I’m reworking the written material and photos from the trip into Kindle format, so watch this space.

The bike is now almost complete in its rebuild. All I’m waiting for is the new custom Yacugar suspension to arrive from Holland, which should’ve been here this week. I’ll post a photo of it when it’s all done and ready for the next jaunt.

Speaking at the Horizons Unlimited event in Enniskillen at the end of May if any of the readers who stuck with the trip want to make it.

My favourite shot from the trip:

I’ve returned to Russia in a bid to learn the language. It struck me on the trip that nearly everyone in every country I passed through spoke it and since it’s the 4th most spoken language in the world, it’d be worth learning. So, I’m back out in Irkutsk, close to where the journey turned East. I will be here until 21st December prior to returning to Ireland for Christmas with family and friends. The language training is going well, but it’s classified by the US department of defence as a ‘Category 3′ language, meaning it’s one of the most difficult to learn, so I’ve some way to go.

I went back to Lake Baikal on Sunday, without my bike this time, and in sub-zero temperatures. It’s still beautiful and hopefully I’ll catch it freezing over before I return.

It was the sort of morning you know you have to face, but will take little pleasure from. I could hear the incessant rain all night, and there was still no let up by the time I was getting ready to leave. Gesa put on a spectacular breakfast for me, and then they helped me carry my stuff down to the waiting bike. I got everything set and braced myself for a wet ride to the port. Goodbyes were said, and these splendid people waved me off until the next time.

It was about 500kms in total, during which you exit Germany, blip through a small part of the Holland, then Belgium, and finally France. Again, there was nothing to report about this leg of the journey, it there was little of any interest to me, and presumably anyone reading this ride report.

I got to Calais and attempted my check in at SeaFrance. Apparently my booking hadn’t worked, so instead of the £27 fare I had expected to pay when booking online, I was now looking at £84. Fearing that SeaFrance had seen me coming and wouldn’t hear of my accusations that while I tried to book online, something happened their system preventing me from doing so, I walked out and tried the neighbouring P&O office. They were £10 cheaper, but their sailing was much later. Angry but without much choice, I went back to SF and bought a ticket for the sailing leaving in 50mins. This, I thought, would be my last sailing with a company whose customer service was distinctly, let’s say, French!

I jumped on the ferry and settled down for the crossing. I remembered that on the way out I had a photo taken up on the deck and so decided that it might be interesting to have a ‘before’ and ‘after’ shot. The ‘before’ shot is at the beginning of this blog but I’ll repost it here. With all of the gear on, it’s difficult to tell, but I’d shed 6-7kg in body weight, and maybe picked up a few grams of embedded dirt.

In any case, I rolled off, switched riding mode to the other side of the road, refuelled in Dover, and took off towards Cheltenham for the Greenbelt Festival. I was looking forward to this knowing that I had many friends who’d be at it as well as my brother-in-law who’d be arriving on the Saturday. On arrival the first person I saw out of 20,000 people was my friend Ivan from Belfast. It was fantastic to see a familiar face, and this would be the start of 4 days of catching up with old and new friends.

With the festival finishing on Monday night, I awoke early on Tuesday to pack my tent and load the bike for the final time. It was a strange feeling to know that tomorrow I’d awaken in a bed and not have to clip down any boots, or secure a tank bag, or lube a chain.

Fearing that I’d left things a little late and knowing that my folks had prepared a little welcome home for me, I knew that I’d have to average around 90mph to make it to Holyhead for my scheduled ferry. Wales has a burgeoning amount of speed camera traps etc, so I knew it was risky business. My sailing was at 12 and I pulled in at 11:45 fearing that I’d missed the boat, literally. I had. My pleading to let me on was in vain, and so I was rescheduled and had to make the not-so-interesting port of Holyhead my home for a few hours. This delay had a double whammy in terms of my time. Not only did I have to catch a later sailing, but it was on the slow boat, so it’d be later into the evening before I’d arrive home to the waiting family. I felt bad.

I pitched onto the boat, fell asleep, and woke up in time to unroll. On getting off the ferry, there was a brand new Triumph Hypermotard beside me, a 1200GS, and a few custom bikes. Pietro sporting his grime and war wounds, looked for all the world like he was on his last legs next to these polished machines. Still, I think the other bikes cowered before his achievements and even though I now had to spend some money on ‘righting’ him, I wouldn’t have swapped with any of them.

Here I was, back on Ireland’s soil. I took a right out of Dublin and pointed my front wheel towards Donaghadee for the final 150 miles. Sitting on the main road from Dublin to Belfast, I remembered the day I left the driveway of my parents house and revisited the stand-out moments of the last 3 months. To be sure, it was the best experience of my life thus far and the days ahead would give me the space that I needed to process all that I’d experienced.

