20th August - disaster strikes

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.

Pawel's bike being inspected

Aga and I, leaving the scene for the hospital

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.

the boy in pain

one side of his suit and the side not too injured

camp that night