What we don’t like are the cops. We’ve been nicked twice now both times for crossing the solid white line while overtaking hmmm I know BAD PANDA. However when sitting behind huge trucks for ages at 50km/h and seeing a space one needs to take it or our journeys would be twice as long. We are also convinced that the lines are red herring painted there by the cops just to catch people because the ones I mention were not on blind rises or corners (clearly those are there for  a reason) well the Russian cops are as bent as a paperclip, and it’s all about negotiating the right bribe. Simply a pain in the ar.. and a waste of time. They should just pull you over and say 1000 roubles you hand it over and ride on. Quick 5 min, but no one must spend ages trying to negotiate with them in Russian, yup none of them speak English so this is quite time consuming. The funny thing is once the bribe is paid they get quite friendly and shake your hand like they’ve just done a good deal… deal my a…

My confidence riding in crazy traffic and playing chicken with big trucks has grown exponentially. This is a do or die kind of situation and I’m loving the time in the saddle. The funnies things is that I told the guys that I am really slow and on a 400cc (they are all on 650s) so they need to be patient with me. I had the job of being on point (each day one of us takes point, leads the route) out of Moscow EEEKKKKK and over the longest day I’ll ride on the trip 650km. So off I go having told the guys that my comfy speed is 100 or the bike vibrates like nuts and I get decidedly nervous. So Ceasar told me the day before that I was not slow as he was behind me and hit 140. I said impossible my bike has hit 126 MAX going down a very steep hill. This bike is slow (I joked when I got it about how quick it was as its much faster than my KLR) but in Russia a 126 is the max and I thought it would blow up it was shaking so badly so quickly slowed down.

To prove his point Ceasar took 2 pictures of me in front of him with his speedo in the frame …erm 153 ouch no wonder the little dear was not happy. So there I was trying to push ever k out of the dizzy devil as I felt guilty that the guys had to ride slow just for me. It seems my speedometer is on the fritz oh dear 🙂

Finally in Russia at about 8 or 9pm after the border crossing. Then a terribly cold ride to the hotel and finally to bed at 2am. Up early the following day with a couple 100kms to Moscow. We reached the outskirts of Moscow early enough to brave the traffic to Red Square. I cannot do this ride justice by trying to describe it in words. I have never experienced traffic like this in my life bumper to bumper 4 lanes with big trucks and busses and crazy drivers, the words organised chaos have never been so appropriate.  The thing is that the Russian drivers are mostly quite polite when trying to ride down the centre of lanes they will quite often move their cars out the way. Even on the motorways many cars and trucks will move over, this surprised me as I’d heard some horror stories about riding in Russia and coping with the trucks.

We finally made it to Red Square and wow it’s stunning, we were so chuffed to get there on our bikes and get some pictures.  So far we like Russia 🙂

I have read and heard so many stories about border crossing and how difficult (frustrating) the Russian one can be. However unless you have actually experienced this no stories can truly describe the reality of the situation and complete lack of logic fond amongst the customs officials. Our first attempt took 6 hours which ended with us having to return to Latvia due to the fact that we are meeting 2 riders in Mongolia and their bikes are being transported on the back of the Kudu support vehicle. The officials insisted that each vehicle must have its own rider / driver and Kudu cannot transport these bikes across Russia, something they have done every year. The officials agreed that the paperwork was in order but that we were trying to break this law. So back to Latvia to find some emergency overnight accommodation which we found in the form of the most stunning little wooden holiday cottage rented to us for the night by a very nice Latvian couple.

Day 2, Jeff (the owner of KUDU and the driver of the 4×4, and Gareth one of the riders left at 5am to drive the support vehicle with the 2 bikes to another border) 4 hours at the border and the customs official agreed they could take the bikes into Russia as they would both be riding them there.

They then drove back to the original border, Gareth walked through and collected his bike and us.4 hours later and we all finally made it into Russia phew, a day missed for absolutely nothing. The reason the border crossing are so painful is that the customs officials (passport control is fine and the people almost civil) try everything to find fault with the copious number of forms you need to fill in. The border crossing process is so inefficient one must fill in form after form and go through 3 different check points (just on the Russian side the Latvian side also has 2, so that is a total of 5 points) fortunately we found out that if we push our bikes across through all 5 points we can jump the queue and take the bikes to the front, saving HOURS. Now it’s true that the drivers of all the cars sitting in the queue for up to 8 hours (let alone the actual customs process) don’t particularly like this but HEY GET A BIKE, we have other disadvantages like getting wet when it rains J

Anyway the forms: every time you fill out a customs form an official will find something wrong with it. They moan at you and talk to you like you are an idiotic child who clearly filled the form out incorrectly on purpose just to pee them off. Two examples: on the form one must fill out the chassis number of my bike which I did according to the stated chassis number in the bike licence doc. The official decided the number should not be filled out under the chassis number space on his form but another place. Totally random. The second example is that I filled in my name under the clearly marked, surname, first name and second name boxes. Well the customs official decided that my second name was in fact part of my first name and I had to re do another form to rectify this mistake. What makes the situation worse is that the forms must be filled out in duplicate for every mistake they find.

