Vienna to Magadan - BAM Road and Road of Bones

[Christian RA40XT]

This is a good one

I`m in!

[Xdream]

Originally Posted by EyeCake

Great story
I want to do this journey this year

my suggestion: do it

[kurien]

Xdream, the suspense is too much ... keep the great RR coming at a faster pace - get off your work ... and get down to more important work - like writing the RR :)

[STOP]

w i c k e d

[Xdream]

Sorry guys. My apologies to be so slow. I know you are looking forward to the real stuff. But I had to go throug those "not so action packed days" too, so you have to follow. haha

Well, next morning we had a late breakfast at 9 am.

This is Yuri. (from here on, you can click on the pictures to view bigger versions, if you want)



After meeting more and more people I figured out that lots of people in Russia just look exactly like Yuri :-) So after a while I called every Russian just "Yuri".

We discussed what to do and I told him, that I want to get to Krasnojarsk as fast as possible. He also was OK with that, as there is not much to see anyways on the way and we decided to ride together for a while.

Yuri set a nice speed. The weather was good again and the streets too. Traffic was much less then yesterday. The mountains of the Ural are behind us now and in front of us is just flat land. (if you think Oklahoma is flat and boring, you never been to this part of Russia before).



It was not too boring thoug, because I was just stunned by the amount of birds of prey. I think they were Hawks and Buzzards. Hundreds of them along the roads, in the fields and in the sky. I only have a small pocket camera, so I was not able to get a proper picture. But here you can see one in the air. I could watch them for hours patrolling the sky.



And Yuri on his Suzuki Freewind



As there was not much going on on the road, it´s time for some more side information that might be interesting für future travellers.

Gas stations:
Here is an overall information about Gas stations throughout russia. Along the main Highway until Lake Baikal (and I guess also until Vladivostok) you will never have a problem finding Gas. I think there was a Gas station every 50km. Sometimes maybe 100km, but not more.

You always geht 92octane and sometimes even 95 octane along this route. Quality of the gas seems to vary a bit. At least Yuri told me that. The more expensive it is, the worse is the quality. :-)

How to act at a Gas station:
At a Gas station you first have to pay at the counter, then fill up Gas. The cashiers counter looks like that.



We are not used to that in Europe. I think it´s more common in the US (or at least was). Well, I had this huge touratech tank that holds (including the original tank) around 35 liters. So I went to the window, sait "trizet litr" which means 30 liters and wanted to pay.
But everytime they asked "trizet litr? a matazikl?" translates with: "you never geht 30 liters in that motorcycle, maybe you mean 13 liters." (i switch to english now, but imagine this all in russian.
Xdream: "no, no 30 liters for sure"
clerk: "no way 30 liters would fit in that motorcycle"
xdream: "ok, lets do 28"
clerk: "no"
xdream: "24"
clerk: "no"
xdream: "20"
clerk: "ok"
I paid and got gas.

After a few stops I figured out what "full" means. ("polny" in russian). So I got to the cashiers window again. Said "polny" and left a 1000 rubel and returned to the pump.
I had 3 tanks. Touratech left and right and the original tank under the seat. I needed to fill them all seperately. I filled the first, switched to the second - damn. The cashier locked the pump. Get back to the window.
Xdream "I need more gas"
clerk: "but you have already"
Xdream: "no, i need more"
clerk: "why"
xdream: "i have 3 tanks"
clerk: "how much you need"
xdream: "about 20 more liters"
clerk: "no way - in that motorcycle?"
further conversation, start at conversation a

They could to that forever. It was especially difficult when the windows had shades so you could not see the person behind the window. If you are not fluent in russian it´s hard to talk with "hands and feet" if you do not actually see the person you are talkin to.

On the BAM Road and the ROB the Gas stations were a little bit less, but you can find Gas in every little village. The most common answer was "ask the Kamaz driver, he has Gas". I love that phrase. Like everytime you were asking people if you had a problem - the answer was "ask the Kamaz driver". If you are a Kamaz driver in the remote Sibirian villages, you are something like the King of the universe there.

I think also the BAM and the ROB would have been doable with 230-250km of coverage. But you would have to plan really carefully. And you might have to wait a day or more until you get Gas in a small village. Here the huge Tank of the small GS with a coverage of 700km and sometimes more came in handy. I stopped at a Village, asked for Gas, if they had i got fuel, if not i continued to the next village. This saves a lot of worries and it saves time too.
Thanks to Colebatch also for pointing that out on his ride report of the BAM. (I read this between the lines).

I never had to use less than 92 octane. If you have to take what you get, then you might have to take 87 octane. I also found a Gas station with 76 octane :-) Here is one of those.



