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

The Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) runs north and parallel to the Siberian railway and the road running alongside it just referred to as the BAM road is one of the hardest adventure motorcycling roads in the world and it’s estimated that only fewer than 50 motorcyclists have completed it. Although the BMA is in Siberian in the east part of Russia the road is split into the west and east half the wet running go Tynda and the east from there to the coast. We travelled along the western part of the BAM and it took us 9 days of riding, from Irkutsk to Tynda approximately 2300km.

As far as adventure motorcycling routes the road of bones is more famous due primarily to Ewan McGregor riding it in the long way round. The BAM however was the road they did not ride deciding instead to take the railway (hmmm maybe they made the right decision …. NAH wimps)

So after being in Russia for a couple of days we hit the BAM road, described as the adventure motorcyclist’s ultimate test of man and machine. “Hmmm bit disappointing this BAM road” we all commented after the first 100ks since most of this is on very good dirt roads or the odd bit of tarmac. The scenery and butterflies were amazing, the weather was good (SHOCK we actually got to see the sun) and we were having a ball. BUT obviously we spoke to soon because things were about to change. The BAM is simply one of the worst dirt roads in the world. There is nothing more that can be said it is just bad very very bad. It is not that it is technically difficult off road riding just relentless miles and miles of cut up dirt, sand, potholes, ruts, rocks, puddles (well I can only call them puddles but they are the biggest puddles known to man, deep, rocky, muddy and sometimes tens of metres long)

The real difficulties on the BAM are the river and bridge crossings. Since we chose to come during one of the worst wettest summers experienced in this region the roads are at their worst and some rivers just impassable. This meant we needed to use the railway bridges to cross them. Many of the road bridges were in a rather bad state of repair, but passable and the second largest one in the Kaunda just nonexistent having burned down a few months earlier. This would not have been a problem if a bridge guard had not been posted to ensure no vehicles used the railway bridge. This man was not going to budge and there was no way to cross the bridge. This meant a 50km return trip to the town on Kaunda where we had to board a train, I will explain this saga later.

Getting back to the bad BAM story, one of the best things about the trip is the group that I am riding with. This is team work at its best not only while getting over broken bridges and through rivers but camping and keeping the spirits up. Every time a rider got stuck two or three other riders would be off their bikes and rushing to help before one could say mayday, often wading into knee deep freezing water. I would have to comment that most of the time that was Gareth and Craig, but no one in the team spent the BAM watching from the sidelines everyone chipped in and did their bit. I know companies send their employees on team building days and now I just want to laugh every time I think of one of those ridiculous events. Until you are lying upside down in a pile of dirt half way up a steep incline underneath a bike you have no idea what team work really means. It took three of the guys to get my bike up the bank after I fell and the 4 to get push and pull Phil’s bike (a lot heavier than my baby) up the incline while I road it. If corporate companies sent their employees to the BAM they would soon weed out the slackers 🙂

I AM LOVING THIS. DAMN this is off road tastic (basically because using the word road is stretching the truth a bit) every day I have just really really enjoyed the riding. Other than the knarly river and bridge crossing the road is not that difficult the challenge is primarily in the conditions. The relentless rain and the wild camping in one of the most mozzie infected areas in the world. These little buggers drink mozzie spray for breakfast. The BAM is long and you get really tired and worn down and it just takes a LOT of stamina to do this road but if you like this kind of things its great and I highly recommend taking on the BAM, it’s a worthwhile adversary and I am so glad I took up the challenge.

Even though I am sick to death of rain and being wet and camping in a wet tent and pulling on wet boots and clothes in the morning I would not change this trip for the world.

No words could really accurately explain what we have been though. Just how much I enjoyed the riding and the challenge and yet just how difficult the BAM is. This is by far the hardest, most challenging, most exiting, most fun thing I have ever done and I do believe the only way to do it is to have the right mental attitude because you need to dig DEEEEEP you will learn more about yourself doing the BAM than just about any other motorcycle adventure I can think of.

