this is what they are claiming. If we don’t get more news soon, we will have to go the station to find out more ourselves.

In the meantime we can have some rest and do some site seeing. In the last weekend there was a great airshow called MAKS. Unfortunately the weather was so bad we decided not to go. The alternative was a horse show on the red square. It was a fantastic show. We had seen a lot of horses in Central Asia and Mongolia. But the guys and girls here showed us a lot of skills. They seemed like gymnasts on horses to me.

The bad weather continued, this is no big deal as there are many interesting museums in Moscow. One of the best I believe is the Tretyakov Gallery. It has a huge collection of Russian painters. The only problem was getting there. We travel by using the metro like most people in Moscow, but I only have one pair of summer shoes here, and also no jacket. We put too much in the train cargo apparently. So we arrived a bit wet in the Tretyakov gallery. But we enjoyed the nice paintings here. I am already thinking to go back some time. One visit is not enough here.

Before visiting the Kremlin, we made a walk through the TSUM and GUM. They have more choice in clothes etc than in Europe I think, but the prices are a lot higher as well. Following the Red Square, and the eternal flame, we have also visited the Kremlin. The cathedral square here is impressive. If you take the tour in the Ivan the Great belltower, you get the overview of the Kremlin which is pretty impressive. The view from the top is also nice.

If you still have some energy left, there is the Moscow nightlife. We found a lot of American looking places. I don’t understand this very well, it must be some kind of love/hate relationship between Russia and America.

Instead of riding the bike today, I could enjoy a ride in a taxi to the airport of Krasnoyarsk. We checked in and went upstairs to watch the runway. There were some private jets and a big, new looking Boeing 777-300 ER from aeroflot. We would fly in the latter one.

We got in the large plane on row 49. Most rows have 8 seats, the total number of seats is 451. It was a very comfortable flight with a duration of 4 hours and a half. During the flight we had to turn our watches back 4 hours.

Once in the Sheremetyevo airport of Moscow, everything went smooth. We collected our luggage and bought a ticket for the aeroexpress. This is an electric train which goes from the airport to the green line metro station Belloruskaya. From there we had to change to the grey line and get out at tsvetnoy bulvar. Then a little walk and we were at the hostel. Once inside we had a walkaround by a friendly american guy. His name is Scott and he is from Nevada, he appeared to be riding a GSA as well, from 2010. It became even better when he even had the latest Adventure Rider magazine 🙂

We were happy to be in Moscow. It was now time to relax and wait for the bike. The bike should arrive on the second of September. In the meantime we did some site seeing, of course. To be honest, we have both a bit enough of site seeing and prefer to relax now.

We also met with an English biker Tony P. He is famous in the adventure riding world by doing whole BAM road. He is a real kind gentleman. Tony also introduced us to Walter C, the man behind Sibirsky Extreme. It was a nice evening, as we had diner in a belgian restaurant. I had my favourite dish, a good steak, with a belgian beer 🙂

Today our main goal was to get the bike and bike luggage on the train to Moscow. After the morning breakfast, we started by gathering all stuff we wanted to ship as well to Moscow. We like to travel light, so the less we need to carry around, the better for us.

We were ready around 11am and headed for the train station. We met our contacts. By now, luckily, there was another way to get on the platform. I could ride around, and get inside the building. We just had to park the bike here, and gather all our stuff in a big bag.

After that we did the administration part and said goodbye to the bike. Hopefully we will see everything back soon in Moscow. Voila, that was one thing sorted out for the day.

Next we had to find out transport for ourselves. It turned out that flying was cheaper than a 4 person train coupe and faster than going by train. On the train it is around 60 hours to get to Moscow, while by air it takes a good 4 hours. So we bought plane tickets and for the next day. We will be in Moscow tomorrow! We booked a stay in Godzilla in central Moscow as well at the time.

We had the rest of the day off and did some more walking to explore Krasnoyarsk. We walked along prospekt Mira and of course to the Lenin square. There was also a nice park and we sat on the big wheel. We went to bed early as we head to go to the airport the next morning.

We did not sleep too well though as our room was right next to the parking and there were only very small curtains on the windows. There was a big strong light on the parking that was on and off at times and it shined right on my bed when it was on.

The eggs were good though and I was surprised to see the same working girls in the cafe again. They were shouting at eachother though as one of the orders for a truck driver was not right.

We were strong again and ready to do the last stretch to Krasnoyark. Don’t worry about the road here, the gravel roads have reduced to 0.1% from here, only an occasional road work gives you some gravel from here.

