Time to get everything washed... and fixed...
Now at sokos hotel palace bridge in st.petersburg,some sauna and spa for reward!
3.8.2010 14:59:18
At russian still, some 1000km to Espoo. Tomorrow at st. Petersburgh and then to finland
2.8.2010 22:47:45
We got wake up visit at 07:00 as agreed on the night before, had quick breakfast and packing and off we go again.
After driving some 2 hours we had first stop and during this stop we noticed that Kari had a nail through his rear tyre so our intended short stop to drink became a bit longer due to repairing of this.
Got this one done very nicely and inflated the tyre using compressor Kari had with him so no need to find air from anywhere else.
As we started approaching Nizhny Novgorod air was getting more and more filled with smoke. During this time there were big forest fires all over Russian and one of the worst ones was just where we were going.
This picture below was taken at broad daylight and this is not fog but smoke!
Road was also getting more slippery and I had lots of trouble staying up with my TKC80 tyres.
We started looking for place to stay quite early, but there was not much found on the way to Nizhny Novgorod. Did not want to go far from the main road and thus were looking for a place just by the road.
Eventually we got to Nizhny Novgorod and to the other side of the city so that we can just get on the road on the morning.
Found a hotel where we did required Russian registration, quick dinner with few beers and again a sleeping time. This hotel had even a wireless internet connection, although needed to pay for that so got connected for a short while to check e-mails etc. First time after Astana.
Day was pretty long, partly due to tyre repairs, but we managed still to drive 849 kilometres in a bit more than 15 hours.
Total after this day is 15304 kilometres.
Day started early, sleeping place was not the best possible… Quick packing and some water from the nearby gas station and off we went.
For few kilometres. Then it was time for breakfast.
Once we managed through this we started moving again.
From Troitsk road was excellent, we headed towards Chelyabinsk. There was a shortcut that Kari and Anders came, but according to them it was full of villages which slowed them down. This was the reason why we started following Zumo’s instructions (I had routable Russian map on it).
After driving awhile, we came to the Ural mountains and road became really bad and full of trucks as well. This started slowing us down a lot.
Also I noticed that especially my front tyre was very slippery and forced me to drive even more carefully and also standing up so that front wheel got more weight and thus more grip from the road.
On the way through Ural mountains there was also lots of accidents, burnt down trucks and just otherwise broken ones.
We also hit one bridge that was under construction and was causing big queues which were not really moving at all. For some time we drove on the side of the road, but it was really hot so we pulled over to resting place to get something to drink. From here we got also instructions on how to get by this bridge and queue. Detour that we were offered took us to some unpaved road and down to village where we wondered a bit where to go next… but we managed to find our way on the other side of the bridge and got pass the road work. Good for us!
After this it was again driving between trucks and other cars until we finally got to an better road when approaching Ufa. In here we also needed to make a tough decision on which route to take towards Moscow: M5 or M7. Quick calculation with Zumo revealed that M5 was almost 200 kilometres longer to Finland than M7 so we took that. This was also originally planned route.
From Ufa we did not drive that much longer, found a place to sleep just by the road and took it. This had shower, restaurant and all! Just by accident Team2 had stopped on this very same place to eat and it got very good recommendations from them.
Took couple of beers and then it was sleeping time again:
After sleeping for a while I woke up and found out that our air conditioning had stopped. Window had been somehow closed and temperature in the room was very hot. Got up, opened the window and went downstairs to have some more to drink. This time, only Fanta…
Eventually got back to sleep. Day had been a long one – again: 11½ hours and 624 kilometres.
Total after this day is now 14455 kilometres.
Crossed Russian-Kazakhstan border late last night and got sleeping place from old train just 15km from border
31.7.2010 3:31:30
From Astana we planned to start going forward with a breakfast at the hotel. In this hotel breakfast started as late as 08:00, so we actually got around 09:00 to the road again.
Plan was to drive as close to Russian border as possible.
Once we got out from the city road changed into pretty bad one, next 70 km was all road work and slowed us down quite a bit.
By accident, we managed to choose a partly different road than M36 which guys had been using before, this was pretty new and in good condition.
Driving was good and everything went well, so by evening we were already on the Russian border crossing at Troitsk.
