Sibirsky Extreme 2012 - The Toughest Ride of Them All

I think someone asked earlier, but I never saw an answer - do you use some kind of water purification system?

Thanks for taking us along for the ride. I will be ordering my DVD.

+ 1 on the lightning strike. When they are that close together is seems most plausible. I would think the wolves would leave more blood.

Cattle are stupid but they're not completely helpless. Hard to believe what I'm seeing.

Cattle are not all going to stand around while killed one at a time by wolves, there's no defensive wounds, no sign of thrashing or struggle.

Poison would kill at different rates and I think dehydration would as well. I've watched cattle die from eating poison plants - in this case it was a long laborious thrashing death.

Lightning seems the most probable cause given the story of rain showers the evening before and that they all died seemingly standing together in a group.

Sad - terrific story though guys and gal.

We left the cowboy with his dead cows and continued down fading double track:



Until we began seeing strange shapes on the landscape. We had reached the polygon ... the area where the Soviets tested their atmospheric nuclear weapons.

Bunkers in the distance:





Naturally, we checked them out.





We saw other strange constructions:





So we checked them out too:

Apparently they were concrete pillars built to see what atomic bombs nearby do to them. All part of the testing process



The horizon was littered was concrete towers full of measuring equipment, fake buildings, fake railway bridges, fake railway tunnels even. All part of seeing what damage can be done to them when you drop an A or H bomb nearby.



It was great fun:

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I find the plains so alluring. More so with a smattering of cold war history.

Great footage, and the "Onedin Line" theme made me smile

The way they had the bikes dancing across the steppe the choice of music may have been a result of it being from a ballet, Spartacus by Aram Khachaturian, an Armenian Soviet era composer. Good choice whatever the reason.

They have their own language, Kazakh ... Its NOTHING like Russian, but in fact very closely related to Turkish. (a separate issue but the homeland of all Turkic (not Turkish) peoples is said to be in north eastern Kazakhstan - from there they spread far and wide from Turkey to Yakutia) In some rural villages they speak Kazakh as a main language. But in reality, Russian is still the main language in Kazakhstan these days. The government has reintroduced Kazakh language in schools and it is gaining popularity, so it will take over again at some point in the future. All our communication with the Kazakhs was in Russian. They all speak it.

Kazakh border guards usually insist on seeing your Russian visa when they process you, because Kazakh visas are in Kazakh and English. Most of the Kazakh border guards don't read either, and they want to see your Russian visa so they can read what your name and nationality is.

Extra weight ... we dont need it to change tyres, or fix flats. The XCs are light enough to lean over and support on the side stand and with roacks or a stick under the bashplate.

Centre stands are heavy items ... typically 4-5 kgs.

Nope ... we just bought bottled water in this part of the world. In other parts like the Altai, Mongolia and SIberia, we drink water from the rivers. I have a water purifying pump, but again, its bulk and weight that all adds up. If you take the things you think you might need, you could take a truck along. I prefer to only take the things that you know you will need. The only areas I think you need water filtration in the former soviet union are industrial areas. And they all have shops selling bottled water. Out here there were no rivers, so nothing to filter anyway.

Hahaha ... yeah - Zhan holidays on the gold coast. You'll catch him chatting up schoolies at the Broadbeach pub every November.

Just like me

Again an awesome rr so far, only a pity the KTM has its problems. One general question: what tyre pressure y'all runnin' on these trips, with different kinds of surfaces(gravel, sand/mud, tarmac and such)?

Keep up the good work!
Greetz, Hans.

P.s.: are you and the gang by any means sponsored by Klim or AdventureSpec?

If my center stand wouldn't protect my exhaust I would take it of too. The boxer's stand is about 2.5 kg.

Someone`s showing their age.

Normally I would run about 1.6 bar at front and 1.7 at the back .... if it gets sandy I would drop that a bit ... maybe 1.3 - 1.4 bar. Cant go too low on these kind of rides cause you really dont want to spend too much time fixing flat tyres.

KLIM were not sponsoring us. Just most of us chose their gear. (Rod wasnt wearing Klim pants, and none of us were using the Klim helmets on this ride - they only make a full face helmet). Some have mentioned that the gear may not be ideal in the baking sun. Nor is it as good as a totally waterproof unbreathable plastic mackintosh material in all day thunderstorms, nor as good as snowmobile gear in the freezing cold. But we have to take gear that will on balance work the best in all conditions we were likely to encounter. There is not the luxury the way we ride of stashing an extra pair of pants in the gear (thats too much volume to carry). So thats why I we have made the choices we have made. Seriously if you look at the gear Terry took along for this 3+ month trip, he had his camping gear, his spare parts and tools, and then he had 1 pair of chinos. 2 technical long sleeved t-shirts, a few pairs of underwear, a pair of sandals, and his i-phone charger. Thats it. So the riding gear really has to be extremely multi purpose and adaptable for all climates. No-one likes stopping when a rain shower comes along, digging out a waterproof layer, and putting it on. All you want to do if it rains is to zip up and get going again.

Adventure-Spec have supported a few rides both myself and Rod have done over the years and they helped us out with good pricing on any gear we needed for this trip. The two guys that own it are both mates of mine and both genuine adventure bikers, so I like to support them too.

I didn't see you there

He was with the rest of the toolies, in the watch house.

Well as CIedema hinted earlier, we had a track to follow. A hand drawn track. You load that track into your Montana or whatever GPS you have, and you follow it. Its that simple.

I think most GPSs can be set up to do that ... The Montana is just capable of loading much longer more detailed tracks into it than other GPSs I have used in the past.

You have a Ride Report from your trip to South America in the red GS650?