Oelgij and the eclipse

We are in a little provincial town called Oelgij now. So far we have had good "roads", even about 40km of asphalt. As long as it doesn't rain it might be ok here. We'll see. We've heard about the raods about any opinion somebody could have. From No Problem to Impossible. The whole range.

Unfortunately knowing some Russian doesn't help here. Just hands and feet. Last night we had a friendly Mongolian visitor coming over to our tent. Since he didn't want to go away we gave him some tea and some of our spaghetti. Poor guy, he obviously thought it was terrible food.

Now we just got our first Mongolian money and are ready to ride a little bit towards the West now. Just about 80kms. There we'll wait for the eclipse tomorrow. In the afternoon there will be a total eclipse visible here, so we decided to stay one day longer in the area. We'll just try to get a bit closer to the mountains. Otherwise all good and more news from Ulan Bator. We are planning to be there in around 10 days.

We are in Mongolia!

Siberia I

Two days ago we arrived in Barnaul, so we are back in Russia. Finally! After spending 8hours and the night at the border. We were missing a document, stating that Marcin is allowed to ride "my" motorbike (it is registered in Germany on my name). And it is simply not enough that I am there, saying that he is allowed to do so. After hours of waiting, filling in forms and the same boring procedures as on every border I started complaining because the sun was setting and it is no fun to ride here after dark. So after about 5 hours I asked the sour faced border officer if we could camp at the border. And to my surprise he left his little office and 50 people waiting, met us behind the little office cabin and was quite nice. He showed us a room where we could sleep and another officer gave us a HUGE watermelon.. later we were drinking some vodka with them and spent a few hours talking. In the end we got all the papers we needed and after a night in the customs control zone garage (where they store the "bribes", i.e. watermelons, apricots, eggplants, paprika they take from the passing trucks) we entered this really nice part of Russia.

After Almaty we were expecting boring countryside in Kazakhstan, but it turned out to be a quite enjoyable ride. The landscape changes constantly, hills, not too hot, thunderstorms in the distance, we even found some rocks that would be good for climbing and bouldering. We met a couple of motorcyclists, that were already preparing for a huge biker meeting that will be at Lake Balkash on Sunday. Coming back to Russia was for us almost like being in Europe again. Even the landscape looked very European. Like Europe without people.

In Barnaul we met two German motorcyclists (www.jeansontour.blogspot.com), one of which we had already met in Tajikistan. So we knew they were also heading towards Mongolia and will take the same route in Mongolia, and it was a nice coincidence that they were staying at the same hotel. They showed us a very nice friendly motorbike garage, where we changed our front tires, changed the oil and I got a knew chain kit on my motorbike. It looks like brand new. Apart from the shattered plastic thing above my front wheel.

In Kazakhstan I had another flat tire. The tires are so worn off that they are easily pierced. We fixed it on the side of the road, the sun burning down on us, no shade at all anywhere close... so we start riding again and I am looking down on my newly fixed tire, to check if everthing is ok, and I don't see Marcin stopping right ahead of me in the middle of the road. Something was lose on his bike. When I looked up I got a heart attack and I guess he did too when I crashed into him :) It was the permature sudden death of his rear tire. We fixed the tube, and he wanted to keep riding on the old tire. It worked - for about 4 kms, then he had another puncture and finally put on the new tire that we have been carrying for about 12000kms now.

Almaty and towards Mongolia

We got the visas for Mongolia this morning. It's another hot humid day in Almaty and we will hopefully leave the city tonight. The local Office for Visas and Registration promised to return our passports this evening with a two week extension of our Kazakh visas and we have an appointment in the afternoon with BMW. They should by now have a new suspension strut for Marcin's bike. So things are looking well at the moment. Marcin's motorbike sounds a little strange, so there might be some bigger problems coming up. But not yet... unless we find some reason for this strange sound later at BMW.

Unfortunately Kazakhstan is a huge country and we will have to cross about roughly 2000km of flat, plain, hot and I suppose quite boring land before we reach the Russian border. We have heard, as always, different opinions about the road. We'll see...

Through Kyrgyzstan to Kazakhstan

After fixing Marcin's bike in Dushanbe we rode along the Pamir Highway through Tajikistan to Kyrgyzstan. With the second suspension strut about to break we chose the better road and crossed some nice passes, the highest one taking us 4655m above sea level. Finally we found some quiet spots in the mountains, perfect campsites, not too many people around, just a few marmots lurking behind the rocks. It was a nice change after being too long in Dushanbe. Tajikistan was one of the most beautiful countries we have seen so far, and Kyrgyzstan turned out to be equally impressive. Mountains everywhere, but the country is a fair bit greener than Tajikistan and with yurts, yaks and high plains it starts to look like I am expecting Mongolia to be like... We had a full day feast with a (huge) Kyrgyz family, eating two goats (cut into pieces in front of our eyes) besides many other things and drinking freshly made kymys (fermented horse milk). I didn't expect a goat to taste well, but it does! I took a lot of photos, so tomorrow I'll try to get some of them online. While you see only Daewoo cars in Uzbekistan, you will hardly see any other cars than Mercedes, Audi, VW or BMW in Kyrgyzstan. I was always wondering where all the cars from the 90ies have disappeared to. Here they are. Unfortunately we had to leave Kyrgyzstan because my visa was about to end and an extension wasn't really worthwhile. So now we are in Almaty, Kazakhstan's former capital. Waiting for the next suspension strut to arrive at BMW. Tomorrow we will hopefully get our registration done, extension of our visas to Kazakhstan and get the visa for Mongolia.

Still in Dushanbe

Marcin has his visa for Kyrgyzstan, but we are still waiting for our extension for the visas for Tajikistan (otherwise we would have to be out of the country within two days), our registration (a terrible procedure that every tourist has to go through, which takes between 10 minutes and 3 days, invented just to annoy normal people) and our permit for the Pamir Mountains. And our spare part should be there tomorrow morning. Hooray. Hopefully we can leave this (ugly) city tomorrow.
I put some more photos online.