Border crossing was pretty hassle free, only thing they wondered about was some missing papers which we did not get when entering Kazakhstan from Kyrgyzstan border at Bishkek. But they understood the issue and just let us through. At this time it was already getting quite dark and we were wondering where to get a sleeping place. From one border guy we heard about a possible sleeping place some 15 kilometres from the border, before Troitsk city.
This place turned out to be some truck stop where all truckers were sleeping behind closed gates and there was also one old train where others could sleep.
This was my sleeping place:
This train was actually inside this building:
Place was not a fancy one, but it had a toilet and all and for extra cost an shower as well. As we had shower in Astana, no need for that in this place ;)
Managed to get also some shashlik from the nearby cafe so this day was full for us.
899 kilometres in 14 hours, quite a long day.
Total for this trip is now 13831 kilometres.
As we are now pretty much on transit back to home, no extra stops on the way. Just driving to get home.
For this day we had last night agreed to stay in Astana.
I was going to get my motor oil and filter changed, had already 9000 kilometres from the last one back at local BMW dealer in Antalya. While searching for a place using Google I managed to find one Yamaha motorcycle dealer (N51.14683 E71.37254).
In my Garmin Zumo I had no routable map so I took GPS co-ordinates and just started driving towards that. After a while I managed to find this place and from there found one English speaking sales person. With him I agreed that I came back on the same afternoon, service guys were someplace else at the moment.
So, back to the hotel to wait couple of hours and then back.
Service was excellent on this Yamaha dealer. They were trying to figure out how to remove my oil filter without the BMW oil filter tool, but once I realized what they were after took the one I had with me to solve this issue. I had also new oil filter with me.
There was lots of people watching this.
Once done and when it was payment time, they did not charge anything for the work, only for the oil! Excellent!
I even got directions towards a place where to get my bike washed, so this was the next place where I headed. Tried to send text message message to Kari and Anders, but they did not answer so went there directly.
Found this nomad car wash place and again, excellent service.
When I drove there some big guy was just about to leave with his car and asked what I was after and once I said that my bike needed a wash he started shouting after the washing guys and immediately there was one guy taking me in and started washing my bike! This big guy was also a biker and probably the owner or boss of the place.
I even had to take my spare Anakee2 wheels of the bike, they hand washed those too.
After I got back to the hotel, not very hard to see which bike does not fit the picture.
During this service and wash I also managed to drive quite a lot across Astana, this city looks quite nice. Not a city full of tourists, but modern city full of life.
For dinner we went out by the river and found excellent restaurant where we got very good lamb with just some raw onion slices. This restaurant was just by the Kenesary Khan monument.
After this it was again time to get some sleep and prepare our selves for the next day.
At 07:00 we started packing our bikes again, long way to go for this day.
When driving along Lake Balkhash we had very heavy side wind which slowed us down a lot. Road was in pretty good condition except one part: At first we saw one car which had rolled over couple of times, but people looked like they were ok, getting their stuff out from the car. This was pretty soon after turning from Balkhash city. Shortly after this all of us drove into oil that was spilled on the road. It was just pure luck that none of us fell on this, it took some hundred to two hundred meters before the oil was out from tyres! And when adding the heavy side wind to this it was really dangerous situation.
After this we took a break and had something to eat.
On the way to Astana we also saw couple of camel herds and lots of police men chasing cars. We were again taking it easy and had no issues with police.
End of the day we got to the hotel Altyn Adam (N51 10.216 E71 25.020) which was same where Team 2 had already been. Hotel was recommended at Lonely Planet book. It also featured free wireless internet connection.
Finally after getting to the hotel and through shower (first really good one in a week or so…) we managed to get something to eat and fell asleep. For next day we had agreed to keep a tourist and service day, so everybody was going to get some rest.
This days driving was 866 kilometres in 13 hours. Longs day again.
Note, Tselinograd that is seen on the map is city of Astana, it is one of its former names.
Good mileage for this day, but still loads of it ahead. Total is now 12909 after this day.
Circle is starting to build up.
This time day started without any breakfast and quite early.
We had some issues finding hotel stuff on this early hour in morning, but eventually we got them and they came to open the backdoor for us to get bikes out on the road.
Right after we left from Toktogul we started climbing up towards mountains. We had two passes over 3000 meters high on the way.
