The BAM Road - ultimate test of man and machine

[Hogslayer]

I've been enjoying this RR for days with what time is allowed me, work(Sucks...) has been getting in the way.
I just want to thank all three of you guys this obviously has taken alot of time and effort to put together. Awesome photos with some of the best storytelling I have ever read!!!

You guys are my heros !!! Thanks again......

[hazpat]

Great RR. You guys are tough!

[Old Dirt Eater]

Originally Posted by Colebatch

Hot Damn ... you guys rock !!!!

Has to be the best yet, and Tony, your a hell of a man, am 75 still ridding, but I don't believe, I could of made the first 20 miles, just Great.
would love to meet you and, have a jug or two of the spirits with you all. Keep it coming

[knybanjo]

WOW

Great report!! on an awesome adventure!!



p.s. did you ever consider a set-up like the one below? ...or would you if you were to return?

Originally Posted by JoeyBones

Me too! But if you go to that blog and click on "походы" from the menu on the left side there are some amazing pics.

Edit: I just had to upload a couple of them....





Ok sorry. "Hijack Off"

[Colebatch]

Originally Posted by knybanjo

p.s. did you ever consider a set-up like the one below? ...or would you if you were to return?

Not really, but when I first started planning this BAM leg of the trip, I was planning it with Chris Scott. (In the end he had to pull out due to publishing deadlines). We did spend a fair bit of time discussing the idea of taking something simple, like an inner tube from a big Russian truck.

There are a couple of problems that make stuff like that a pain in the nuts. Firstly, you need to bring a hell of a lot of rope. You need at least the width of the river length of rope attached to each of both the front and back of the bike. Some of the rivers we may have used it on (like the Olyokma) were 400 yards wide. We would need over 800 yards of rope. Secondly, the only way to get a floating bike across a body of water is someone has to swim across first, carrying the rope, and then physically pull the bike over. Swimming over 400 yards of fast flowing Siberian River is still rather a large logistical problem in itself. Thirdly, the current on a typical river on the BAM would make controlling the floating bike mid stream almost impossible. Even if physically we could hold it (questionable) and stop it floating away downstream, there is a real risk of turbulence capsizing the top heavy rig. Finally its going to heavy and bulky ... even something as simple as a giant truck inner tube, and in between using it, you have to carry it and the 800 yards of rope.

The conclusion I came to when considering stuff like that is its going to be OK when (a) you are on a relatively still body of water and (b) when there absolutely is no alternative. I guess we felt we always had the alternative of the railway.

I don't feel there is any part of this trip where it would have been worthwhile to have such a rig. That doesn't mean there is no place for it anywhere, anytime, but I certainly don't regret not having any floating bike device on this trip.

[Colebatch]

Originally Posted by bigdog99

Colebatch,

I met Eric Haws back about '92 I think, and saw his slide show on his Trans-Siberian ride. I don't recall him calling the road by any particular name. Was it the BAM road that he was on? I recall in his pictures and some video that the insects where he was were literally in clouds. He said it was enough to drive someone insane, but other than a few references, you don't mention insects to a great extent, and your pictures are nothing like Eric's in that regard. Different roads, seasons, or...?

Eric and Gail did the Western BAM Road between Tynda and Bratsk in 1991, when the country was then the Soviet Union ... They did it as passengers on the back of a couple of Russian bikes from memory, piloted by Russian friends (their bike had been confiscated). I am not sure if thats the slideshow you would have seen as they also rode the Road of Bones two years earlier in 1989.

The Road then would have been very different. Back then the BAM road was relatively new (most of it was built from the late 70s to late 80s) and regularly maintained. It was after the Soviet Union fell that the maintenance on the road basically ceased. So since Eric and Gail were on it, there has been 19 years of decay. And in a place with such extreme weather conditions (80 degrees C or 145F annual temperature range between summer and winter) and particularly permafrost and ice, 19 years equals a lot of road degradation.

As for insects, they were bad. We rarely took our helmets off until we were in a hut somewhere because of them. We abandoned camping after the very first attempt (and Terry is a total camper). But somehow we learned to deal with them. We found huts (where we could have a fire and shut the door to keep the mosquitoes at bay), we stayed in towns where we could sleep and eat indoors. Tony and I struggled with the mosquitoes more on the Road of Bones than on the BAM Road ... perhaps because that was in July, and the BAM Road was in August. There was almost no problem in the towns and cities ... I suspect they treat the surrounding areas, but away from any populated area they were a real pain.

