Today we have ridden from Donetsk in Ukraine to Donetsk in Russia. What a coincidence. We have said goodbye to Larisa’s family in Donetsk. It was hard to leave our son Erik behind for the second time. But the journey to the East must continue.

We have ridden towards the E40 again and followed it via Luhansk, to the border station at Izvaryne. We saw a lot of mines under the way. At the border point, first we had to checkout Ukraine, which took about 20 mins. They checked my passport and the bike papers took some more time. Then we had to check in in Russia. For that you need first to fill in the migration card form. Afther that we got another 2 form paper for the vehicle. Oops it was all in Russian 🙂 So it took us some time to get everything filled in correctly. You don’t want to mistakes here as it will give you problems to exit the country again. Meanwhile the sun was going down and a storm was coming. Our plan was to camp for the night.

We were standing and waiting and the border post to process our vehicle import documents. All of a sudden a man in a van stopped who saw our bikes. His name was Igor and he invited us in his house in Donetsk. What luck! He said to follow him to his house in the nearby town of Donetsk which we did. When we arrived at his house, his son Stas, came out to check the bike. He was a very friendly guy too, and a good painter, he showed us some of his very nice aquarel paintings. We got warm food and some tchai, and a bed offered. What can I say more about the Russian hospitality?! After some time Igor’s wife and daughter arrived and we talked about our journey.

We didn’t know first but the timezone has changed again, we are now at Moscow time or UTC + 4hours. It was already around midnight, so time to hit the beds. Tomorrow we ride to Volgograd.