It’s so frustrating and one must just bite ones tongue smile and get through it, and of course not a single customs offal speaks English but when you find one that does it usually doesn’t help

Welcome to Russia, fortunately the only unfriendly things is Russia are the customs officials and mosquitoes

FINALLY got through the border at about 8pm time for a quick pot noodle and a VERY LONG COLD ride to the hotel made it to bed at 2am. BUT WE MADE IT to Russia 🙂

Sitting in bed feeling very sorry for myself after having a root canal, my nightmare has always been needing a dentist while travelling especially when I was diligent enough to go have a check-up before I left.  I started getting tooth ache about 5 days ago but it was very intermittent and not hugely bad. However since I am about to travel to Kazakhstan and Mongolia and be nowhere near a city I thought I’d find a dentist and have a check-up.

Well on ex-ray later and the very nice lady dentist declared my tooth is shot and I need a root canal NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO I said but my cried fell on deaf ears and she grabbed a syringe and shot me full of Novocain before I could run. OUCH it was not a very pleasant experience and I’m going to just curl up in a little ball on my bed and read my book.

However painkillers are good and they will make me feel all better to ride to Russia tomorrow. I have also decided that this is the worst thing that will happen to me and the only Dr I will need to see for 6 months, I knew I‘d have a bad day, but it’s over now 🙂

Final rest day before heading off to Russia and the real adventure. I met the group I’ll be travelling with last night it’s smaller than I thought with just us 4 bikes (I originally thought 8) and the support vehicle. I am however quite happy that it’s a smaller group and they are a really really nice fun bunch of guys. We pick up another rider in Kazakhstan one in Mongolia so there will be 6 bikes in total later on. The 2 additional riders are from Australia, the other guys are from Malaysia, Mexico and 2 from the plus me the Safa, so we are quite an international bunch.

Going over the route I was surprisedto see just how many wild camping nights there are in each stretch. I thought, for some reason, there would be 3 at a stretch and thought no problem I can live without a shower and bathroom for 3 days, eeerm try 7 days wild camping in a stretch OUCH 🙂 ah well I have had no illusion that this would be one of the toughest things I’d ever do in my life. Although the bathroom will be the least of my worries. I am far more concered about the very long days up to 500km a day double ouch on bad roads. Time for those big girl pants and that bottle of man up.

I also still need to get us to taking the bike off road. I love the little WR250s we ride in Spain but the Suzuki 400 is a bit different. I hit a couple of relay sandy bad roads in Poland on the way and it was quite an experience. The bike is fully loaded with the panniers and the tires are pumped for tar roads, so when I hit the dirt roads it was quite tricky and I still need to adjust to that.

So here goes early tomorrow morning we leave beautiful Riga and the adventure is really starts 🙂

In contrast to Lithuania, Latvia was a surprise. The landscape again beautiful flat and green with a huge wide river running down the middle, all very pretty.  The towns were the shocker, these are filled with the typical communist gray aging low rise tower blocks, very depressing and uninviting. At four o’clock when I typed motel into the GPS and was taken to this small town down the back roads between the low rises I got a decidedly uncomfortable feeling and even more uncomfortable looks from the occupants. So I decided to listen to my gut and high tail it out of there.

I found a main road and eventually a small motel owned by the nicest couple. They insisted I put my bike in their garden shed. This meant I had to ride right over their garden, I felt awful and asked if it was not ok to just park the bike behind the motel. ‘’Oh no, not safe” I was told, hmm ‘where the heck am I’, I thought, but the couple were very nice and the motel very clean.

In every small motel I stayed in the owners have always locked my bike away in the garage, garden shed or beer shed (Pity I don’t drink beer) and have all been so very different and interesting. From the very staunch Polish man who was not at all impressed that I was riding my bike alone and asked why then seemed to dismiss me as a freak and ignored me. The other polish motel owner was wonderful he kept on saying ‘oh mein gott’ after every question I answered. Are you biking alone – yes ‘oh mein gott’, where are you from – south Africa ‘oh mein gott’, where do you live – Switzerland ‘oh mein gott’, where are you going – Russia ‘oh mein gott’ (I thought if I said Singapore he might have a coronary) he was just lovely and when I only ate half my breakfast (enough to feed 6) he promptly scolded me and told me I need my vitamins.

