Sibirsky Extreme 2012 - The Toughest Ride of Them All

Hey Tony.

Now you've piqued my interest...
Good to see you lurking and keeping me on the straight and narrow-despite your shameless efforts to lead me astray and into dens of Muscovite iniquity.
You just wait matey...your share of abuse is coming...no one gets away from the acid pen.

Next morning I humped the gear down to the bike and loaded it on. I was pretty good at this by now and it just took a few minutes and then went in to get some breakfast.
I'd hoped that there would be a change of face behind the counter but no...my sneering host from the previous night awaited me.

I think I've worked out since why she was so rude to me. The night before when we were talking about payment for the room, I simply didn't understand a point she was trying to make around the room having two beds. I think she was expecting me to pay for both-the room-but my constant "nye-panimye" (I don't understand) maybe made her think I was taking the piss or being deliberately obtuse to save a few quid.
Whilst I would not have paid anyway as the room was a fleapit I wasn't being obtuse for any other reason than maybe I am obtuse and crossing a continent with 6 words maybe isn't the brightest or most polite modus operandi.
She was probably pissed off too, with having to deal with a fuckwit foreigner after the day's truck drivers etc and maybe just the general tedium of her job....jeez...who'd want it.

Note to self: Must try harder and learn some language before I go back-it will save much international misunderstanding.

The morning was cool and damp, but I was glad to get out on the road again. After just a few miles I ran into fog-not the wispy here-now-and-gone variety but the "Fuck Me" wet pea souper that meant I couldn't go over 20 mph and misted the visor constantly. I put on a fleece as I was freezing and carried on, scuttling along in the gutter to avoid the occasional loon who went ripping past and would have had me off, at best. Trucks came way too close behind me-it won't hurt them a bit..right?- and the road took alarming 90 degree bends prior to the rail crossings ...and then another just after it to resume the direction of travel. This went on for a horrible 3 hours during which I covered maybe 40-50 miles.
I was very glad when the sun started to poke through, the mist cleared and I could wick it up a little and relax in to the ride.

A strange phenomenon was that in every village I rode past, every 50 yards or so would be someone-a teenager, a granny, a wifey selling any number of things...but almost always the same thing. In one village it's be honey, in another birch twigs bound to a stick (to lash your ass in the banya), in another selections of vegetables and in the weirdest one...multicoloured microfibre dusters on sticks...but everyone always selling the same thing. sometimes half a dozen..often 20-30 stands.

Tony P (I think it was he?) told me that they are given these goods in lieu of part payment for their day-jobs and this is how they recoup the missing cash.


Below
Rural Russia. This guy drove his cattle THROUGH a gas station when I was filling up. WTF? I just got the iPhone out too late to snap it properly.

It says "Sibirski Tract" on the AZS station sign..I think Walter should sue!


Note the "Go-Faster" flames on the side of the Lada. This is the same vehicle Prutster mentioned us having seen in a cop-bad guy chase with both cars revving to valve bounce and going about 40mph. I think the flames are aspirational rather than realistic.....

great to see the KTM back in action :)
another trip (partially) trough china: http://bigbiketrip.wordpress.com/

Next time you're travelling across south-eastern Poland, let me know, she will gladly prepare some... Everytime I pop into my parents house, I keep thinking she prepared food for a platoon of troops anyway... then I start counting my sisters, their husbands, their children and maybe my mother is right. Love you, mum !

Well, might be. But those are always sweet... And surely you kill'em by putting into microwave.

Well, Fat Thursday was 2 weeks ago...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pączki

Now, there's a whole world of possible differences here :)

There are Pyshki and Poncheekee - these are supposed to be the equivalents of doughnuts, however, say, in St.Petersburg the first is the ball-type (possibly with a filling) and the second one is the deep-fried toroid, optionally topped by some sugar powder. In Moscow, the reverse is generally true. Both types are never savoury though, always sweet.

Then there are endless varieties of pirozhki (which literally means "little pie") - made with plain, pastry or sour dough, savoury or sweet, open or closed, mostly baked. There is a deep-fried subclass of savoury ones, usually with a lump of shredded mystery meat inside, called belyash; kind of a mini-cheburek if you like. Big ones can actually be called chebureki, or khychin, in places.