[ktm950se]

Greetings Walt,
If you were to do this trip again, would you consider other bikes to be better suited to the task. I ask this in consideration of the seemingly similar terrain covered by Maciek during his recent travels, reported here http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=239330
His choice was a KTM 400


Thank you for your reply, and sharing your report with us.

ktm950se

[Tony P]

Originally Posted by Oisin

---

Quote:


I thought for a second that it was red wine you were drinking.... known the world over as a girls drink...and carries 3 demerits on the hardcore bikers scale for every glass consumed(except when drank having stormed a French castle to rape an pillage the locals, and to annoy the locals a bit more just pop in a few ice cubes in it....that'll soften their cough)....but then I realised its probably the blood of a wild boar which you guys killed with your bare hands and then used its carcass to lure several polar bears which you then karate chopped in the neck, skinned them and used the furs as bum cushions on the road.

Please note the "real man" among us has a pint of good English bitter!


I appreciate all you kind posters offering to buy us beer.
I'm always up for a free drink ....
(and my London home is only 15 minutes from Heathrow !).

[Colebatch]

Originally Posted by ktm950se

Greetings Walt,
If you were to do this trip again, would you consider other bikes to be better suited to the task. I ask this in consideration of the seemingly similar terrain covered by Maciek during his recent travels

Yes I would consider other bikes. ... BUT .... (depends what you mean by "this trip")

One of the issues I had to consider was that this BAM Road was merely one month out of a 7 month project for me to explore a whole bunch of roads in Siberia. I also had to travel across Mongolia, Central Asia as well, and ride all the to and back, racking up 30,000 miles (50,000km). So that meant I had to find a compromise bike for all of that.

Mac had the ability to tailor his bike specifically to one task, and one set of road conditions, because he flew the bikes into Magadan and out of Anadyr and had a single mission ... to get to Chukhotka.

I had a much longer lasting, broader project and therefore a much broader set of bike requirements.

Terry, who came into the project to do this BAM Road, was torn between taking his well prepped XR400, or the bike he eventually took, the larger heavier XT660R. And the main reason for that was that he had to ride it all the way back to the UK afterwards, and the thought of doing that on the off-road set up 400 was too much like hard work.

It was a similar story with luggage ... Terry was on the road for about 6 weeks all up, meaning his luggage load was only about 15 kgs, and that includes the weight of the bags. Mine was double that, but I was on the road for 7 months, and had 2 still cameras, 2 video cameras, laptop etc etc etc ... so I was limited to how much more I could have cut out of the luggage because I had a much broader project than Terry did.

If I replicated the entire 7 month Sibirsky Extreme Project again, there is no other bike I would rather take than the X-Challenge (148kgs, 650cc). If I was just doing the BAM Road, a single purpose mission, with only 4300 km (2700 miles) to cover, then a 120kg KTM 400 or 530 would definately be something to think very seriously about. But the idea of doing 7 months and 50,000 km on a KTM 400 does not appeal to me in the slightest. I would need to add 20 kgs of oil filters to the luggage for starters.

I think MetalJockey was asked his thoughts on the X-Challenge he took thru Namibia vs the 640 KTM he took through Angola, and he said something like "With the X, you go to it in the morning in the middle of nowhere, you press the button and it just fires up." There is a lot to be said for that when you are all remote.

I specifically took this bike for the overall project, because the project was so vast and diverse, with all sort of road conditions ... deserts in Kazakhstan / Uzbekistan, huge altitude in Tajikistan, challenging tracks in Extreme Siberia, and drinking 76 and 80 octane fuel along the way ... and for my money there was only one engine I wanted to do that with, the fuel injected Rotax 650 single - for me its the best all purpose adventure bike engine ever made - it truly does it all. So then it was just a question of finding the lightest, most off-road capable platform for that engine, and it was the X-Challenge.

For a straight BAM Road run, I would consider a KTM 400, a XR 400, a DRZ400 ... I would also take a look at what could be done with the G450X, or an Aprilia RXV 4.5 (450cc).

[ktm950se]

Thank you kindly for your quick and thorough reply!

ktm950se

[BobbySands]

forgive me for asking what might be a utterly silly question, but sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between internet myth and motorcycly reality.

what about taking a Ural on something like this? would you need to carry another bike each for spares?

what about taking one on the the trans-siberian or other trips through remote russia? would there be any benefit to taking a russian made machine? are they common enough that you might find parts somewhere out there or are they just as non-existent as your BMW?

just curious.

[Tony P]

Originally Posted by BobbySands

what about taking a Ural on something like this? would you need to carry another bike each for spares?

what about taking one on the the trans-siberian or other trips through remote russia? would there be any benefit to taking a russian made machine? are they common enough that you might find parts somewhere out there or are they just as non-existent as your BMW?

Apart from maintenance spares like filters chains etc, which we carried, the lack of OEM spares is not really a problem. If something brakes it will be fixed. The Russian people in remote areas are extremely resourceful and talented 'bush mechanics'. You still will not be able to get Ural spares from the only shop of any kind within 100 miles.

Out there they still fix things - something of a forgotten art in 'our' World.

