Sibirsky Extreme 2012 - The Toughest Ride of Them All

Tx to all for a brilliant report. And no river crossings are never boring-keep 'em coming.

Prutser, knowing your love of birds, thought you might enjoy these two pics from my garden/yard in Cave Creek Arizona.

Harris Hawk on my anemometer.


And a cluster of Mourning Doves having a 'branch meeting'.


Machog

And I appreciate that you take us along for the ride.

Maybe this guy can help make that happen, he appears to be a SE2012 fan too

Just a wee bit of a Luv tap is all.

I used a couple of those on some seat bolts that kept falling out and they solved the problem completely.

Really great report guys, thanks for taking all the time to write it up!! I'm glad there's still a bunch left.

Hi Prutser.

This question is not bike related but directed at both you and Beamster as you both shared the tent. Is it an Fjallraven Abisko lightweight 2 and what if any feedback could you offer on it's performance. Did you ever find that the length made pitching and camp locations more difficult to find.
This comment though is bike related, allowing that lad to ride the bike bought a tear to my eye. I know that's not a cool or macho sentiment but as a visiter to his land you crossed the geographical and cultural divide in the most endearing and enduring way possible.
Thank's to all of you for allowing us to tag along.

Stashek.

Stashek.
Gosh you make me blush with my lack of vocabulary.So heart felt was Prutsers kindness for me as well.....
This trip brings bitter /sweet memories growing up in Greece .I was in manyways living the life of the Mongolian kids.

I too have a question regarding the stove used and if the stove was worthy .
Thanks.
M.
.

Our wet feet started to get pretty cold by now. And I think all of us had done enough river crossings for that day.
(more than 30)
Now we just had to find a good place to eat, sleep, take a hot shower and a wel deserved
After the big river that I mentioned in post #2370 we still had a few small shallow puddles before we entered a big valley.
This valley had vehicle tracks all over the place and we started to see more locals driving normal cars on the tracks,
so now we couldn't be far from civilization.

A few km's later we drove into Tsakhir.



In the town we stopped to look around and see if we could find a place to spend the night.
Rod and Beamster checked all the town's exit ways but both came back telling there was nothing there.
That meant we had to get our camping gear out again. The hot shower and the good meal would have to wait another day.
Now we had to raid one of the local grocery store's. Where we bought some noodles and some delicious chocolate biscuits.
Because the weather further down the valley didn't look promising we decided to drive back into the valley,
so we would have some time to put up our tents before it would start to rain.

Everywhere you stop locals will come over to check you out.
These local hang arounds came to show their rides while they checked out ours.

So did you bookmark ADV on their laptop and show them how to check this thread a few months later so they could see themselves, that would probably be the cherry on top for them.

And awesome to let the kid take a ride on the bike, likely to be a lifetime memory.

We found a great spot to pitch our tents just outside the town. The evening up there was amazing, we had such a wonderful view... Again!
You could see people riding in and out of town. Down by the river there was a local family pitching their tent, so even they go out camping.
After dinner T and R went to bed but Prutser and I were still enjoying the evening view.
All of a sudden we heard strange noises, big black shades came wandering over the hill top
Because it was almost dark we couldn't immediately see what came towards us, but then it turned out to be a group of yaks entering our campsite... :d



Tsakhir's skyline seen from our campsite.



With the last sunbeams of the day we tried to dry our socks and boots.





This was the river we crossed more than 30 times. Today's score: Bikers 30+ : River 1



Tee Bee's wise words; F#ck Mongolia! And thanks Mr Colebatch for choosing this lovely track and I'm sure you knew
there were not a lot of water crossings and we wouldn't get very wet at all oser oser

Utterly fantastic - thanks so much for sharing!

Amazing photos. Insanely jealous. I'm thinking a loop of Mongolia needs to be in my future!

My first thought is always that you're drinking red-bull in the blue and red cans.

I always like to google map where these great landscapes are:

Tsakhir, Arkhangai, Mongolia

wow! just when you think the pics can't possibly get any better.......they just keep coming!

that green color in the valley sure is pretty.

Whilst we were queueing in the shop with the grumpy shopkeeper to buy anything edible she might have( FFS..we're buying anything you've got!!) these guys came galloping -no exaggeration-through the main street, proving beyond doubt that this has been elevated to a 2 horse town.

They saw us and scooted back to greet us. As I've said before...on a moto in Mong, you are cooler than Ice-T, cooler than Paul Newman (playing Cool Hand Luke), cooler than Shems Bondt, cooler than.....Frank Sinatra with Ava Gardner on his....arm, and we were treated accordingly.

As P has said. we'd crossed many rivers that day, and although we'd all been wet ( OK..some wetter than others) we'd all dried out now apart from the feet and all we wanted was a hotel..cheap/expensive-it wouldn't matter as long as we could get a shower, have somewhere to dry our gear and get almost anything to eat and a beer.
Alas we still had to feckin' camp with soaking boots. :0(


Just occasionally in The Life of an Adventurer, one needs a magic wand that you can wave and take you out of it for a night...alas Walter had taken it with him and was waving his own wand. So camping it was.

The first sign we had of the yak-migration was when a solitary yak appeared on the skyline bellowing, and we thought he was separated and thus wolf-dinner , but then a few of his pals arrived,,,then a few more..then a host.
When the yaks all started bellowing and moving down to the low ground I was a little concerned that they might just trample through the site and flatten our tents, but we were all quite relieved when they passed by and carried on down towards the town

Amazing photos.

The scenery looks truly beautiful in Mongolia. Thank you knarly adventure team for sharing, immensely enjoying it!

Thank you Prutser I am sharpening the pencil as we speak.

I thought we hadn’t gotten to that part of the story yet

Hi Stashek,

The tent we used was a Helsport Rondane 3 light. Which is a great tent if you only need a place to sleep.
But with the bad weather it would have been nice to have a bit more height inside.
Normally I would use a smaller tent together with a wing that I only pitch when the weather sucks.
For this trip I didn't take the wing because it would be extra weight and space in the panniers.

Finding a place big enough to put up this tent was no problem. Its a bit shorter than the Fjallraven Abisko.
The helsport is just a few cm's wider at the end compared to the fjallraven which gives more space for two mattresses.
I used a Fjallraven akka RS2 for a few years. But the inside was a tiny bit to small for our mattresses and we would wake up with a damp mattress and sleeping bag.

The stove we used was a MSR Whisperlite which I used a lot in the 15 years that I own it.
It has some disadvantages. Reducing the flame enough to stop your food from burning is a bit hard.
But using the right pans helps a lot. Stainless ones are the worst imo as it doesn't conduct the heat fast enough.
Titanium ones are much much better IMO.

Its reliability, simple design and easy cleaning makes it a great stove. A local outdoor shop showed me some examples of broken stoves due to vibrations. But this had never happened with the Wisperlite so they told me.
After 15 years still (you do need to clean them once in awhile)

I'll look for one .Thanks.