Everyone who knows me well will know that I have a real complex about only one part of my body and that is my big butt. However my posterior has taken a seriously beating on this trip and I do feel very sorry for it.

Anyone who rides bikes will know just how hard it can be on ones gluteus maximums especially when spending up to 10 hours a day in the saddle. I am seriously happy that I bought my Corben saddle as it is damn comfortable and I only gets monkey butt after the a few hours unlike the original DRZ saddle on which I could not ride for more than 2 hours.

Feeling bruised and saddle soar my posterior then had to endure the copious number of mozzie bites it received especially while in Russia, remember I’m peeing in the same place as the bears so no respite from hungry mozzies and they are not fussy about what part of one’s anatomy they are feasting on. Thank goodness I picked up some cream to use on insect bites as it came in handy one day when I sat on a thorn bush while peeing in the woods. I kid you not, I genuinely sat on a thorn bush during our arrest by the Mongolian border patrol. Thereafter I took extra special care when squatting.

Since half our journey has been in rain one of our biggest problems is trying got keep our gear dry. My riding pants are always wet or damp even when I wear my rain gear as that makes me sweat anyway.  I have a removable kind of quilted lining in my riding pants so took that out but this has led to what I can only describe as some kind of nappy rash. Now try and imagine describing this to a pharmacist who speaks no English…well I didn’t I just used that insect bite cream and it seemed to work a treat clearing my rash up in no time, I may just tell the manufacturers 🙂 Needless to say no matter how hot or cold it is the lining stays in my riding pants.

As if this was not all enough the final straw in my poor butt saga came about when we stopped for petrol at a Russian gas station. I walked around the back to take a pee and was promptly bitten by a rather large ferocious dog. Now fortunately his bark was worse than his bite and more fortunately he was on a long chain. One minute I’m scoping out a pee patch and then next hear a very angry bark and feel a decidedly sharp pinch on my rear end. I turn see the dog, I spot more teeth coming my way and promptly high tail it out of there but just to the end of his chain and on realising that he was now stuck told him he was a BAD DOG and nonchalantly continued to find that bit of inviting grass I was searching for in the first place. So there I was in on a nice patch of grass staring my attacker down and wondering just how strong that chain was.

The one thing my poor butt can be grateful for is the fact that it was not bitten by a horse fly. I was washing my hands in a stream one day and did not notice a horse fly bite my arm until it was too late. Damn it hurt like …, an hour later the bite on my arm had swollen to the size of half a peach and by the next morning was like two halves next to each other and really hot. Cleary my body did not like the idea of a horse fly bite and was having a reaction a few antihistamines, pain killers and a day later and all was well again but boy do I watch out for those things now. We bought extra strength insect spray and just dosed ourselves in the stuff constantly and it sort of helped. I thought the rain would keep all those little buggers away but no it makes no difference.

Butterflies: The first thing that struck me after entering east Siberia was the number of butterflies one sees. I have never seen so many in one place, and as you ride down the road you just see hundreds of them as they cluster together on the side of the road, it’s quite beautiful to see.

Siberia scenery: The other thing that struck me was just how stunning Siberia is I had no preconceived ideas about this area of the world and have been speechless on more than one occasion. Siberia must be one of the most beautiful places in the world.

I’m an alien an illegal alien I’m an Englishwoman in Russia. This is another story for another day probably after I have left Russia, unless I am in jail.

Of course being so close to the Russian border our campsite is infested with Russian Mozzies, but this time we came prepared wiht face nets and extra strong mozzie spreay.