First pass was just slowly driving upwards through very green areas, magnificent views! Highest point was Ala-Bel Pass ~3170m. Road was in excellent condition so we were also driving on normal cruising speed all the way.
Second one was in Ala-Too Teo-Ashuu Pass was going up very fast, on top of the mountain some three kilometre long tunnel and we were on the opposite side of the mountain. Then it was going down as fast as we got up.
Once we got down from the mountain there was a checkpoint just before city of Kara-Balta. In here they wanted to see the red paper that we paid 5$ on previous day when entering this road.
After Kara-Balta it was time again for some road side lunch.
We were heading towards Bishkek and Korday border crossing since we wanted to void the bad road A358 from Burylbaytal at Lake Balkhash southern corner to Shu on Kazakhstan side that Team 2 came to Kyrgyzstan
.
Korday border crossing was the most fastest border we entered this far. Even with some queuing before we managed to get to the border posts it took only some ½ hour to pass Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan border controls. On Kazakhstan side we did not have to fill any customs forms, only one small paper with name, date, passport number and signature.
Got our tanks full of fuel just after the border and we started driving through very boring roads, nothing to see. After driving M39 towards Almaty some 110 kilometres we turned into smaller road which eventually got us to M36. This smaller road was partly on pretty bad shape, but according to Kari and Anders this was still way much better than the alternative one that they came.
This day was quite long for us, but just before the night and darkness came we managed to find a place to sleep. Nothing fancy, just bed without shower.
We did mange to get our bikes behind locked doors so those were safe again. Had quick dinner and it was again sleeping time to get ready for next day’s trip.
This day was 710 kilometres driving in almost 14 hours.
Total after this day was now 12042 kilometres.
After this we have only two more border crossings (Kazakhstan-Russian and Russian-Finland) so we could really start the transit phase back to Finland!
Morning came again and it was time to leave from Sary-Tash. From the bicyclist we had already learned that we would go into some high mountain passes again, road would be under construction for the first 70 kilometres or so. There were Chinese road workers everywhere building new road over the mountains.
This was now the day that we would pass the restless area of Osh located in Fergana Valley that we had heard so much about.
Very soon after leaving Sary-Tash we started climbing up, passed these two mountains and after the second one road was also turned into older one without any road work.
I was riding a bit faster on these roads and sometimes had to wait for others. This was then the photo shooting opportunity!
Once we got down from the mountains, we started approaching Osh. We were not to enter the city as there were lots of road blocks where they were searching all your luggage, instead we turned into road which was taking us through Uzgen towards northern part of Kyrgyzstan.
In Uzgen we did some money exchange to local currency, Kari and Anders went to this exchange office, I was watching after the bikes.
And as usual, it did not take that long before there was big crowd around the bikes, people taking photographs and asking questions.
In Jalal-Abad we had some issues finding correct route towards Bishkek, we asked from lots of people and probably due to our weird way of pronouncing it there was couple of different directions that they were trying to send us… at the end I was then starting to trust Zumo and planned route and just went back to the road we came. It turned out to be the correct decision and this lead us back to main road.
Anyway, not totally worthless detour, we saw quite a many burn down houses in Jalal-Abad, some we already saw when approaching Osh, but in here there was a lot of these. They were just rebuilding all of these so lots of building materials were just lying on the city roads.
Route that we had taken was excellent, in very good condition and we got the speed up again. Road was following some river and Toktogul Reservoir. At some point we also came across checkpoint where we needed to pay some 5$ for using the road.
BTW This was something that needed to be saved, it was asked later on.
Did quite a long detour around the lake and once we were approaching Toktogul city, police stopped us. I was on the lead and this police guy came and started saying something about speeding. Sure, I had some speed over the limit, but not as much as he said. Anyway, Kari had some issues with his stomach and was totally wasted, did not want to spend too much time on it. Fine was 1000 local which was ~20€ or so, so just paid and we were on our way to find hotel.
Managed to find hotel quite soon after this, not an fancy one, but it had a room for all three of us, shower and a toilet. We even had a living room in our usage.
This hotel is located at N41.87758 E72.94191.