Hearing an exhaust in the distance, my dad and sister had come out the front door and were first to greet me as I pulled up onto the spot from where I’d left. They’d put together an amusing banner for my return, which on saying ‘Welcome home from there Simon and Pietro’, had the neighbours all wondering if I’d ‘come out’ on my travels and was bringing home my gay Italian fella. I got off the bike went inside, and the return of the prodigal celebrations began. Thanks folks! Indeed, thanks to everyone who made this trip what it was. There are too many to mention, but most of them are referenced along the way in the story recorded here. Only time can tell what sort of impact a trip of this nature has, but I know that going ‘away from here’ was exactly what I needed after 5 years in business. Now that I’m ‘back from there’, I’m not sure what is next, occupationally speaking. Perhaps I’ll post it on here in a couple of weeks, should the epiphany happen.

In the meantime, to those who have tracked with me, thanks for coming. To those who’ve not simply lurked but have managed to find the ‘post a comment’ button or emailed, a big-thank you for the encouragement in letting me know that the nightly ritual of journal updating wasn’t to no avail.

This site is going to be redesigned soon and might be used for whatever is next. In the meantime, after 4 years, I’ve reactivated my facebook account, so you can come and find me on there to stay informed.

nb., A quick update on Pawel is that he’s doing well. He’s got a small problem with his neck and his shoulder is healing up. There’s been no word back from the Russian authorities and can’t get through when he’s tried to contact them. His plan is to head up in a van in a couple of weeks to pick up his bike.

Briefly and in answer to a few questions that have been pm’d or emailed to me:

1. Trip cost: £3500. The £500 was for the clutch, freighting bike, and trans-sib tickets. If you’re planning a trip budget on £1000 a month. No carnet’s needed for this trip.

2. Group size: my favourite riding was done solo. I really enjoyed the freedom of blasting out through Europe to Volgograd on my own, and I didn’t enjoy the first few days of riding with the Estonian/Finnish guys as their pace and stops were away off what I was used to. Having said that, they were all really good guys and I immensely enjoyed the craic around the fire in the evening. I would day that two people is the ideal for a big trip. I met other riders along the way who were riding in two’s and it made me a little envious. More than three is slow going. Three is a crowd and preferences and alliances can still form. Two is good from a safety point of view and company when not riding, while one is wonderful but is lonely at night and lacks the safety element. The other bonus of riding alone is that you enter into your immediate environment more and will get many more opportunities to experience local hospitality etc if solo (or as a couple). Also try and find people of similar experience if not going on your own.

3. Best kit: Soft panniers. I personally would urge caution in using hard panniers. Every single rider in the big group we had said that they wouldn’t bring them again. We lost days in trying to reattach them when the bikes went down. I would’ve bust an ankle at least a couple of times if I’d had mine on. They’re great for European touring on tarmac, but beyond that, bin ‘em.

4. Do again: as usual, bring less gear. I stripped everything down several times before I left, and realised that I should’ve been more ruthless again. Of everyone, I had far and away the least stuff with me, and still had too much.

5. Favourite country: Russia. The people, the land, and the language were all wonderful. Mongolia is obviously like nothing else on earth and is perfectly enchanting, but there was something about Russia that really got me, and I think everyone felt the same. Most of us are wanting to do some language training in Russian and will certainly be back.

See you on the road. Over and out.

Simon

I awoke at 5am knowing that we had a long ride all the way across Poland to Berlin. It wasn’t long before the others surfaced too. Aga, in her own inimitable style, threw together a plush breakfast to send us on our way. Tytus, who definitely had the biking bug, wanted a little scoot out on my bike before we departed. I took him to the end of the street, returned and loaded up. I have to say, I didn’t for one moment mind having Pawel on the back of my bike for a few days, but it felt great to have the whole saddle to myself again. I really wondered how Kris and Gesa had achieved what they achieved.

Unfortunately it wasn’t all motorway to Warsaw, and in fact, the road had us going through every little town and village possible. This made for slow progress and the ride was largely uneventful…which is good given how eventful things had been of recent times. In the early evening we were passing out of Poland and into Germany. Kris and Gesa were understandably excited, so I went ahead of them and shot some video of them riding home, past the German border sign. We all stopped and marvelled at the sunset and they wondered if the architect of the heavenlies had laid this on especially for their return. Our destination would be the apartment of their friends ‘Danijel and Sylvie’.

It goes without say that the Berlin Wall information centre/museum was top of the list of places to visit, as well as the historical buildings, Brandenburg Gate and the Jewish memorial. I have to say that it was sobering being at the Berlin Wall. I have vivid recollections of my mum setting me in front of the TV on the 9th Nov ’89 and saying ‘you have to watch this, it’s history in the making’. As a 13 year-old boy, I was more intrigued by the graffiti on the wall than the political significance of the circumstances. However, it all came home when I stood there and pulled up those memories. On reflection, this trip was a comprehensive education on communism, nicely rounded off here, in Berlin. I spent a good deal of time wandering the city and thinking about walls and their use in segregation; from my own homeland, to Israel, to E/W Germany, to Korea etc. I was particularly fascinated with this church, ironically called ‘The Church of Reconciliation’, which stood alone in the death strip. If walls are metaphors for segregation, I thought, what would be the equivalent metaphor for unity and reconciliation? I wondered if it was the very thing that this church and other churches like it render impotent by building walls around and thus preventing its true transformational power from taking effect in society: the table? At table, eucharist, communion (or whatever your tradition calls it), our own dinner tables etc, barriers are dropped and everyone sits, together. A level of intimacy, otherwise unachievable, is experienced, as strangers are welcomed and our humanity encounters ‘the other’. Perhaps this is why most of the successful Protestant and Catholic reconciliation work was done over dinner? These reflections were taken further when I visited the impressive Jewish Memorial, build on the site which hosted Joseph Goebbel’s bunker.

