Full of anticipation, we headed to Tashante (the border) after a grocery and a fuel stop. Truth to tell, it was an awful day at the border. I didn’t get stamped for exit, and the border guard at the final Russian check point insisted that I rode the 13 kms back to the Russian border [...]

Today saw us in the same place, but with an assortment of activities. Sami and I did a run to a town some 30kms away to get some more food and drinks. Sadly I dropped several litres of water and a 6 pack of beer off the back of the bike, which indicated that Tesco [...]

I got packed up first and left dead horse plain behind. We were to find Pawel and Aga using co-ordinates that they had sent through the night before. Eventually, after playing around in some woods, I discovered them. In time, the rest would get here too.

It was a beautiful place, with stretches of rivers and [...]

We rode all day among the lovely twisties of the Altai mountains. Hundreds of kms of stunning scenery. Along the way we met a crew from Australia who had just come out of Mongolia. One of them, named Cain, was on a KTM 990Adv. I had a good chat with him about his route through [...]

I awoke with something on my mind. It wasn’t anything more pressing than whether or not to leave the half used conti trail-attacks behind or whether to carry them with me through Mongolia in case of running the knobblies down on the run to Moscow. If I left them stashed around the hotel somewhere, it [...]

Today was largely spent with the crew relaxing around Barnaul. We tried various coffee shops, ironed out the registration process with the immigration police (which incidentally is not necessary if you’re constantly travelling, provided you keep your fuel receipts etc. The truth is that I was holed up in Irkutsk for a week and then [...]

Now on automatic pilot, we got up, packed up, and got on the road. Our destination was the city of Barnaul. We were looking forward to some civilisation again and the opportunity to scrub ourselves down, give the bikes some TLC (at least those of us who didn’t do anything to them in Almaty), and [...]

After getting up, cooking up porridge or whatever, we packed the bikes and made for the Kazakh/Russian border. A quick stop was required to get some more rehydration juice. After a few mins, 2 or 3 ladies came running out from their little home across the road and presented us with a big bag of [...]