August 26th 2002 Problems of a pannier kind! Two weeks out of Moscow we have reached the foothills of the Urals and a very pleasant city called Ufa. This episode, which started with a train ride, looked to continue with one yesterday as Christ's pannier rack has finally kicked the bucket.
Things have been going quite swimmingly up to this point, quite literally, with a short 500km ride down the Volga (from Nishny Novogorod to Kazan) and some of the filthiest weather to date.
The Moscow satellite town of Noginsk turned out to be a "closed" one so we unwelcome to stay there as foreigners! Happened fortunately some very nice Kazanians staying in the hotel we tried lent us their identities for the night.
Back on the road we were in for a pleasant surprise as the dire state of repair we had expected did not ever really appear, the huge trucks and road trains that pass along our route are not the kindest of vehicles for the surface but an ever present army of navies don't do a bad job at preserving it. Many of the main roads we have chosen are down on the new road building schemes for widening anyway - so we often have a hard shoulder to cruise down.
Vladimir was a convenient 'days ride' from our Noginsk station stop and we enjoyed our time there very much! The place used to be the capital, donkeys years ago, but it has gone to rack and ruin since! We stayed in the swanky Hotel (name to follow) which as well as being one of the towns prize guest houses now also doubles as a strip joint! Very tastelessly they have combined the hotels restaurant with the seedy hang out, this really did not aid our digestion of their Russian vodka, Salmon Caviar or Havana Cigars! Someone must have been watching our debauchery of that night because he had chosen to put a massive great hill on the road out of town, something our vodka-abused bodies had great difficultie coping with!
We were now faced with the problem of the random smattering of motels along our way, it was either a case of doing 15km to the next one or hammering the 100k + distances. We got to Nishny Novogorod 3 days later.
Our Russian has improved enough that we no longer have to impersonate farm yard animals each time we want to eat. Now we know how to order eggs we are safe from the putrid Russian 'Shit-Houses' for a couple of days at least!
We were hoping for a break when we got to Nishny, thinking that there was a boat to Perm from there and thinking it might take a couple of days along the Volga! In typical fashion Christ had just cracked into his first celebratory beer when I found that the boat only went as far as Kazan and that it left in one hour! It was thanks to the help of some Russian rowers that we made the boat at all, there was only one ticket left in a first class cabin but some how they managed to persuade the captain that 4 passengers and 2 bikes would fit no problem! We enjoyed a luxurious night drinking Cognac with the other first class passengers and slept on the floor of a cabin donated by a friendly professor of English we had met! Our rowing friends from Tomsk (possibly on our route - Christ doesn't like the thought of the reputedly 'glow-in-the-dark' drinking water there and I'm not sure about the extra kilometres!) discovered that it was not possible for us to travel any further east by boat so we left them with our pride semi-intact in Kazan.
Christ's tires had worn quite thin by this stage (probably due to his extreme lardiness!) and produced some impressive blow outs so he is now riding moon buggy style with our mountain bike replacement tryes!
Kazan is the Capital of the Tartastan region of Russia where a great volume of Tea is consumed everyday. It has an impressive Kremlin (fortified village) with a brand new Mosque looking pretty swanky in front and a tower built by Ivan the terrible at the back. We met two English chaps also passing through the city and enjoyed a bit of a break from each other's company speaking to them.
The next 500km on the road to Ufa were full of surprises, the landscape was reminisant of our own Berkshire/Oxfordshire countryside with rolling hills through the fields and the odd wood here and there. Unfortunately the similarity went a little too far as the town of Chilny cropped up, a place I can only describe as the mother and father of all Didcots, it makes our own little industrial black spot look like Barbados!
Crossing over a long bridge into town at dusk we saw the yokels fishing with extremely long lines for three headed fish in the heavy metal solution that flowed below. Such a busy town for industry should contain a few truckers motels you would have thought, unfortunately not. At 10 o'clock with all the rooms in the only local hotel full we struck up a deal with the management to stay in their pent-house suite (It had hot water) for a greatly reduced rate, as long as we left by 6 in the morning!
Our international playboy life style continued the following morning as we were interviewed by the world renowned 'Chilny TV', Channel 5 have got nothing on them! We were asked to do a trailer for the Kids slot, which involved us sitting in their canteen drinking coffee and speaking in criminally bad Russian accents! We were chucked out into the rain at 2; it really did do nothing for our make up darling! Their resident handy man had added his thoughts to our pannier racks and was remarkable still alive to tell the sorry tale, I don't know were he got that welding gear from but it belongs in a museum!