Excited to be in Berlin as I’d only heard good reports about the city, we rolled in in the dark and parked up under their balcony. It wasn’t long before Danijel was down and welcoming us. I knew instantly that these were good people and it was going to be a good couple of nights at their place. The plan was to spend the whole of the following day sightseeing around the city, have dinner in the evening when Gesa’s sister Adja would come over from Hamburg, and then break for Cologne the following morning.

Even more impressive were Danijel and Sylvie. Dan is Croatian but speaks fluent German and English and is pretty good in French. Sylvie is from Hamburg but her mum is French, so she’s fluent in French, German, English, and Croatian. They have a 2-year-old son Mijo whom she converses with in French, he converses with in Croat, and he’s obviously learning German, as well as English when people like me come through. It’s not often 2-year-olds can make you feel educationally challenged! As it happens, the day after we left, Syvlie gave birth to a Marie Yvonne. Congrats you two!!!! I’ll be over to give English lessons next month;-)

It was time to leave these new friends. I had a deadline to be back in England for, and wanted to spend at least one night in Cologne again, but with two people whom I didn’t know on the way out when I visited, but would share some rich life experience with in the weeks following. Kris and Gesa were understandably excited about this final run home along the autobahn.

After a final farewell to D and S, we made it to the famous German autobahns with some alacrity. I’d say that normally, Kris was quite a conservative rider, partially owing to the fact that he had his missus on behind him. Not now though. They were maxing every drop of hp out of that R100GS that they could muster. Their excitement was vicarious, because I could feel it too. I’d no idea what or to whom we were returning to, but when you’re friends are this stoked, it’s very hard not to feel it yourself.

Kris was texting that we’d be back at a certain time, but with loads of road works, and torrential torrential rain, we were delays by some 2 hours. It wasn’t helped by the fact that my fuel reading sensor in the tank, replaced x4 by BMW and guaranteed by Hursts Motorrad before I left, went on the blink twice. On both occasions it showed in excess of 70 miles left and then here I was on the autobahn freewheeling. Not good. With the smallest hard shoulder in the world, I’d pull in, Kris would detach his fuel hose, and gift me some from his voluminous tank.

The closer we got to Cologne, the more I could see them getting excited. Kris passed me at a speed I had not yet seen him go, and then I tailed them into the city on this horrible wet evening. We pulled down into the street his flat was on, and there standing in the rain, was a gathered throng of expectant family. Just as they had all gathered to send them off some 4 months ago, here they were, suffering the rain, to welcome them home. The shouting and whooping was great craic as Kris and Gesa pulled up and tooting the horn. Then began the hugs, and then came the little beers and pizzas from his local pub underneath his flat. It was a good evening and even though a stranger to all of these people, I felt incredibly privileged to be part of this and was made to feel welcome.

I stayed the night and would leave the following morning for the final run home.

Tomorrow should finish the ride report.

Morning came and with it, the ritual sounds of stoves. A communal pot of porridge was prepared, eaten, and we got down to the business of packing up and heading off. Bound for Latvia, we soon made it to the border. This exit from Russia took longer than we had hoped as a coach load of Poles arrived after us and yet somehow were processed before us. We sat around, glad that this would be the last border crossing on this trip. All hereafter would be the gloriously invisible and highly permeable borders of the European Union. Knowing that fuel is ridiculously cheap in Russia compared to a few miles down the road in Latvia, we all stopped at a local fuel station and filled up. As we had a coffee and sat outside, it was funny watching Latvians who, obviously having loads of time to wait their turn in the queue, felt it worthwhile as they shook their cars to get air pockets out of the fuel pipes and even jacked the cars up to allow them to get the last cubic mm of fuel into their tanks. Some even had the entire boot area converted into an auxiliary tank so that they could carry 180 litres of fuel??

We got into Latvia and found the roads to be excellent. It definitely had a more European feel to it. Even though we were still a good distance off home, it very much felt like I was riding in my own back yard now, relative to how far we’d gone. Owing to the lengthy border crossing, we didn’t make it as far as we’d wanted, so we pulled off by a river and set up camp again. It turned out to be quite a subdued, and indeed submerged, night. Everyone was quite quiet and yet in good enough spirits. We knew that we were in for a deluge that night, so battened down the hatches and turned in. Sure enough, the next morning, Pawel and Aga were floating on their thermarests as the water had streamed down the hill straight into their tent. Apparently Aga was so tired she hadn’t even noticed and slept through. Pawel, still in a lot of pain and now becoming immune to his painkillers, was up most of the night anyway.