And we did get our bikes also on the back of the hotel, not very easily but got them behind closed gates. Somebody had left their old car blocking the route, there was just enough room for our big bikes to pass it…
Me and Anders had some dinner, local cuisine of meat with some cheese salad. After that it was time to plan rest of the journey on how to proceed through Kazakhstan and then just sleep.
Downstairs there was some local people singing karaoke, but at the reception they asked from us if the music was too loud or not and once we said yes, they started slowly stopping it so we got good night sleep.
Issues that we had been hearing about situation on Kyrgyzstan were largely just rumours, people were living their normal lives, some police control points on the way but quite a many of those were already gone and those that were left were not really interested on us. We were stopped on one place on the way.
Scenery and people were very nice, might be that someday my bike is going again towards Kyrgyzstan!
This days driving was 581 kilometres in 12 hours.
Total after this day is not 11332 kilometres.
This was the day we start approach towards Kyrgyzstan and Sary-Tash. There was so much on the news about situation in there so we were a bit waiting mode to see what was the current situation over there.
Day started with usual breakfast followed by packing of bikes. There were also other guests who were on tour with jeeps, they were not daring to enter Kyrgyzstan at all!
I was not putting on any special clothes, morning looked like an warm one so just plain outfit with warm long inner clothes. No Gore-Text inside.
After that we went to the bazaar to find fuel since fuel station did not have any and we had heard that from bazaar we could still get this. And we did after few trials and questions from the people.
Got some fuel from bottles, no idea of the quality but at least bikes were running with it!
Again, so really nice views and one pass 4655 meters high on the way.
Continued further to find views like this:
Then we got to the Tajikistan border, this was something like three separate crappy buildings and lots of people. In first of these they again took some money out from us for whatever reason, second one they took same information again, but offered some tea, melon and candy when they were working on it, very nice. Last booth was the passport stamping place and off we went.
There was already new border house being built, but will take some time before that was going to be in use.
Then expecting to see Kyrgyzstan border control, but nothing. That was really far away and we ran into some obstacles as well.
On this I was walking through first to see what was in there, this was one lesson learned from previous exercises like this. Good that my boots are holding water out also when walking on it…
No issues with this, I went first, then Kari and last Anders.
Finally got to the Kyrgyzstan border which was not much. Probably some years ago there had been more, but now it was really nothing in it.
This was very quiet place, one guard opened port for us and started shouting something to the house where we were invited. So we took our passports and there was one man looking at them really carefully, no issues found except that he did not know what day was it and he needed this for his stamp! We were also wondering the same issue, but lucky for us we had one mobile phone with us…
Got quickly out from it and had to even open the port on our own, on Kyrgyzstan side there was nobody to do that… obviously they were not expecting many people as road was gone for the cars ahead of us.
Half of the road was gone, cars had been driving through just while ago, we had no issues with it.
Also on the way there were holes on the road were man could be standing so we needed to take extra carefully the last kilometres before Sary-Tash.
At Sary-Tash we found something called “Sary-Tash Guest House”, an homestay kind of place, just by the gas station.
This was a local cafe/bar/shop were we had one beer and I also managed to get rid of all Tajikistan Somon’s.
Got some dinner in our sleeping place and lights were out pretty soon after that! Dinner was some potato with onion and meat.
I was sharing a room with one bicyclist, Kari and Anders had a room on their own.
Sary-Tash was still quite high, 3181 metres where we were now located.
Today was quite easy riding, only 236 kilometres in 8 hours.
Total after this way was now 10751 kilometres.
Morning started a bit later than usual as we had agreed to have some service for the bikes. Got some breakfast first with couple other tourists in Pamir Lodge.
After this I headed to town to find a place where to get my tyres changed, plan was to switch from Anakee2 to TKC80 which I had been carrying all the way from Finland with me.
Found a place where they did exactly this and agreed price to be 30 somon which was ~6 euros.
I took wheels out an handed them over to guys through this small window:
Then headed back to Pamir Lodge where Kari and Anders were also working on their bikes.
Kari was checking valves and air filter condition, Anders was just doing general check. On Kari’s bike we had small issue on checking valves as his engine guard bars needed to be removed before the valve cover could be taken off and it was quite a job. But after getting those out and measuring valve clearances, no need to adjust them.
I was just checking the air filter, my valves where just checked so no need to check them now.