We only made it 50kms that day and were very glad of the polices help in finding a very strange little hotel in the middle of a ramshackle town just off the road. It was devoid of running water but the proprietor was very big on the virtues of vodka to cure all ills!
The next town was a lot larger and it was here that I am sure (although Christ may dispute the claim) that we were given help by an ex-KGB spy to find a room! It was 10 o'clock when we arrived there (we had been caught out by unwittingly crossing into a new time zone) and I am sure if it had not been for his connections we would never have found ourselves a room - in the cleaners cupboard!
An irate cleaner ejected us at 8am, but another early start was prevented by some more media attention! Even though it slows our progress we some how find the time to make these career changing interviews! The local TV station found us a really foxy interpreter so all was good!
We were now in Bashkier territory and were fortunate enough to be told of their reputation for honey before it passed us by, the extra energy helped us over the final hills in to the town of Ufa.
The city straddles a peninsular between two large rivers and as a result is very long and thin, so we had to cycle along the length of it to come out the other side. This was to be a particularly unpleasant experience and was to delay us by a few days but we drank in the "Hotel tourist" bar in blissful ignorance that evening.
September 1st 2002 The Urals loomed large on the horizon and we had made plans to leave the city after only a days rest, A very friendly bloke called Rinat, who we met outside the aptly named "Hotel Tourist" put us up for our first night at his grandparents house. His friend Elvira was a really good host for the city and found us a cheap hotel to stay at the following night.
Rinat's uncle and aunt (Raoule and Elena) ended up taking over the hosting role and were extremely kind to us when we found that our bikes had taken quite a beating in the bad weather we had had the previous day. The alfresco car park we had left them in offered no protection and I expect the attentions of the guard there did them little good either, but how ever it happened Christ's pannier rack had fallen to bits and mine was on it's last legs.
Family Bayasitov jumped to the rescue once more and so it was the following day that we found ourselves in the cellar of a Russian locksmith's, Raoule's brother ran the place and had some very useful connections! Somehow they managed to weld a broken aluminium casting back together again, so hats off to them! Our planned train ride to Chelyabinsk was cancelled and we stayed with our amazing hosts for a third night!
That evening sampling the delights of student life once more we drank vodka in the local park, all passers-by, including some of the Cats of the town, became KGB spies - but fortunately we avoided interrogation.
On Tuesday the 27th amazingly grateful for the help we had received we left under escort and black clouds to take on the Ural mountains. The foothills were slow to appear and we made 120kms to the first motel of the range that day, it was built into the side of a hill and had the strange visitors attraction of a caged bear in the car park! Unfortunately the potholes on the road that day had claimed 3 of Christ's spokes but relaxing in a Banya that evening things didn't seem too bad.
Wednesday was a different story, the percentages and weather ganged up against us and made for quite a sorry time, the Russian truck drivers we shared a cabin with that night gave us a liquid cure and Thursday was even worse!
Apart from the Mountains and the cold nights the back drop of the Urals made for a very pleasant ride and I would really recommend it for a walking holiday as most of the forests and rivers look untouched, just watch out for the wild cats and bears!
The best thing that happened to us was meeting a barking mad Swede called Stellan who is travelling solo by bike to Iran! Check out this link. We have spent out first two nights under canvas in Russia under his guidance and now don't feel too bad about the problems that may lie ahead of the two of us!
Just after we crossed over the border into Asia we met another insane individual called Makiko (Marsha) from Japan, She has just biked across from Vladivostock starting a 4 year tour of the globe on her huge 120kg Off road motor bike, best of luck to her! Now we are in Chelyabinsk and have fallen on our feet again, being taken in (at the bank this time) by another kind family whose son is quite a renowned local artist. If we can get our stinking clothes washed again we are going to be on a winner!
September 17th 2002 September 2nd saw our departure from Chelyabinsk, we left with a large jar of jam each and a set of clean clothes! The kind family who put us up gave us a fond farewell and pointed us in the right direction for the road to Kurgan. The weather was fine, most Russian years have what is known as a 'barbiletta' (sp) about this time and we are lucky enough to be catching one now.