We had a number of items fail throughout our entire trips and the only delay exceeding a few hours was in Komsomolsk while a new rear shock absorber bottom mounting lug was machined for my bike. BMW dealers will not supply that part, not in Russia, not in UK, not in USA and not even in Germany - they only sell a complete rear suspension unit.

The only real problem would be from an ECU or other 'technical' electronic failure.

[Colebatch]

We filled up in Novy Uoyan and hit the asphalt road out of town. Sadly the asphalt (rumoured to go all 180km to Severobaikalsk) only lasted 30km, but the dirt road after that was at least a graded gravel road. We needed to do as much of it as possible while the daylight allowed. After 75 more kilometres of dirt we were back on asphalt.



Soon after the town of Kichera, in the twilight, we saw Baikal, one of the natural wonders of the world, illuminated by a large glowing moon. It was a beautiful sight ... Terry had been talking about ... 'getting to Baikal' since leaving Vanino.



Half an hour hour of beauful lakeside driving later and we had arrived at the big smoke, Severobaikalsk, first little city since Tynda, and found ourself a lakeside hotel with hot showers and comfy beds! The hard road was now over. The remaining 1000km of the BAM road was all prepared road, passing through the small cities of Ust Kut and Bratsk. We could now finally start to relax.

- - -

Terry had asked to take a day off to have a bit of a look around Lake Baikal and I was in no mood to disagree. We decided to take a ride down to the seal hunting village of Baikalskoye 40km to the south, sort out anything that needed sorting and generally have a relaxed day. The weather was awesome. Sure it was bloody cold prior to about 11am, but clear blue cloudless skies cheered us up. It was the first cloudless day since meeting Terry ... he must be bad luck!

My bike wouldnt start (first time on the whole trip), so Tony went into the centre of Severobaikalsk to sort out breakfast, while Terry and I began the time old process of checking if we are getting spark, if so, are we getting fuel? It turned out we were not getting fuel. A connection was loose to the fuel pump. Once diagnosed, and the connection jiggled around a bit (highly technical jiggling of course), all was well and the bike reassembled just in time to enjoy a greasy take away breakfast.

We rode about 10km out of town and found a deserted stretch of lakeshore to chill out on. There was plenty of deserted beach, but we chose a nice grassy spot. Mosquito free, midge free, ant free ... it was heavenly and the boys both soon drifted off to sleep. Must be an age thing.



In Baikalskoye, we grabbed an ice-cream each and headed down to the jetty, taking in the cloudless blue sky and crystal clear waters of Lake Baikal.








Eventually it was time to head back to Severobaikalsk before everything closed for the day. I needed to find a place to upload some long overdue pictures for the blog and Tony hadnt checked his email in weeks. Terry is a bit of a luddite, so no problem for him. He just sat out sunning himself in Severobaikalsk's central square.

When all was done, we stopped off at the market for a huge and tasty dinner of shashlik - long one of my favorites, and now one of Terry's favorites too (no surprises he went back for seconds), before grabbing a few beers and heading back to the hotel to pack.

With the hard riding all behind us now, we re-arranged the loads. We would soon be parting ways and now was as good a time as any to make sure the right stuff was on the right bike.

[Colebatch]

We had pushed quite hard since Tynda. The Eastern half of the BAM had taken more time than we expected. We didnt know how tough this Western half would be, but I expected it to be a lot easier, as I knew it had been done before. It was easier, but not as much easier as I expected. There were still tough bits. But we had left Khani 3 riding days ago, so to get from Khani to Severobaikalsk in just 3 riding days (plus the rest day in Taksimo) was decent going.

Here's a map of the Western half of the road so far, from Tynda to Severobaikalsk.

It had taken us a day from Tynda to Yuktali, 2 days from Yuktali to Khani, 2 days from Khani to Taksimo and just a day from Taksimo to Severobaikalsk. All up 6 days on the road from Tynda to Severobaikalsk.

[Katkatit]

Funny thing.
My dad walked by my room just when I was looking at your map. From 10 meters away and just one glimpse at my screen, he immediately recognized the place, stopped and said "you going to Baikal??".
I was surprised how easily he understood what I was looking at, but then I remembered he served his military service in the Red Army somewhere in the area (on the Chinese border).
So I tell him "I'm not going anywhere yet, but I sure will, some day".
"What's with the blue and pink lines?", he asked.
"Oh, I'm just reading about these 3 crazy Britts, the blue line is the Trans-Siberian railway, and the pink line is the route they are riding".
Once again my dad proves that even though we left the Soviet Union 15 years ago, he sure knows what he's talking about: "Holly sh*t, are they riding the BAM? That's crazy, there's no road there! YOU are not going there!"

Anyway, so now you got my dad watching out for me not to buy airline tickets to Moscow and then Vladivostok I hope you guys are proud

Go on now
Katya.