19th July

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 to take a day out of the saddles. We once had some contact details for the Altai off-road club which Tiit (the Estonian who’d buggered off earlier in the story) had connected with prior to our departure. Now that he’d gone though, we were all a bit clueless. I knew that I could count on Jon Fox (everywherevirtually) to turn them up for us. I texted him and a few mins later he’d searched for the club and turned up Sasha’s contact details. I called Sasha and while I was doing so, a Russian chap pulls up and tells us to follow him to the notorious biker bar. It was all coming together. We would arrive there, eat and drink some, and await the arrival of Sasha. Not too long after, Victor arrived. Victor is a biking legend in these parts and what he doesn’t know about bikes isn’t worth knowing.

Anyway, we all ate, had a bit of craic and then decided on a plan of action. Everyone needed different things – I needed a workshop, Gesa an internet cafe, Tuomas a pedicure and scrub down, and Sami an x-ray machine for a hand that was still regretting the horse. Our common denominator was that we all needed an inexpensive hotel. We followed Sasha out the road and ended up in some place which appeared to be a ski resort in winter. It wasn’t bad, but wasn’t worth writing home about either. After unpacking and falling on our beds until our odours forced our beds to eject us, we each went and did our thing. Victor brought Pauli, Tuomas and me to his workshop…if that’s not to grandiose a title for it. I think his workshop hosted the Sibirsky extreme boys when they were passing through here. Effectively it’s a big concrete room in the middle of multi-story car park. There was almost no lighting and we all had to wear our head torches for the work. Victor seemed to provide the space for people to work on their own bikes, and if anyone needed his help, he was there. Owing to the 80:20 air composition of carbon monoxide to oxygen, I wondered if I needed to leave a ‘by accident suicide note’ as the young bucko’s around the place insisted on keeping their scooters at the red line. Sami turned up later with his x-ray which he and the doctor (a fellow rider) asked me to take a look at. Honestly, the doctor didn’t really seem to know what to read on it, but we were glad to see that nothing appeared broken. Geza, Kristian, Pavel and Aga found their way to an internet cafe and we all met up that night back at the hotel at 1:30am. I can honestly say that it’s the first time I’ve been standing there, covered in oil and dirt, working on my bike at 1am! I thought my bike was weeping oil at the bottom of the sump, so I did some stripping and discovered that it was only chain lube kicking up. Now shod with knobblies, filter changes and a thorough check-over, Pietro was a much happier camper and the two of us rode back to the hotel with a collective smile on our German and n.Irish faces. That was until I found out that the hotel shower was locked and I’d have to now wait until the morning! A couple of final acts were for Sasha to give us a presentation on the Altai Off-Road club, and some ‘must see’ sights and GPS co-ords in Mongolia, as well as t-shirts etc, and finally for me to take the stitches out of Pauli’s now healed foot. The gloves were necessary to prevent oil and brake dust infecting what was now a well healed 1.5 inch gash to the bone.