The road onwards across the west Siberian plane is very flat and an excellent cycling venue, so happy in the knowledge of certain fast progress we were happy to wait for Stellan outside town after losing him in the traffic. It was about 4 o'clock by the time we had got any Ks done, but with the wind behind us it looked sure to be an easy hundred before stopping for the night.
Stellan had some old tyres on his bike, a fact we became aware of when one of them split right open at a tear! Bollocks. He didn't have any spares and his wheels were a size larger than the tires we were carrying - so it looked like we were stuck for the time being. A couple of kids pulled up on a bike with suitable replacements, the kids were about 9 or so - and I reckon we could have had 'em but we settled for offering them some cash instead, they refused and pedalled off! We settled the matter by sowing up the rip with fishing wire and putting a load of gaffer tape around the tire wall. It was now 6 o'clock. We continued across the open marshland with its few dead trees (a testament to all the acid rain generated by Chelyabinsk industry) until dusk when we found a bit of dry land off the road to make camp.
The problem of worn parts was one that plagued us for the next couple of days and it badly slowed us up. Christ's pannier rack is now almost entirely made of wire and old nails and has been given a life expectancy of the next pothole. Having a third party member really helped spirits though, we were more relaxed and definitely had more fun. The Urals had taken their toll on Christ's knees; these being just as crucial to progress as any mechanical part of our equipment I suppose you could say the next twist of fate was a lucky one!
We had had enough of the shower free mosquito frequented nights by the road and were looking to spend one comfortable night in a hotel to clean up, unfortunately Stellan's visa ran out two weeks ago so when a place to stay turned up we encountered problems. He was not keen to get his passport out when they asked for it at reception, we decided to leave for a field.
Speeding out of the very knackered and mostly drunk town called something strangely close to "Shumacker" the front right wheel of my 'Velocepede' failed catastrophically. Being exclusively designed and manufactured by one small firm in Manchester the outlook was bleak.
It was a cold dark night with far to many Russian rude boys prowling around in their suped-up ladas, we were glad to get back to the main road and stop in the cafe there for some food and Vodka. Amazingly we found quite a good spot to pitch our tents in the dark, we lit a fire and cracked on with the vodka.
As both Stellan and ourselves are under time pressure to get to our destination (before siberia freezes over) our paths diverged the following morning; we returned to the cafe of the previous night to try our luck hitchhiking and Stellan cycled off toward Kazakhstan.
A huge electrical storm and a second split tyre forced Stellan to return to find us and a more permanent solution for his knackered tryes! We were both in luck; some locals lads gave Stallan a lift to a bike shop where he found some replacement tyres, meanwhile we enlisted the help of the local constabulary to pull over a truck and make sure we got a lift!
After a night in Motel just outside Kurgan the emergency plan procedures got under way, discounting the possibility of replacing my wheel with one from a BMX we got on the phone to our friends in Manchester, who were remarkably helpful. Faced with the problem of cutting across 190kms of Kasakstahn without a visa (or taking a long route around) and being delayed by at least a week awaiting our replacement wheel hub we thought we would kill two birds with one stone and take the train as far as Omsk. So once again the accident proved to be a bit of a mixed blessing!
After buying our 'billet's we took a stroll around Kurgan in the rain, the weather really didn't do the place any favours! We took refuge in the Casino for lunch, here we saw our first English spoken news bulletin for quite some time and learnt of Bush's most recent bungles. We felt pleasantly far removed sitting in Russia. Back on the street we were held up twice and almost missed out train, the first problem was trying to buy anything at the super market. They were running this ridiculous system whereby you had to buy a receipt for your goods before they would hand them over to you! It sounds quite straightforward but by the time you have queued up at the till for the third time, to pay for the bottle of water you forgot, it gets quite tedious. Our next stumbling block was a far more pleasant one, Christ stopped to have a piss behind a bus stop and looked down to find that he was watering a large budding Ganja plant!
A policeman met us at the station.
Having heard about our trip the English speaking copper made sure we got our bikes onto the train and gave us his email address in case we got any further problems down the road! I guess he wasn't trained in the Thames Valley!
The train ride to Omsk was very comfortable, everyone gets a bed instead of a seat on these intercity trains, we shared a space with a Kazakhstan businessman, who made sure we were awake to have our picture taken in Petropavlosk. At 5am we arived in Omsk, it was raining and we were homeless, we decided to take the usual course of action and go and sleep in the station. We left our bikes locked up there in the luggage room and hit Omsk later that morning to try and find a residence.