We left our small village and after some time we passed the bigger city of Kansk. There was a nice airforce base here. I saw actually Migs fighter jets standing by. They looked like fulcrum F29’s to me.

Another thing to note is the police from here. Yes I was stopped today, it had been a while. I guess I was doing around 100kph and I was only allowed 90 or was it 70? I just got a warning though.

Around noon we got in the big city of Krasnoyarsk. I was told about 1 million people live here, but it is smaller than Novosibirsk. It was a huge city though, as it took about 30 minutes to get into the center. The first thing on the agenda here was to go to first official BMW dealer. Remember my new shock I got from BMW, and which was fit in UB? Well it needed some tuning. It is not a simple mechanic spring, but a more complex electrical version with an engine fit to it. It is called ESA in BMW terms, which means Electronic Suspension Adjustment. With the press on a button, you can adjust the preload and damping of the front and rear shock. Easy, right? Of course it gives you not as much fine tuning as other mechanical aftermarket shocks offer.

Anyway we arrived at the dealer, called Elit Avto. They have a car and motorcycle section. The guy at the bike section understood my question immediately and took off with my bike. What the hell? 🙂 We could wait inside and were offered tea, coffee and biscuits. I had explained that I got the new shock under warranty, however I had to pay for the service. We will check if this is the correct procedure once back in Belgium.

When the bike was back it was really low now, I could my feet on the ground easily. I had been riding for the last 10.000km with a setting on high hills and hard 🙂 I changed it back to high hills though.

Our next stop was the railways. When I was riding to Krasnoyarks, my lust to ride all the way to Moscow on this road got lower and lower. So I wanted to check if you could put the bike on the train like we could in Irkutsk.

We found the train station and the bagage section easily. The guys here told us they don’t do bikes as they are too heavy. We needed to go to another company for that. They explained us where it was. It was already around 3.30pm by now. I had been riding all over the city, and there is big traffic here. Before entering the city from the hills we noticed a big smog cloud above it, well now I knew which caused it. But Russians are quite polite for bikers and you can easily manouver between the cars.

We tried to find the new address but appeared further then we first thought. So I had another plan. I still had the number of Rostislav in Irkutsk and gave him a call. He texted me back with a number of a local guy in the station. We called this guy and he turned out to be, right, in the bagage section of the train station. But only 20m further from where we were. So back again to the train station 🙂

We found our new contact easily now and Larisa did her magic. She is a real gem in doing business like this, I am sure many things would not be so easy without her. It was not a problem anymore to put the bike on the train and the price was good. We only had to come back tomorrow before 12 at noon to put it in a crate. The guys asked me if I could ride on steps as we needed to get the bike on the platform though.

We had another thing sorted out, the next step was finding a nice hotel or hostel. We saw a few places, but most of them were very old soviet style and dirty. One of them reminded me of a place I saw in Nukus. But we found a nice place eventually called hotel Ujut close to the Yenisey river, with a safe parking for the bike.

In the evening we went for a bite and a walk downtown. We discussed our plans for the next days. At it was actually cheaper to put the bike on the train, and I did not have too much lust anymore to ride with the TKC’s on the boring asphalt to Moscow, we would go and leave the bike at the station tomorrow.

We took a day off in Bratsk yesterday. The city has a typical soviet layout, with the main street being ulitsa lenina and a big lenin statue. We could already feel it is getting colder here, and the summer has ended. It was around 10 degrees and people wore jackets on the street. I had also noticed it in the forest, the colour of the leaves was already yellow or brown for some trees. We both realised it was time to leave Siberia and head back to the West.

The problems with the water in the Far East also played part in our decision not to go further East. As can be seen in the news the summer of 2013 is catastrophic for the Chabarovsk area with a historic high water mark level. The Amur river has reached to about 7m and people are being evacuated. But it is not only this area that has lots of rains for over a period of one month. Also Magadan area is affected and parts of the road have washed away.

One wonders if this is coincidental, or perhaps a reason is behind it. A possible reason would be warming of the ocean water caused by the submarine volcanic activities. Higher water temperatures cause higher evaporation. This damp is carried via the wind over the landmass. I am not a geologist but it seems like an acceptable theory which I would like to further review, because if this would be the case, it would not stay to just this summer… I also wonder why this specific area was hit by the heavy rains.

Anyway, not only the water catastrophy, but also the colder temperatures felt at the end of August, made us not go further east and north, but rather back home. My friend Ivan who lives in the coldest big city in the world, Yakutsk, told me they already had temperatures of -2 degrees C. The ideal period to go to the Far East would rather seem June or July at the latest.