And of course there are national varieties - pozy in Buryatiya, echpochmaki in Tatarstan and Bashkiria, etc and so on.
(same with pelmyeni - khinkali in Georgia, manty in Turkic and Central Asian territories, varyeniki in the Ukraine, etc)

The day at last warmed up and I could push on harder.
Since Irkutsk I'd had no phone coverage. At Alzamay I'd picked up a text from my service provider which said " we notice you're making calls from outside the UK (No shit Sherlock-I've been out here 6 weeks) and would like you to call us within the next 12 hours to confirm your phone hasn't been stolen"
I picked up the message well after the 12 hour deadline had passed and I now had no service wherever I went.
Surely they haven't cut me off?...I'm 5 thousand plus feckin' miles from home and no way of letting them know I'm still alive.

It was now important that I get to a motel with wi-fi, but out in the boonies no one would realistically invest to lay a 400 mile cable for one connection and none of the motels I passed had wi-fi advertised, available (I asked) or satellite dishes to pick up from the ether. Problem.


I stopped for lunch in a pretty motel by a small lake with diving board, fishing jetties and little boats.
The staff were great and the food excellent. I'm just not sure if the other clients relished having someone who hadn't shaved for a week and smelled like a dogs arse next to their table, but hey....watchagonnado?

During the afternoon-it was now baking hot- I came on a huge tailback of traffic, running for 4 or 5 miles. I scooted along the roadside and got to the front. One of these 60 -70 footer semi-trailer trucks was lying on its side fully across the road and smashed to pieces. Some cops and an ambulance crew were trying to get the driver out of the cab. I think it 's been one of those "asleep at the wheel" incidents but I don't hold out much hope for the guy.

Ever opportunist....The Powleece had set up a radar trap just a few miles down the road to snag the motorists when they got round the accident in case they were trying to make some lost time up. No, they didn't get me.
They actually didn't get me anywhere which given their omnipresence on the entry and exit to every town, and many points in between is surprising.

In the early evening I was looking for somewhere to stay when I spotted a couple of motos up ahead. I goosed up the old girl and drew level with the guy at the back-he nearly jumped out of his skin. It was a group of Poles (of course it was-it's always Poles) on ADV-ed up thumpers. I'd just got past them when I spotted a Motel (and cafe as the sign says..this is better than a correspondence course-I may start charging soon) and peeled off to check it out. I hoped they'd follow me in and chat but they maybe had time pushing them and they pressed on.



I approached the desk and asked the very pretty lady the " G " question. "Da!" and she showed me a lovely bright modern room with an ensuite bathroom where stuff worked . Hurrah!...and a bright clean resto that sells beer. . I then asked if I could use the phone to dial the UK. With some language difficulty I realised that I couldn't dial international from here- only local, so I asked if I could use her own mobile and I'd pay whatever it cost. She was wonderful and after some lack of understanding said I could. I called home and let my wife know I was still alive-what a weight off my mind. I also told her to tell the arsehole phone company (O2 by the way) to get my feckin' service restored. More on this later.

I thanked the girl and gave her £20 -about 30 bucks and God bless her she tried to refuse but I was having none of it, from where I sat it was a bargain for the peace of mind.

I had a shower, a meal of proportions that would have choked a pig, a beer or three and went back to sleep like a man coshed.

Todays mileage was again over 900Kms-about 550 miles and took me nearly to Omsk from outside Kemerovo. At this rate I'd have enough time to snag a day off in Ekaterinburg, which I'd heard is beautiful, historic and is where Czar Nicholas and family were murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1917.

Mario/Mbravo/All. Thanks for this. It is "Pirozhki" I'm looking for I think...but the belyash fits the description better.

I think the example I had wasn't necessarily the best representative of the type.

I'd better go back and check the rest out

Just reminisce about belyashi - it was popular student food (when I was one, mid-80s, still Leningrad back then) - it had SOME meat inside and cost just 10 kopecks. There was a caveat though - you better bought these things in the morning; the people who churned out batches and batches of the stuff changed the frying oil once a day (if that ) so the evening pies were effectively deep-fried in varnish, and once exposed to the air while lying on the trays, hardened to a letter-opener quality.

Desert conditions prevailed at the end of July

Actually, as TonyP hinted, I'm American, I just live in Moscow. And I've only done the stretch between Irkutsk and European Russia once, and that frankly that was enough for me.

However, I've ridden quite a lot around Russia and enjoy it, but riding all the way across the whole of Siberia gets rather tedious. I like the regional cities, however, so try to stay in them when possible.