Yet another reason I love to meet people when I travel and stay in camp sites or little B&Bs or motels.

I finally made it to Riga and its stunning nothing like any of the other towns I saw just beautiful.

I have a rest day so am trying to catch up on the Blog, however it is actually a lot harder to blog than one would think, and let’s face it I could talk the hind leg off a donkey J

Crossing the border from Poland to Lithuania the thing that struck me was not the difference in landscape as it is remarkably similar. One would call the north of Poland flat but the landscape is gently contoured, the fields roll like waves onto the horizon. In Lithuania on the other hand the landscape is really flat, very pretty and the forests and lakes just as beautiful. Anyway as I was saying the remarkable difference are the little villages. The houses in the Polish villages are made of brick or stone. They are grey or brown not necessarily dull just plain. In the first Lithuanian village the houses were very small and made of wood but very brightly painted almost reminding me of a seaside village, very cute.

The big cities in Lithuania however are nothing to write home about so I won’t.

I have a love hate relationship with my GPS which once directed me to the centre of a golf course. I was on my riding down a small lane which didn’t feel quite right. I then turned onto the golf course, it’s amazing how far one can travel in the few nanoseconds it takes your brain to realise there is something quite wrong here. However when I saw a few golfers walking hastily  towards me golf clubs in hand I made a hasty retreat.

So now I use a combination of GPS and map (it doesn’t help) which somehow got me into the middle of a cow field in the middle Poland.  While riding through it and very politely greeting the cows I found myself in the tiniest village with just dirt tracks between the houses.

I stopped at the corner turned the bike off so that I could sit and slowly re-evaluate the map and GPS.  The corner was just outside a small stone cottage. The next minute out came the farmer’s wife and son, and I thought oh dear I’m about to get told off in Polish for disturbing the cows. I could not have been more wrong, the wife told me all sorts of news and asked me all sorts of question in Polish, to which I sign language I’m lost and managed in very bad pronunciation asked how I get to Argustow. We eventually figured out where I was trying to go and they directed me to the nearest road. The son proceeded to pat me on the back two or three times to wish me well and they sent me on my way. So sweet a so helpful.

This is what travelling is all about, meeting people who give you the biggest toothless grin an old farmer’s wife can give a stranger. For those seconds you get just a glimpse into their lives the stone cottage with perfectly clean little courtyard, the low brick wall and rickety wooden gate. The washing hanging up which you assume the wife was doing by hand as she dried here hands on her apron while walking towards you. Encounters like this and seeing a tiny village I would never have seen if I had stuck to the main roads is why I like to travel.

Poland is a beautiful country the landscape just rolls on forever and is bright green dotted with various size ponds and lakes. I was really glad I got off the main highways as this scenery was well worth seeing.

I’ve just spent two great days in Berlin and still think this is one of the nicest major cities in the world.

I realised today just how much I rely on my GPS. I went to find a new pair of goggles and was given direction to another shop the owner thought might have them. So off I went following these very easy directions after getting hopelessly lost I saw a post office so thought ‘great telephone book’, I’ll get the address of this other shop there since no one I asked had heard of it.

The post office assistant promptly gave me two huge cellophane wrapped books, the telephone book and yellow pages. I explained that I just wanted to look thought one. However he insisted that they were mine and I must take them home. So after throwing the phone book away and finding the shop I wanted in the yellow pages I headed off with telephone book in hand.

Now if you’ve ever seen very lost tourists with a map standing on a corner, imagine a very lost tourist walking down the road with the yellow pages, which is the size and weight of two bricks. After receiving a number of rather peculiar stares I decided I needed to tear out the pages I needed. I needed however about a quarter of the book which is the entire Berlin map section plus the index etc. So there I was standing on the street corner acting like an Amazonian body building trying to rip a telephone directory in half. I am sure there is some strong man completion in some part of the world which requires this task, I however did not look like any of those men. 5 mins later resigning myself to ripping single page by single page. Heading off again I finally found the shop only to discover it was about 200m behind me. From now on I will take my GPS, compass and own map on every expedition even those I undertake on foot. The bad news is the shop did not even have the goggles. ah well I did get to wander around half of Berlin and it is a cool place to wonder.

Off to Poland tomorrow where unlike Germany  I can’t even ask for directions as I don’t speak Polish

Arrived in Jena last night just as it was about the rain …hmmm what luck 😉 as the camp site rented the cutest little bungalows so I decided I did not want to spend my first night camping in the rain. The ride to Berlin was rather uneventful just motorway all the way. It was quite interesting to ride throuh such a big busy city and see the main sites. I have two days here to chill with friends and then off to Poland.