Thats how you get Gas on the BAM



A nice Gas station on the ROB - yes, this is actually in service.



After that small excursion into "Gas station philosophy" we´r back on the road. We made it by dawn to Omsk. Another huge 1000 km day. We stayed at a truck stop that night. Only about 1 hour of driving in the rain today. That was a record!!



Another small info for future travellers. On that route there would be a shortcut to Omsk through Kazachstan. It saves you around 2 hours. Everybody told me, that it is not possible without complicated Visa stuff. But on the road we met a motorcyclist from Omsk who said it would be no problem, even without Visa. He did it a week ago with 3 english Motorcyclists and they had no problem. They also did not have a Visa. I would have loved to go through Kazachstan. Not because of the shorter Route, more because of "Borat country". Well, Yuri was not so happy with the idea and we went around. So again no real proof that it would be possible.

5 days of riding and I am on the same longitude as India. Doesn´t that sound cool?

[Xdream]

Originally Posted by Durden

Those are some long days you are putting in, i'm curious to see if you get burnt out.

Do we have any betting going on already? Just curious

[RDT953]

Xdeam, brilliant!
you did everything you were told not to do , crossing the border to Belarus at about midnight, awesome

pulling over to Russian policemen , gas stations

i am from Belarus originally, have to say: you are right on the money!

[Xdream]

Day 6 Omsk - Novosibirsk

morning toilet



aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh hmmmpf

done - lets go!

horse power



another day on the long and flat roads. traffic got more, but not a problem at all. it started to rain in the late morning and we stopped to get our rain gear on. I mean, Yuri did get his raingear on. Did I mention that i did not bring raingear? That was because I did not have anymore space for that in my luggage. My Motorcycle cloth were waterproof for a certain amount of time of course. (this amount of time was like the afternoon of my first day ) I don´t complain, but it could have been more comfortable.

Anyhow, we stopped in the middle of nowwhere on the roadside.
3 germans showed up travelling the other side and coming from Mongolia
5 minutes later 1 austrian showed up travelling the other side and coming from Mongolia
another 5 minutes later 1 american showed up going to the "stan" countries with a 1150GS with a broken frame
3 russians showed up going to Vladivostok



We stood there for nearly an hour and at times there were 20 motorcyclist on the roadside. I did not see much motorcyclists before and I did not see many after that. That was such a special place right in the middle of nowhere.

Some nice russian Mosquitos on the head of the Austrian guy.





We reached Novosibirsk in the late afternoon. It was still raining, but we decided to drive through the city and stop at a roadside hotel somewhere after Novosibirsk. But there was no roadside hotel.

It got dark, thunderstorms began, thunder, lightning, rain, wind. everything you don´t want on a Motorcycle. We came to a small guesthouse, but they did not have anything we could stay in. We continued. It was after 10PM when we found a small house along the road where we could put our bikes in a garage and had a room to sleep.

Yuri asked for the room and I was taking care of the bikes outside.



He came to the Garage where I have put the bikes in. Then he said: "They have room for XX Rubel" and seemed quite happy. I asked, if they have shower in the romm. He answered "no". And I said. "Well, then I don´t want to stay here, lets go back to Novosibirsk and search for something else. (100km back at 10 PM in heavy thunderstorm)

He did not look very happy - did he?



It was soooo funny to see his face.

A guy from poland also stayed there, but he was in bed already and he was not up, when we left the next day. So don´t know anything about him.

6000 km so far. Tomorrow we try to reach Krasnojarsk, which is just 750km away. But the weather forecast was even worse than today.

[Steveman]

Hi Ixi,

love the shot of Yuris mug! hahaha....

Cheers
Steve

[dnapekko]

This sounds great trip. Was it difficult to get Belarus-visa? I have heard, that they require hotel booking for all nights, an you obviously did not have any. I plan a Finland-Poland-Belarus-Russia-Finland trip next summer, and visa-regulations look... interesting.

[selkins]

Loving this report, even if it is the boring bits of the trip!

[kopeli]

What a great adventure,congratulations dear XDREAM,

keep on

[Gripforce]

Subscibed!!! Well done!!!

[Xdream]

Originally Posted by dnapekko

This sounds great trip. Was it difficult to get Belarus-visa? I have heard, that they require hotel booking for all nights, an you obviously did not have any. I plan a Finland-Poland-Belarus-Russia-Finland trip next summer, and visa-regulations look... interesting.

I only had a transit Visa for 48 hours and this was really easy to get. Don´t know how difficult a longer visa would be. But you definitely need also a Hotel Voucher for applying the Visa. (like Russia) Maybe a "fake" voucher is enough here too, because I heard of people travelling through belarus and just camping.(there are no real campgrounds after all)