We had pretty much all the tools with us to do this kind of maintenance, some tools Kari needed to loan from me since I was really prepared on this because my first 10 000 km alone.
During the evening before we learned that there was a broken bridge on the route to Murghab via Ishkoshim and this was the route we had originally planned to ride. This broken bridge was so bad that there was no hope that we could cross it, even guys with bicycles had issues with it and they can carry their stuff over...
So, time to change plans again and choose direct upper route to Murghab.
We got moving towards Murghab around 13:00. One detour on the way, we chose wrong way out from the city, but when hitting first control point guy was pointing us to the correct way.
Then when really getting out from the city, we hit also one control point where they charged some 40 somons to get passed by. This was probably just money into their own pockets, no real reason given why this money should have been paid… but we were friendly and just gave this to be able to continue.
Very soon after this we came across Team 1 members, Sakke and Esa.
Had a chat for an ½ hour, we were a bit wondering where rest of the group was, Esa and Harri so we decided to continue and see when we ran into them.
It took an hour drive before they came:
Harri had an accident with an dog, but was still driving after that. Bike had some injuries and so had Harri, an broken collarbone. Nothing too bad, but enough to start thinking on how to continue the trip.
After a while we started to continue forward and Harri and Esa headed to Khorog to find doctor.
On the way we needed to put some extra clothes on since we were climbing higher and higher.
We drove over 150 kilometres on higher than 3800 metres, highest point was almost 4300 meter. On this height all of us started feeling this, I also fell here since I just did not have any power left on my feet to hold the bike on one stop…
Kari lost his rear fender here as well, it was stuck in rear wheel, but once we got the bike on centerstand it got loose and off it went. This was the same part I lost already while ago.
Pretty nice views all the way.
When approaching Murghab we saw one more control point. After standing few minutes by the gate, there was a very much drunken guy coming out from his box and telling us something about registration at Murghab OVIR station. But this was not something that we should have even be done since agreement between EU and Tajikistan. Got through the gate and started finding place to sleep. We managed to find a place called Ibrahim where we just slept on the floor. Price was some 10$ and included dinner and breakfast. Got also our bikes to safe place behind closed doors so everything was ready for us to sleep after dinner.
Today's driving was 332 km and this took some 7 hours with the meetings with Team 1 and Team 2.
Total after this day is now 10515 kilometres.
After this day is now finally time to start turning towards Finland!
After sleeping outside day started again quite early up in the mountain. Daylight revealed the river where we washed up last night and we started packing our stuff again:
During the night it had rained quite a lot so roads were a bit wet, but views were just great!
Very soon we started going up again, highest point was 3252,8 metres.
After this point we were on the way down towards Khorog. That was the destination for today.
On the way we had some really nice unpaved roads:
This was probably the best rewards for the trip! And it still just continue!
When coming down from the mountain we had one incident with these local border control points, this was before coming down to Kalaikhum.
These guys were at first very friendly, but after Kari came a bit later than us to this point there also walked this other guy with two starts on his shoulders everything changed. This guy ordered all of our stuff to be searched and it really looked like they were trying to find something, on my gears this guy was looking and looking and when other guys opened my bags and found nothing this guy was shaking his head and told to move forward. Nothing found.
When reaching Kari he had his camera and phone a bit too wide open on the bike and when packing our stuff Kari soon realized that his camera was gone! These guys at the control point had taken it in and even when we started asking where is the camera they were a bit lost that they did not understand the issue…
Lucky for me and Anders all our electronics were in the tank bag which they did not really have any interest, so one camera gone at this point.
After few minutes of asking and wondering the issue, we then just decided to start driving forward, not much that one can do with these local authorities if they start acting like this.
Good lesson to keep all the stuff at hand and not leave it wide open.
We also ran into one water crossing:
And this turned out to be a bit harder than it first looked. I went first and managed to get to the other side.
Then came Anders:
Nothing seriously broken, got everything fixed in few minutes.
Kari was taking it after this extra carefully:
Nothing broken on this, just a heavy bike to be driven on these roads… and its good way to wash your bike…
So we continued and on the way to Khorog and no more incidents happened.