After some tinned fish breakfast, we made it through the rain to Lithuania. This was a country with utterly exceptional roads, a complete absence of any traffic on them, sunshine, and stunning river and forest scenery. I did think to myself that if anyone wanted somewhere a little different than the usual France, Spain and Alps ride in the summer, the Baltics would be a great place to come and explore.

On exiting Lithuania we were heading to Pawel’s mum and dad’s place in Suwalki, a short way across the border into Poland. We pulled into the parking area behind their apartments and enjoyed a warm welcome from his family. He had to explain to them that he’d had an accident and hence was riding home on the back of my bike. The precise details of the accident would be saved until we’d all left the following morning. In the meantime, his mum had prepared a feast for us, including the traditional Polish dish of ‘Kartoshka’. It was really a fantastic evening with some faultless Polish hospitality. After being reunited with his son Tytus, we were all really glad to see Pawel laughing again. Pawel and Aga had been on the road longer than the rest of us, and had gone through Iran (which was their favourite country) and had some many great stories to tell. I just hoped that the experience of this trip and the sharing and memory of stories wouldn’t be marred by the final chapter.

We were relieved to be leaving Moscow. Not that it’s an unpleasant place, because when it’s empty and there’s a nice relaxed vibe in the city, it’s not. But we were on a bike trip, and what with the train ride and the stalling in waiting for the clutch, everything had become more static than we were used to. I found that on a trip of this longevity, something switches in your mind; your focus becomes the road, passing scenery, the feeling of movement and progress. You make allowances and even, by necessity, build in times that aren’t like this, whether to be to recharge the overland batteries or absorb more of a place you’ve entered. If you get stuck, particularly where the people, like you, aren’t locals and are there on their own personal missions, and the environment isn’t indigenous, it feels contrived and inauthentic. I felt this after a few days in the hostel. Normally I’m a pretty sociable guy, but in this instance, I wasn’t concerned about hearing the stories of other travellers, or to answer questions regarding my own journey. I was supposed to be moving, and to that perpetual motion I wanted to return. Having said that, I knew that it was the home straight, and very soon the perpetuity would grind to a halt. I was under no illusion that, on my return, the simplicity of bike travel would be overtaken by questions of finances, occupation, accommodation, and other humdrum responsibilities which a sabbatical of this nature allows us to temporarily leave behind, in order to make space for us to address other questions in our lives.

By way of illustration, my main concern that morning was trying to find chain lube. About half an hour after we had navigated our way to the main road out of Moscow which would take us into Latvia briefly, then Lithuania to Poland (passage through Belorussia would be quicker, but requires a $100 transaction for the privilege), I caught site of one of Moscow’s BMW Motorrad dealers. Knowing from experience that they always make their highly branded punters welcome with coffee and whatever else, we pulled in. As well as chain lube, I was hoping to pick up a right hand wing mirror replacement from the accident as I knew that when I got to the UK and moved to the left side of the road, it’d be more important for passing. As usual, we were ushered to the cafe for refreshments and I told them what I needed. A wing mirror they hadn’t, but my usual Motul chain lube they did…at Moscow prices. What normally costs me £7.99 at home, was priced at a difficult to believe £20 here. Asking if Dick Turpin was the proprietor of this particular dealership I said ‘I’ll run the chain dry, thank-you very much’, and hit the road again.

It felt good to be back in the saddle with ground to be covered and places to be reached. That feeling was short-lived, for 20 minutes later we were hit with the biker’s worst nightmare. Blasting down the dual carriageway, I was aware of some commotion on my right, but a bike lying on its side in the grass in the central reservation caught my attention. The closer I got, the more the thought ‘I recognise that bike’ registered. When I was right up on it and saw the Polish plate, I knew it was either Pawel or Aga’s Yamaha. About 50m beyond it I saw the other bike of the pair on its side stand parked in the central reservation. I hit the anchors hard, jumped off the bike, and ran back to where the people had gathered at the side of the road. To my relief I saw Aga, who was running towards me. She put her head on my chest and was weeping. ‘Where’s Pawel, where’s Pawel’ I asked, while trying to comfort her, in what I had already surmised was a pretty awful situation. ‘He’s been taken to hospital in an ambulance, but I think he’s ok’. What a relief, as the number of people around indicated that it was more serious. In time, I came to realise it was more serious. It transpired that there had been a car accident an hour or two previously, with two cars involved. No one had been hurt, and one of the cars had already been transported away. The one that remained had been put on the recovery truck and there were obviously two guys – one the owner of the car, and the other the owner of the truck – securing this car on the back of it. Pawel had been riding along on the inside lane and on doing a shoulder check over his left shoulder to move into the fast lane to check for Aga, noticed a car passing him. As he looked around again, his metal pannier on the right side, caught the two guys standing on the road at the side of the truck. In the mayhem of what was taking place, I could see clothing, belongings, blood and more, belonging to the men on the road. After the impact, Aga narrowly avoided hitting Pawel who was sliding up the road. She parked up, ran to him lying prone in the middle of the road, and managed to ascertain that he wasn’t too bad, so pulled him off the road. She then went to one of the two men, and could see that he was very badly injured and struggling to breathe. She tried to comfort him in her best Russian while the wife of the other man was leaning over her husband telling him to not go to sleep. A whole 25 minutes later, the ambulances arrived to take them all to hospital. Aga was left, helping the police and detectives make sense of the scene. We then pulled in.