Belyashi vs Pirozhki s myasom ... Whats the difference. Seems the same meat. Same dough. Same fryer. Only the shape is different. The pirozhuk is elongated, while the belyash is circular.

I remember asking a Russian once while I stood at a zakusochnaya trying to make my choice. He shrugged his shoulders and said I think you get more meat and less dough in a belyash? He definitely wasnt sure. Maybe he was trying to justify himself, since he went ahead and bought a few belyashi.

Whats your take on that debate mbravo? If you were at a zakusochnaya somewhere and had a choice of belyashi or pirozhki s myasom, what would you choose, and why?

Hey Bike-R
I was there 27th..

you weren't one of the guys I passed just before the motel were you? I noticed a POL sticker on one of the bikes but didn't see another.

We were there on 19th of july.

Speak for yourself

Yup. Have you read Gaurav Jani's journals or watched his films? Great stuff. And he's a super nice and humble guy.

Having grown up in Michigan home of the Motor City I spent a lot of time in the late 50's sticking these kinds of flame decals on everything. Bicycles, model cars etc.....

When I see these pics I wonder what the gearheads in Russia would have done had they had the same freedoms and resources as those of us in the west. There seems to be no shortage of ingenuity given what they had to work with.

Thanks again to all or you for making us aware there is something worthwhile on the other side of the planet.

Mind you, Russia's got the supposedly largest pile of resources in the world...Still their yearly budget only clicks when oil&gas prices are right. When it doesnt, they just sell more gold, platinium, diamonds or the like...

Try this for an entertaining report. Be warned, you have to be very patient with this one if you want to read the whole trip, also there are links to some pretty gruesome videos of mob violence.

http://advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=618066

(snipping most...)

as always, Walter, great commentary. you touched upon a few topics that here in the US would be considered "politically incorrect" to discuss, and I think that holds back American understanding of the world, and of ourselves as well.

the US culture in general (what's that I just said about stereotypes) has shifted to such a level of political correctness that it's difficult to have a candid conversation about such basic facts that, on a per capita basis, you'll find more Polish than Chinese ADV riders. so, with the discourse stalled at the gate, we are much more reluctant to explore why this is the case, and therefore such insights as Walter's would be viewed as awfully shocking, and not taken with the value it contains.

and I've succeeded in thoroughly hijacking the thread... moderators, please go ahead and move this discussion to somewhere more relevant - and let's get back to reading about Rod's trip west, and the Norwegian folks' trip east!

OK, let's see. There's at least three parts to this problem - theoretical, technical and practical :)

Now, the theory tells us that belyash as such is a Tatar word, and is related to a certain sort of Tatar meat pies. It also tells us that it has to be fried; in Russian, belyash is a pirozhok; it is just one of the many types possible.

Technically, your picture from zakusochnaya is slightly off, exactly because belyashi would be fried, and a generic pirozhok s myasom would be baked - granted, it might be difficult to see under often non-optimal lighting conditions :) I can also tell from experience that belyashi usually have kind of juicier stuffing, while a baked pirozhok would have drier minced meat inside.

Finally, the practical part tells us, iirc, that the proof is in the pudding. That is, I would consider the specimens before me and choose the ones I'd decide are better for me. There is a general preconception that belyash is a "cat-n-dog" pie, relating to the mystery meat status of its stuffing; it also kind of looks greasier and less healthy. But in reality you just take a look, sniff and buy what you like more.

Also, you have to take into account the geography. In Bashkiria or Tatarstan I'd take belyash without thinking twice. In St.Petersburg... I would lean towards pirozhki, but consider the specimens laid out before me, as above.

I completed 20 days of motorcyling in China back in 2010. I never did any kind of ride report because I didnt think people would be interested?

It is extremely difficult and expensive to do it "legally"... That being said, There are many ways to avoid these kinds of problems with the right assistance. I was fortunate enough to have the right contacts to make this happen and it was an experience I will never forget.

Colebatch is once again accurate on his understanding of cultures in regards to the Chinese. But, a change is very much happeneing in China as we speak in regards to Motorcycling...

I was able to make my journey based on my business involvement in exporting thousands of motos to china over the last 6-7 years. They have very strict regulations on engine size and models allowed to be imported... But the demand and supply is rapidly getting larger. There are lot of politics involved... but a change is happening I can assure you the next 10+ years will show a lot more motorcycling in China.