So not being impressed with someone breaking my bike we all break camp and get ready to leave just as two Mongolian border guards arrive and demand our passports. They are clearly not happy keep our passports and demand we follow them. Not speaking Mongolian we try ascertain what the problem is waste a lot of time but realise we must follow them, thinking they want us to leave ASAP and get to the road where they will return our passports. We get to the main road and get told to follow them in the opposite direction to the Russian border where we want to go. We (I keep on saying we but what I mean is Jeff ) try in vain to get our passports back and go to Russia but after cocking his AK47 (hmm is that the right term? do you cock and AK47, well basically he put a round in the chamber and tried to look mean) and looking like he means business we sigh and follow the guy all the way to the border post in the middle of nowhere. They basically make us sit outside next to the 4×4 and wait…and wait…and wait, not really understanding what the issue is but having no option we wait.

Jeff finally ascertains that the problem is we camped in the wrong place according to them it was a border no go zone…hmm strange considering according to the GPS coordinates we are 50 km from the border and 500m from the maid road. However the border guard who has made a mistake won’t now admit it and has called his senior officer who needs to come in from the barracks so we wait…and wait… and wait. The big boss arrives and the situation is still not cleared up due to no one speaking Mongolian but we are told to follow the big boss back to the barracks where he will speak to the even bigger boss and get an interpreter.

Well we head to the barracks in the nearest town still in the opposite direction of the Russian border. We FINALLY get to speak to the big commanding officer through an interpreter and explain that we did nothing wrong, there are no signs indicating this was a red zone near the border (50km from the border unlikely but we had clearly been stitched up) needless to say the big chief had better things to do than seal with us and told us not to camp there again and basically pi.. off, so we did 3.5 hours wasted.

Knowing what Russian borders are like we were not looking forward to the border crossing especially after a 3.5 hour delay. WELL we could not have been more wrong. The Mongolians let us jump to the front of the queue and we got though in an hour, we still had to fill in a number of stupid forms but hey we’re not complaining when it takes an hour. Then the Russian side of the boarder OK so we steel ourselves ready for the red tape onslaught. We get though the passport control and get sent to customs. We walk into the customs office with bated breath … here it comes … two ladies with big smiles greet us and ask us to fill in the forms and help us fill them in… erm are we in Russia? are these ladies on happy drugs? Are they imposters and not Russian perhaps? WOW we were gobsmacked these ladies were so nice and when they said goodbye and good luck we nearly passed out. LESS than an hour on the Russian border this is surely an all time record. So we get Back in the USSR (well ok not quite the USSR but you know what I mean)

We finally arrived in Ulan-Ude which will be our last hotel stop for at least 9 days, from here we tackle the BAM road!!!

Finally we leave for Russia for the 3^rd time. This time from Mongolia we will take the BAM (Baikal-Amur-Mainline) road and Road of Bones to Magadan. Coms will probably be less frequent but I’ll try updating the blog when I can and since my SPOT is working I can be tracked on

http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0yjAYZN28Cndzttvn3CxG10h3mWdiS7qC

Midday Tuesday and we say goodbye to the Oasis guesthouse in Ulaanbaatar, this is a great place to stay and full of interesting people mostly bikers travelling across Mongolia, so a lot of stories shared over a coke or beer. We did one small trip to the nature reserve outside UB two days before we left because we were missing our bikes and felt the need to ride 🙂 but not before doing a ritual for good luck

We head off to the Russian border (uuuggghhh another border crossing) and camp about 50 or so km shy of the border ready for an early start in the morning. We had our final and very nice Mongolian dinner in a small town before settling in at camp. I mention this because Mongolian food is dire. In Ulaanbaatar you can eat well and find a number of good restaurants serving every kind of food. We had the best sushi ever and great German food at the Oasis. We even had a Mongolian BBQ. There is nothing Mongolian and Mongolian BBQs they are made up but still scrummy. Mongolian food consists mostly of goat (if I never eat goad again it will be too soon, it is the WORST meat ever and leaves a bit of an after taste) with noodles. The food is very fatty or oily and I believe the fat is yak so most things have yak fat taste or smell. It is edible and filling and we ate it but if there is a choice have something else. HOWEBER saying that I’d still rather eat Mongolian than McDonalds so it can’t be all that bad 🙂

NEVER have the traditional “tea” it is not tea but sour yak or mare’s milk and literally made me gag. They also make an alcoholic drink call airag out of it by fermenting the mare’s milk, fortunately we never came across it.