I knew that Pawel and Aga had thought about freighting the bikes back to Moscow as he’d been texting me to find out prices etc, when they were in Mongolia and I was in Irkutsk. It turns out that they’d put them on in Ulan-Ude, but we didn’t know that they’d reached Moscow that morning and that we were all setting out at almost the same time. They must have passed us while we were sitting in the BMW dealership only moments earlier. That we happened upon this was a pure coincidence. The convergence of all these events turned out to be awful, for as we stood there trying to communicate to various people, the phone call came through to one of the bystanders that the two men had both passed away.

I got my camera out and started taking photos of the scene as I knew that when this goes to court, Russian road traffic legislation might not be terribly objective when a non-national is implicated. At least if we had some independent evidence, we might have a leg to stand on. For obvious reasons I’ll not show the photos of the scene, but it wasn’t pretty and it’s actually incredible that Pawel walked away from this. After a couple of hours when details had been taken and the detectives had done their measuring and evidence gathering, we were given directions of the hospital. Aga had rightly decided to not tell Pawel anything at this point, but for us to just go and make sure he was ok. One of the victim’s family’s had already shown up and in their understandable anger, was threatening Aga. They followed us to the hospital to identify the bodies and as I sat at the back of our little convoy with Aga in the middle, I was not a little worried about having to pick a Land Cruiser out of my rear, so I kept a close eye in my rear view mirror for this brief run.

On getting there, I was glad that no surgery was required for Pawel. The hospital was truly awful and the staff were less than helpful. He was lying in a little room on his own with his jacket over him to keep warm. Still pretty gaunt and in shock, he was utterly surprised to see Gesa, Kris and I, walk into the room with Aga. In fact, since he hit his head, he thought he was seeing things. According to him, while he couldn’t raise his right arm and was in quite some pain, nothing was broken and they were happy to let him go. I was sceptical, but anyway. Normal precaution at home would be to keep someone in overnight who had delaminated one side of their helmet when their head hit the deck. The police then arrived and we all made our way to the police station. We went to the head of the police station’s office where all kinds of languages were being spoken to communicate what was happening. Aga told Pawel that the two men had passed away, and he, understandably, fell apart. So much so that nothing more would be achieved in us being there, so they suggested that we all stay in a nearby hotel that night and come in and do statements the next day. Aga and Pawel wanted us to stay and so they put us up in the hotel. We had dinner and tried to process the day and then went to bed. Since she was so tired, emotionally drained and in need of a good night’s sleep before the next day, I agreed with Aga to set my alarm for 4am to check in with Pawel and ensure that the was ok.

In the morning our Police escort arrived and took the three of us back to the station. We spent the day giving statements (Pawel’s and Aga’s) and then I was taken out to the compound where Pawel’s bike was temporarily stored in order to ride it back to the station, where they’d keep it for up to 6 weeks for him.

I have to say, the police were brilliant. There was clearly an affinity between us all. They went out to the local shop and bought us food and drinks. Anything we needed, they provided. As a thank-you, we took two of the main detectives out for dinner the evening we left. How we’d get Pawel home was an urgent question. None of us particularly wanted to put him on a plane on his own and leave him with a 500kms train ride from Warsaw to Suwalki. So we all agreed that we’d split my luggage up a bit and he’d ride home pillion on the back of my bike, subject to him even being able to get onto it. After a couple of trial run and a few grimaces, he was able to clamber on behind me. At last, and with a wave off from the police, we hit the road for an hour prior to camping that evening. Pawel was still lost in his own world, and would be intermittently until we got him back.

After we checked into Godzilla’s, which was a hostel of impeccable standards, we lay down for an hour or two, and then took off around the centre of Moscow. I was astounded at how empty the place was, as I had heard that it was on a par with London or New York in terms activity. It was later that I learned most of the city was still elsewhere because only days before it had been under a cloud of smog from nearby fires. True enough, we noticed that everything was still too hazy to take any decent photos and the air quality wasn’t even blackwall tunnel never mind alpine.

We wandered around Red Square, the Kremlin, St Basil’s onion temple, the Duma, Lenin’s mausoleum, and various other places of historical and non-historical significance.