We had learned from bicyclists on the way that the place to spend the night would be Pamir Lodge. This was a bit difficult to find, but after asking few times we got one car to escort us there. Excellent service.
Got there and managed to get last two rooms as well, found shower, western toilet (not just hole in the ground!) and got my clothes washed as well.
Place was quite full with bicyclists and other travellers and after us there were still people coming in.
Today we also made decision on how to proceed further. Originally we had planned to drive to Murghab and possibly to Sary-Tash and then back to Khorog to join with Team 1 and rest of the guys, but instead of this we decided to proceed further to Kyrgyzstan and don’t mind about the possible issues in the country. So we would meet others only for a short while and then continue.
Today’s driving was 298 km in 11 hours.
This brings my total kilometres to 10183 km and still going further away from Finland!
At Ayni we started day early. Now we were me, Kari and Anders driving together which was actually very good since the roads started getting worse and worse.
At first we were driving excellent roads, new asphalt on the road and everything looked good. Then we missed one turn that would have taken us on the scenic route across mountain, and this got us to the Anzob tunnel.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
The Anzab Tunnel is a five kilometer long tunnel located 80 km northwest of Tajikistan's capital Dushanbe. It connects the Tajik capital to its second largest city, Khujand. It is also a transit route between Dushanbe and Uzbekistan's capital Tashkent.
The tunnel is part of a planned road which would run from Iran through Herat in western Afghanistan, Mazar-i-Sharif and Sherkhan Bandar in northern Afghanistan to Tajikistan and from there up to China. The route has been named the new Silk Road.
Anzob Tunnel was recently completed with the help of Iran. It is a symbol of brotherhood between the people of Iran and Tajikistan, who share a common history language and culture.
Previously, especially during the cold seasons, a lack of a direct link between northern and southern Tajikistan led to disruptions of commerce.
This tunnel was very interesting, full of holes, one lane closed, other lane open, no lights, water dropping from the sealing, building machines parked without any warning signs and since we did know how long this tunnel was going to be, entered into it with sunglasses on… I could barely see where I was driving even when I had two Xenon lights on… but, eventually we made it through to the other side.
Before and after road was very scenic, excellent experience.
When getting closer to Dushanbe, it started looking more and more like summer house type of buildings by the river, newly built nice looking places.
Dushanbe we managed to get through without any bigger issues, stopped for money exchange since I had no local currency.
Once out on the country side again, we made stop to buy some local fruits and then stopped to get something to eat.
Weather was not that good looking, but no rain so we just continued driving forward and not put any rain gears on.
At this point road was still quite good, but it started getting worse very soon after this.
After driving couple of hours on these bad road we hit first bigger water crossing, I went in first as it did not look that bad, got to the other side but had too little speed so made my first fall from very high river bank. Should have been driving faster, but I was trying to be too careful.
No real damages happened so after a while we continued. This day was going to be very long…
On the way we heard in one police control point in Khumdon that was some issues with the road, something had happened and from what we understood was that we could still get through so we decided to continue.
On this very same spot I also had my first loss on he bike, this odd rear fender what every GS has was loose, it had one part broken so decided to take away so that no further damage for the bike from it.
This was the one that fell off:
After this spot we drove further and came across one couple with bicycles who told us that there was a broken bridge a head, some Chinese truck drivers had broken it with their oversized trucks, but according to them too we should be able to cross it. Keeping our fingers crossed!
Once we got to the bridge, this was what we saw:
There was now way we could cross from here! After looking into this and negotiating with the workers for an hour or so, we started seeing some movement towards making us something that we could use to cross the bridge. If we could not cross it from here, it would have meant two days driving for us to get to the same spot as from here…
So we all started moving this one big steel piece across the hole to get us over:
Would you drive your big heavy Adventure bike over this:
It was already getting dark before we finally made it!
Now we just needed to find a place to stay for a night. From the couple with bicycle we had heard that there was some muddy road ahead so we decided to drive to some higher ground, but as darkness was already there we did not really had good changes of finding the spot for a night. After riding some 20 km we finally found it. Some farmers open place, just by the road and one mud river! Place was some 2200 meters high up on the mountain.
Made some quick food and started sleeping. Once we got to this phase, it started raining.
On this day we made only 373 kilometres in 14 hours!
After this day total kilometres are now 9886.
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