So as I was saying the final meal in a small town restaurant was chicken and rice and really good noting like we’ve had in the other small roadside cafes throughout Mongolia.

I of course had to drop my bike in the parking lot, and this moved the hand guard jamming the gear leaver. So the next morning I planned to loosen the guard and sort the problem out, after figuring out exactly what that was. However Phil (one of the other riders) was convinced the guard was bent and even though I was not. My plan was to take it off turn it over and compare it to the other guard to see if it was or where it was bent. After Phil offered to help me and I said never mind Jeff (the expedition mechanic) and I are going to look at it together he still basically took over my repair job telling me what to do and how to do it then took my hand guard and walked away with it, leaving me rather confused, and not giving me a chance to compare the two guards. Then he came back with it said something about it still being bent and walked off and promptly broke it in half. Hmmmm no I was not impressed in fact I was incredibly angry. Now don’t get me wrong I genuinely appreciate the help and the fact that his intentions were good, but it’s not what people do it’s the way they do it. I really really like working on my bike and also enjoy sharing that work with people especially those who know more than me because I am still learning and know I have a lot to learn. All I can say is that when a rider is working on their bike feel free to offer your help but don’t basically take over, tell them what to do and then BREAK their bike uuuggghhhh (sorry Rant over but it had to be said, bikers etiquette people bikers etiquette!!!)

We are making the most of our time here in UB while we wait for one of the guys to get his Russian Visa sorted (what a nightmare, if we didn’t know better we’d assume the Russians did not want tourists, the process is a nightmare and completely illogical)

We did a day trip to the big Genghis Kahn statue about 1hr out of the city. It’s huge and really worth seeing. We then went to a monetary in one of the national parks. We’ve been getting fat and lazy while we wait but are having a good rest.

Had to get a few things on my bike done so spent a day working on him much to the amusement of the peanut gallery who all watched me, took photos, passed comments and generally made a spectacle out of it. It did turn into a good laugh and way to kill some time. My bike may never recover 🙂

  Since I am no speed freak and also hate bad traffic since it freaks me out a little I really did love the “off-road” in Mongolia and was a little disappointed on the way to Ulaanbaatar when we finally hit the tarmac. The best thing about the final stretch to UB was the sand dunes. I got to ride the little dizzy on desert sand whoohoo, just a few meters up a dune but it was good and the dunes are beautiful.

Reaching UB was another story all together I thought Moscow traffic was bad but UB traffic is like nothing since at least in Moscow people are conscious of bikes and try avoid them in UB there are no rules and the roads are one big pothole with a few bits of road between. I seriously thought I was going to die. We got the guest house just on the other side of UB (The Oasis) and it’s great and had 3 rest days before the next big trip.

There are 3 ways to go into UB town from the guest house, taxi, private taxi or bus. You simply stands on the side of the road and put your hand out and if a taxi (and there are very few) comes past great. However generally ordinary people will just stop for you and offer you a life and charge a little less than the taxis. I needed to get to the Russian embassy to sort my visa out (could only get a 10 day transit visa but that will be another story) and on my way back took a bus. Hmmm well actually I took a moving sauna, it was raining so everyone was wrapped up and this particular bus was jam packed and it was HOT, so free sauna (I believe they’re healthy) I thought the London underground was hot and crowded. The traffic is so bad that bus crawls along it was quite an experience.

The other surreal experience I had in UB was a massage. YIKES if I was into some hard core S&M I’d have enjoyed it because boy was it rough. I walked in with a screaming headache from my neck problems and at least I walked out headache free but I think that is because it got scared and ran away. Not only was this massage rather thought but it was a full body massage as in front and back. I have never had a front massage and had to bite my lip to stop laughing it was so funny. Then she pulled my hair, I kid you not my hair had a massage as well. Ah well all in all I survived and afterwards felt really great.