Our bikes were supposed to arrive that evening at 1am at Jaroslawski station, so we managed to stay awake through the day in order to head out there in the evening to be reunited with our machinery. On getting out of the taxi (I was now down a kidney), we messed around at the train station and generally only saw scores of homeless people and wild dogs. We were passed from pillar to post, in and out of warehouses and rooms with largely naked men sleeping in bunks. I think I’ve covered this before earlier in the blog, so I’ll not rehearse it all again. Suffice it to say, the bikes got lost and arrived later than they should’ve done. Better late then never though. We were still faced with the task of how to get mine back from the station. We asked a few guys with trucks, but it soon became apparent that however generous people outside of Moscow were, people inside it were inversely proportionately generous…ie., selfish. Unless I parted with my final kidney, all of my money, my parents money, and the crown jewels (like I had a say over these), such an act of altruism was as likely as George W. being invited to headline at this years Mecca Television Awards (MTV). Our only other alternative was for Kris to tow me. There was one obvious problem with this plan – from where do you tow a bike? There’s nowhere to attach a tow rope too, so we figured the only way was for me  (with my still gamy wrists) to hold the rope, while Kris deftly guided us through Moscow rush-hour traffic. Mercifully, they have unbelievably long periods between green and red lights here, so that meant we could dive across roads when necessary. Eventually, and much to the relief of my right arm and general well-bring, we made it back to the hostel and were greeted with cheers from the few sitting outside.

Go back into the archives and you can read Moscow in real time. For now though, let it be said that I went to the ballet and thoroughly enjoyed it. Godzilla’s is very central and everything pretty much a short walk away. In addition, the police station is outside the front door, so it’s very safe. So safe in fact, you can, as you see above, leave your bikes outside the front door of the hostel as the hostel also has got a 24hr security camera looking down on them.

Waiting for the clutch was getting to be a pain. I was constantly checking parcelforce to see if it had moved on their tracking page, but it was very definitely stuck like a kipper bone in the oesophagus of Russian customs. Different people were telling us different things, and it ranged from ‘ah, y’all have it tomorrow’, to ‘make yourselves comfortable, you might be collecting the pension here’, which, according to Moscow standards, would be quite the windfall I suspect. Kris and Gesa were brilliant and sucked up the expense of staying longer so that we could all ride back and end this adventure together.

Eventually though, I got tired of the uncertainty. Partly out of boredom and partly to be ready for when the clutch did arrive, I got stuck into stripping it down. In the absence of a workshop, I got out my tools and camping stool, and just turned the pavement into an impromptu workshop. Scott, who was the American manager of the hostel and a brilliant lad, had no complaints with me doing this. That he was a rider too and was, later that week, about to go and take delivery of his new GS helped my cause I think. In fact, his presence was invaluable, because before he moved to Russia, he was a transmissions mechanic in the US, so when I got the clutch taken apart, he was able to look at it and tell me what had actually happened to it.

It turns out that the main nut on the thrust pin in the clutch had completely come off. All of the friction plates were in surprisingly good order given that the bike was nearing 40k miles and had seen a lot of 1st and 2nd gear work. We put the whole thing back together and were sure to douse the main nut with thread lock. I struggled to get the gear change groove into the right place inside the clutch as it seemed to be a case of trial and error. I summoned Scott down, who sat staring at it on his lap for 3 mins, silently, and got it first time. It’s always a pleasure to watch a professional work! My one concern was not having a new gasket for the housing, but Kris meticulously cleaned the whole thing with WD40.

I took the bike for a quick ride around the block and concluded that I didn’t need to wait for the new clutch. It would get me home as was.

We packed up the room the next morning, said some final farewells, and pointed to the road out of Moscow. I still needed chain lube as I still hadn’t managed to get some.

Sometimes journeys are long. Sometimes journeys are very long. And just occasionally, sometimes journeys are far too long! This was my experience of the trans-sib from Irkutsk to Moscow. Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect. My experience of trains was limited to the Bangor West to Holywood to Belfast Central as a child, the First Great Western when I worked in England, or the London Underground. Frankly, if I’d been stuck on any of these for 4.5 days, it wouldn’t have been a whole lot different.

Kris and Gesa got a cabin with a wonderful lady by the name of Lara, who was Italian, but spoke fluent Russian, French and English. She was a big advocate of Russia having once lived and studied in Leningrad as it was then known. Also in their cabin was a little old Ukrainian man who seemed to have got his day and night back to front, owing to the fact that he’d sleep all day and when people were bedding down for the night, he’d get up, make a massive bucket of coffee, and read while the rest of them slept. I, on the other hand, had a wholly different experience. My coupe was like a wild west brothel, minus the sex and prostitutes. It started off just dandy when I had an elderly couple from Omsk who between them had ‘you’re welcome’ or possibly, ‘your welcome’ as their only English. One would have thought that words like ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or ‘where is the…’ might have been more useful, but ‘you’re welcome’ was all their teacher deigned useful for whatever sortees they might have had to make into an English speaking world. Actually, I say ‘English’, but we all know that it’s really an American phrase, said in response to almost anything. I often wanted to abuse this limitation in language by asking her if I could, just for the craic of it, swot her husband around the head when he wasn’t looking. When he looked at me in a fit of red rage, I could then feel vindicated that she approved the action.