The third reason is a resource reason, we have run out of resources which is basically time. The reason behind this was mainly mechanical problems, remember the rear shock. But also leaving home a bit later than planned, and staying a bit longer than planned in some nice locations, stretched the planning. An even more flexible planning and more time could resolve this issue of course…

Back to our story now, as we are ready to leave to the West.

We carried our luggage down from the room, and I went to the stayanka to get the bike. Before riding back, there was friendly russian guy who gave me some clay so we could glue a broken mist light of the GS. These little but strong lights, typically can break or come loose with a fall. He had noticed one of mine was loose.

I also took my spare oil can out, I had about 0.4l synthetic 10W60 of a french brand high grade oil left and poored it into the bike. The oil mark was back just above the middle now.

Larisa was waiting by the hotel when I got back. We loaded the bike and road along the lening street outside of Bratsk. I don’t know why, but I also like to ride via the Lenin street and watch the statue when I leave a city. By now I guess we have seen about 50 different kinds of them 🙂 One remarkt though, in Russia, there are still many of them, while in Mongolia and Central Asia, most of them have been removed. I will not go deeper into this, but there is a reason behind it.

Once outside the city, it was a nice asphalt road, which runs for about 200km to the city of Tulun southbound. From Tulun you hit back on the M53 which is the transsiberian highway in this area and leads to the next big city which is Krasnoyarsk. If you look well on the map you can also see there is a small road from Bratsk to Tayshet, a city on the M53. This looks like a serious shortcut, but I had no documentation whatsoever about this road and decided against it. I still wonder however how this road condition is.

The M53 is a pretty boring highway if you ask me. Many trucks are seen here which leave massive dust clouds once you are on a gravel stretch. There was not a lot of gravel left, it was mainly asphalt. You also have the railcrossings.as the road follows the trainrails, or is it vice versa?

Anyway, we rode well into the evening, and into the sunset. A bad thing to note about riding in this direction is obviously that you get the sun in your eyes in the evening. This can be bad for eyes and dangerous as you can be seriously blinded in some cases.

Once it got dark we were on the lookout for another gostinitso and we found one around 10pm. It was a typical truck stop place with cheap food and beds. The guy who watched my bike was armenian. We noticed that in this area there were more and more armenians and georgians looking people also.

We had a beer in the cafe and talked to a truck driver and watched the local girls dance on the latest russian hit songs. I had ridden about 600km today, so I wanted to go to bed. I also had a problem with one of my eyes, it was aching a lot. Maybe it got a cold by riding with open visor during the darkness. Rest was needed, but the ride of tomorrow would be shorter, about 300km to Krasnoyarsk.

Yesterday we had done about 450km. Today I wanted to get to Bratsk, it would mean about 550km and I don’t know how much asphalt we would see. So we got up a bit earlier then yesterday and said goodbye to our host.

We went back a bit in the town to make some pictures and fill up.

Even after leaving the town of Magistralnii the road stayed asphalt. It was only a while after the junction to Nebel that it turned to gravel again.

The road was pretty good, and the scenery was nice, but less impressive than yesterday. We made a few stops under the way.

Just before the city of Ust-Kut we met another tank. This time the man invited us inside, he was eating and having some vodka.

He also invited us for a ride in the tank on a steep track in the wood. He asked me to park my bike up on the steep track which I did. Larisa got in the front passenger seat and I was in the tank. The ride up the hill was very relaxing, but then we reached the top. The man must have thought war broke loose because he almost flew off the hill. I could not stay up and had to tighten myself inside the back while everything was flying around. Larisa in the front could witness the ride better and told me how the tank just made it through every corner and just missed the trees.

Anyway we both made it back in one piece, barely, and the man enjoyed himself when he saw our faces. He told us when he is very drunk he rides too fast… It felt very good to get on the bike again and ride further.

We entered the city of Ust-Kut and saw the Lena again. We checked the barge waypoint and there would be a boat the next day to Lensk.

Our decision was already made to go back, so with pain in the heart I drove on the West towards Bratsk. It was another 300km to cover over a mix of gravel and asphalt roads from now.

We had some more borsch, lemon tea, bread, koteletki and puree and drove the rest of the day further through the siberian woods.

At some points the gravel had very big stones and the big felt like steering by itself. At other points the road was very dusty and it was very hard to see through the dustcloud.

In the evening we reached the city of Bratsk which is actually very big. It lies at the Angara river, and there is a huge dam. We rode over the dam, and had a look at the power station.

We had to ride another 25km to get to the real center, and checked in to the Bratsk Hotel. They have a restaurant, disco, biljarts, and good rooms 🙂 We had a blast!