So what can I say about Mongolia. I think the pictures will say a whole lot more. This place is so vast and beautiful the landscape changes a lot more than it did in Kazakhstan. I just love it, it’s so beautiful and the people are fantastic so friendly. The traditional food is awful, interesting to try but OMG sour yaks milk yuck. Every time we stop we get surrounded by locals wanting to see the bikes and they are so friendly. The wild camping has been great I am so used to it now, I only hate it when it rains while we are making or breaking camp but like when it rains on the tent at night as I love the sound, but means packing a wet tent which is horrible. I have honestly never been this dirty before, thank goodness for baby wipes. I have a baby wipe bath every night before crawling into my sleeping bag, however it’s not quite the same as a shower and my nails are filthy I mean really dirty my hands just never seem to be clean no matter how many baby wipes I use. However we humans are very adaptable creates and I’m used to it now.

The riding is Mongolia has been awesome the terrain is so varied I can honestly say I have ridden on every conceivable type of gravel. Mud, very deep sand, shallow sand, pebbles, rocks, solid dirt roads, you name it you will find it in Mongolia. THE riding has not been very technical as such just very varied and has tested my endurance ea lot since you ride off-road on bad surfaces for hundreds of kms and hours and hours and I LOVE IT man !!! Off-road Mongolia rules. Well I say off-road but it’s really the roads just very very bad ones and if you don’t like the “road’’ / track then you just make a mew one and ride where you want. The plains are so vast you will see 3, 4, 5, 20 tracks in front of you and can just pick one or as I say just rid ea new one. I still relay get a kick out of corners, if I’ve lost my mojo or am being glazy and not cornering properly you just ride right over the corner on to the grass and make your own corner. It’s so much fun riding here I must come back. but then I’ll do a proper off-road tour on a light bike up into the mountains and do some real trail riding.

The Dizzy is going like a little dream. It is a very top heavy bike especially with a 28l tank however I am really used to this now and just loving this little bike especially in the deep sand, he just sails over it and it’s a breeze…it’s the pone time he gets to kick tenere butt 🙂

We’ve had only one river crossing which was interesting. I have done so many river crossing that I cannot count them on two hands. However this one was the biggest and deepest one. You had to cross 3 sections and change direction at each section. I should have been able to do this with my eyes closed but lost my mojo and stalled like 4 times, Lyndon would be so ashamed.

I’ve enjoyed riding with the group so much the guys are great and we have relay gelled as a team now. I have been getting such a kick out riding across Mongolia watching 2 or 3 riders next to me in parallel tracks or just going across the open plains, you need to experience this to know just how cool it feels.

Having reached Mongolia we are spending a free day in Olgiy before the 5 day off road stretch to Ulaanbaatar over the Northern Road.

We had the most interesting fun day ever. We visited an Eagle hunter in his Ger camp. The eagle hunter is really good and has received a number of medals in competitions. Unfortunately the hunter was not in but we had the opportunity to have the eagle sit on our arm and you cannot believe the strength in that birds claws. He was just holding on and you could image how much power he could exert when hunting. The hunters use the eagles to hunt wolves, 3 eagles can take down one wolf, incredible. He also weighed a lot more than I expected. It was really interesting to see him and get so close, we then had a small snack in the ger / yurt with the family of the hunter. Although we are in Mongolia the area is inhabited primarily by Kazakhstan families. The gers they live in are therefore Kaz gers which are bigger and far more decorative than the Mongolian ones, which we should see a lot off as we travel through Mongolia.

After the eagle we went into the mountains to shoot an AK47…well go figure, when in Mongolia I guess. That thing has quite a kick, but it was really  fun, I killed a mountain but my target survived 🙂

We also visited a stone man, this stone has been there sin e the 15^th century and marks the grave site of a hero, s well as the other people who are buried at the site who died during the same battle that the hero died.

After lunch we visited the local museum and the black market in Olgiy, a really interesting and fun day.