The most challenging things on the BAM road are river crossings, Bridge crossing and railway bridge crossing. Since this is one of the rainiest summers for years the rivers are really swollen making the river crossings very challenging sometimes impossible. Many of the bridges over rivers are either nonexistent or in a very bad state of repair. This leaves only the railway bridges as they are the only well maintained ones. Railway bridge crossing scared the $%^& out of me as I was o convinced a train would come and squish me.

One of the longest and most well known bridges is the Vitim bridge, said by many to be one of the worlds scariest bridges (clearly these people never did a railway bridge crossing) The Vitim is 1870feet  (570m) long and 50feet (15m) above the water. The scary part is that it has no sides so no room for error i.e. one slip and you and the bike go over the edge.

Well it’s easy peasy but wouldn’t want to do it in the rain, fortunately we decided to do the bridge when we arrived at about 7pm instead of wait until morning. A good decision considering it was pi… it down the next day.

The Vitim Bridge

and other bridges crossings