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.