Back to the point. They got out at Omsk, which was sad as I actually learned most of the precious little Russian I have from this couple. Let’s face it, when you’re stuck on a train for 4.5 days with nothing to look at, it’s a good use of your time. The brief silver lining was that I’d have the whole coupe to myself. Or so I thought. I say brief, because at the same stop, a Russian bloke got on. Watching the speed at which he made up his bunk and settled in, made me think that this guy is a professional trans-sib traveller. I struck up some conversation with him, and it turned out he was a terribly decent chap too. He mustn’t have thought the same about me, because he only lasted 12 hours. Through Chelabinsk, Yekaterinburg and Samara etc, I had countless Russian men in and out of my room, much to the amusement of Kris and Gesa. It’s quite disconcerting when you go to bed (bed=generous description for a top bunk just wide enough but too short to get much beyond foetal) in a room with one group of (russian) men, and awaken to a completely different set. I was grateful that nearly all my stuff had enough Kazakh and Mongolian desert remnants to make it look entirely worthless for theft and subsequent resale.

So the carriages alternated between 1st class, 2nd class, and then at the back you had the ‘Gulag section’, which to all intents and purposes looked like it was full of people being transported to the Siberian gulags. It was open plan and was largely Russians who were travelling here, aside from the odd pommie school teacher or student. In our carriage you had a big hot water urn, and a toilet cubicle. The urn was for preparing ‘dinner’. Masterchef this was not.  You had to somehow programme your brain that the only remaining food in the world was Korean noodles, requiring steeping for 3 mins in boiling water, by which stage the enclosed chemicals could sufficiently tenderise the plasticised noodles.There was a restaurant cart, but it was distinctly ‘Russian’ (used pejoratively this time) and about as inviting as dinner at a landfill site. Needless to say, we passed on it.

Reading, playing cards, taking photos of the same thing over and over again, looking out at impoverished villages, monitoring how rapidly your BO was evolving and in relation to the speed of others, getting off at the odd place to buy a blini off a be-scarfed little local lady, or counting the hairs on your arm, were about the sum total of the activities on the train. One of the highlights of the day was when one of our two carriage attendants would mop the floors. The journey got a little more interesting when we passed many of the peat fires in the distance which had been responsible for emptying Moscow when we got there. If you had ever considered the trans-siberian, my recommendation is to make sure you do the Beijing-Ulaan Baatar-Irkutsk leg for sure, for here lies the scenery. Birch forests get a bit same ‘ol same ‘ol after the first 100kms (with 4900 remaining). Also, the lower the train number, the better quality, ie., number 1-9 (and in particular Baikal no9) are the hoi polloi, with anything over that slowly degenerating. We were on number 81, and very nearly booked 395, which presumably is full of decaying bodies and half-wits.

In Ykaterinburg, we knew there was a Kremlin which was worth a visit, but we only had 30 mins. On the way, I clocked the golden arches, normally filtered out on principle by me when at home, but on this occasion, a McDonalds was like air to a drowning man. Gesa and Lara had the Krem in their sites, and while Kris and I wanted a few photos, Ronald McDonald’s house of hospitality was very much on our agenda. We told them we’d see them back at the train, and thanks to their persuasive skills we did. It turns out that the train had loaded and was ready to depart, when we were nowhere to be seen. We rounded the corner and saw the doors all closed and could hear Gesa gulderin’ (‘shoutin’ for the non Ulster-Scots readers) out the door ‘schnel’. With thick shake and coke flying everywhere, we usain bolted down the platform and lept onto our dreamboat to paradise.

Finally we got to Moscow. This journey, which had reminded me of CS Lewis’ epic book ‘The Great Divorce’, terminated at 4am in Kazansky train station. We lugged our stuff out of the carriage and got a taxi – which, incidentally, was our first intro to Moscow prices ($30 for 4kms) – to Godzilla’s hostel.

So as was definitely not in our plans, we headed back to Irkutsk, one bike down and heavily laden with food. I jumped in Tatiana’s car and K&G tailed us to the town centre. Our superhero didn’t have a permit to allow him to drive down to the railway station, so he took me to the top of a hill from where I could almost completely freewheel the bike to the front door of the terminal. After unloading the bike, I offered him about $30, which he at first wouldn’t take. He claimed that he knew what it was like to be stuck on the road and just as he has received help, he likes to help others. In the end I forced it into his pocket and he was quietly grateful. This was yet another instance which highlighted the supreme generosity of the Russian people.

On getting the bike down to the railway station, I bartered with some fellas to see if I could store the bike in their container. 400 rubles for the night was steep, but not knowing the area, it gave me peace of mind. I would go back down in the morning and remove it before trying to stick it on the trans-sib to Moscow. All that remained to be done that evening was for us all to go back to Tatiana’s again, cook up a good meal, and laugh about the fact that we seemed destined to not get out of Irkutsk. If this continued we’d have to start working out rental splits. I did wonder about this road out of Irkutsk, as it wasn’t long into the same journey that Pauli’s bike stopped going. After messing about with recovery trucks and tampering with the bike, they discovered that his battery had no longer any water in it, and it merely required a top up before he would be off again to Finland. Other than the roads through Europe, it seemed ironic given that this was the most plain sailing part of the ride thus far.

