Oki. Long time since the last update.
We stayed at the Baikaler hostel in Irkutsk. Great place with nice staff. Irkutsk – Ulan-Ude took two days instead of one because of crappy roads with heavy road construction. Great views along the road tho and friendly people that came up and wanted to talk with us. Nice indeed but not many people speak english this far east so you have to communicate in other ways. Some pics:
It´s rather common that people wants us to take pics with them in the pic after having “talked” with them for awhile.
Team Orix. They are from Argentina if I don´t remember things wrong and they are traveling around the globe in a big truck. We met and talked with them for awhile. Think this is their blog: http://orix-on-road.blogspot.com/
I THINK it says “Honky Tonk” on that sign…… If so, the second Honky Tonk-place we´ve visited on this trip in Russia. 🙂
Lake Baikal. It was raining when we were at the lake so we opted to carry on instead of stopping and checking the lake out.
After some very rough road constructions that took a great deal of time it got dark and on top of that we got stuck at a train crossing for a very long time. A train had broken down right at the crossing. We were very tired then but could´t get anywhere. We drove on when they got the train started and found a motel that was open. Odd hotel. Biggest rooms ever and two drunk girls behind the counter. Really cheap rooms and they continued to drink and play music as we carried our bags up. Most hotels in Sweden don´t let their staff drink and have private parties during work hours. BIG hotel room!!
We paid around 10 Euro for the room.
And GREAT electrical work in the bath room…… Not…….
The hotel was actually rather nice/not totally crappy but still a bit strange since it was out in the middle of nowhere, HUGE rooms and drunk staff. I guess it´s a russian thing….. 😉
Russian motorcycle with a stripped side car rig. Guess it´s more handy this way so one can use it as a work vehicle.
Siberia is great! Rugged houses but beautiful countryside!
Eva on the side of the road.
We laugh a lot at these russian mini-vans. You see lots of them. Don´t remember what they are called but they look really frightened or scared if you imagine that the head lights are eyes and the grill is a mouth. They look like they are in panic….! I want one!! 😀
Pigs by the side of the road.
The Ulan-Ude city sign. We stayed at this really strange hotel in Ulan-Ude. Managed by some chineese ladies and they also rented out rooms by the hour. We know what that often means, don´t we…? They spoke only chineese and russian and I speak neither so the communication was a bit hard….. They asked something that I didn´t understand and when I answered “Yes” they gave me a bottle of russian champagne and the lady said: “Plesent”. Perhaps the only word in english she knew…? Still don´t know what question I had answered.
Lots of cows that walks out in front of you all of a sudden.
South of Ulan-Ude on the way to the mongolian border.
We had lunch at this really nice place on the way to the border. Soup and dumplings.
Russian Kvas! A truck driver told me that I just HAD to buy a bottle since it was so good. Tastes like shit!
We met this australian lad on his bike. He had been riding through Asia, China, Mongolia and was on his way to Vladivostok if I don´t remember things wrong…
Good fun when girls wants to sit on the bikes! Eva is a GREAT ambassador for female bikers!
Oki. We made it to the mongolian border…… Eva will write about that. It was a odd experience and took forever! 🙂 We met some german bikers before the border that we camped with after crossing the border. Great folks and one of them was on a diesel mc!
This guy in Germany rebuilds Royal Enfield-bikes and installs a small diesel engine. Coolest bike ever! I want one!
http://www.team-vahrenkamp.de
Our german friends! Great evening camping after crossing the border.
We stayed for lunch at this road side “restaurant” the next day on our way to Ulaanbaatar. People often ask you to take pics of them. That is indeed nice.
It´s actually hard to realize that we are in Mongolia! We almost gave up many times when it was so hard to get the russian visas but now we´re here!
You don´t find these things along the road where I and Eva come from! 🙂
We made it to Ulaanbaatar and the road into the city was……interesting….. Eva will write about that too. Arrived late and it was raining hard the next morning. So Eva bought a umbrella. Later that evening I got sick as a dog. Don´t know if it was because of something we ate that day or something else but I spent most of the night on the toilet. And when I was done it was Eva´s turn. We´ve spent the day in bed rather worn out with muscle ache, fever and very tired. Hope tomorrow will be a better day! We will meet our romanian friend Adrian tomorrow or on monday. He´s here now too! That will be great! We´ll also fit the off road tires to the bikes and go visit the huge Genghis Khan-statue east of UB. And after that the real adventure begins. Going west through Mongolia…. THAT will be interesting. Hope we manage to avoid to break any legs and arms. More later……
//Jan
Birka Adventure Riders 