The following morning I got up early and headed down to the railway station to rescue the bike. As would be common practice in Moscow, I had to awaken some boys sleeping in some cave of a container to get it out. I pulled it over to where I saw another guy up on the platform putting his in a container. The closer I got, the more I thought that I recognised him. Hardly possible I was thinking, owing to the fact that I’m not terribly well connected in these parts. Anyway, I needed to know the protocol for getting the bike on the train and how much it would cost. He looked up, saw me, and we realised we’d both met over a month ago in Barnaul. He turned out to be Michael, the doctor who took Sami to the hospital to get his hand x-rayed and was a very decent lad. Apparently he’d been riding some off-road around Baikal when the bike went down and since wasn’t working, so he was freighting it to Novosibirsk. Anyway, I got some pointers from him, tried a couple of offices, and ended up speaking with a legend of a guy, Yvgeney in office 18 of a freight company at the station (make note of this if you’re passing through this area). His prices were a quarter of the price of everyone else’s, and as he spoke a few words of English, it made life a bit easier for me. From there I waited around for the passenger ticket offices to open so I could find out how much it would cost for the 3 of us to get a coupe to Moscow together. Female Russian officials are a little scary. They generally bark in contempt at you, and I thought if this is her at 10am, I certainly wouldn’t want to be seeking information at 5pm! Anyway, after some plaintive questioning, I got the relevant info, parked the bike up against a wall where I was assured it would be safe until the next day, and was then picked up and brought home.

The next day, Kris and I were to ride his bike down to the station, meet our friend Yvgeney, and build our crates to freight the bikes. It turns out that they had no crates, so the cost came down from 135 euros to 95 to freight them all the way to Moscow. With our 250 euro tickets pp on 2nd class, this wouldn’t be a whole lot different to riding them, when you take into account tyre wear and fuel expenses etc.

We spent pretty much the whole day in our new friend’s office and it was actually very good craic. Tatiana came down after work with Gesa and ironed out anything we couldn’t translate. By this time, Yvgeney had gone out and bought a bottle of Capatainski rum and was shouting us all to a few celebratory shots. He hadn’t made very much of us that I could understand, so, ever the cynic and former car salesman, I thought that there must be some kind of sting in the tail here.

We wondered how we’d weigh the bikes, as the scales were about 2 feet off the ground and were clearly not long enough to get the bikes onto. Yvgeney kept harping on about having all the benzine emptied out of them, which was easy on Kris’ bike owing to the simply removal of a fuel hose, but with mine it was more difficult. We’d just filled them for the start of the run to Moscow, so we weren’t keen on throwing good fuel away. I think he understood and told us to pretend they were empty. With some pushing and pulling,we got them onto the scales diagonally and found that mine was 233kg and Kris’ 270. Prices were worked out accordingly and then we left the bikes in the corner of the loading bay, where apparently they’d be put on at 1am that evening.

Later that day, we spent some time on the phone and internet trying to source me a clutch in Russia. We went to various aftermarket parts supplier stores, the BMW car dealership, and other possibilities, but there appeared to be no clutch for an F800GS in all of Russia. Motorrad dealers in Moscow were all quoting 28 days before they could have one in. I then asked Alan at Hursts to stick one in the post to me and Simon Race, who was a great help, forwarded me the address of Tom Reiter who works in Moscow and would be the willing recipient of it. Tony who rode with Walter Colebatch in Sibirsky Extreme last year advised us to grease the part up some and put in a beaten up old box so that it looked second hand and thus not get stuck at the Russian customs. All things being well, it will be there in Moscow when the bike arrives, the day after I do. Administering peace in Israel/Palestine would’ve been a more straight forward task than all of this, but eventually we got it sorted, so we went off to celebrate in the Bierhaus in central Irkutsk. After the privations of Mongolia, it was so good to be nursing a pint of the black stuff!

The following morning it was time to pack up and vacate Tatiana’s yet again. After several elevator rides down, we shoe-horned all our gear into her car and onward to the train station. Having everything on the motorbike and the ease of packing it in the morning and riding off was something I took for granted. Lugging baggage around and using public transport was such a pain in comparison.

Gesa is the lead singer of a band called Munavoi and when I saw her in this picture in the lift I thought it’d be a good band shot…if she were with her band.

Running through the pouring rain to our train, we found our carriage, Tatiana tried to get us in the one cabin/coupe together, but couldn’t, so we bade our farewells to the angel of Irkutsk, made our bunks, and began the interminably long train ride on the trans-siberian railway.

3.5 hours after we pulled in with Pietro limping, Tatiana did arrive. Before long she was on the other side of the road trying to flag down a trucker. As you can imagine, it wasn’t long before a few vans, cars, and trucks arrived – the power of the feminine huh?

None of the first batch worked, as we’d no way of lifting the bike up into some of the Kamaz trucks or vans that were stopping.

Eventually she saw one with a crane, and the boyo pulled in. A quick exchange in Russian between him and Tatiana saw him leaping out of the cab and instantly transform into a superhero, minus the cape and red undies. Well, he might have had red undies, but I wasn’t so concerned that he need be in uniform for this occasion. He started working his mojo on the crane while Kris and I started trying to figure out a way to get it lashed up for a hoist.

anyway, more to come later…got to run out the door here.