We woke up very early and started riding towards the rising sun. Already, there were some hints of road construction. ...Read More
I left in the morning around 7:30. I couldn't sleep for too long and somehow lost my appetite. After riding for a few hours, I realized that I wasn't where I thought I was on the map. Apparently, at one point I missed the main road and took a detour. I was running out of fuel. I knew I couldn't make it to the next town so I decided to wait there in the middle of the desert. Here, fuel and water are very important. One is distance and the other is time. You have to have at least one ...Read More
In the morning I went to the local marketplace to see if I could find an URAL suspension. This is a more heavyweight Russian motorcycle occasionally found around the area. I found one, but even that didn't seem strong enough. I left after lunch, hoping that the rubber would hold on for a few days. I tried to cover as much ground as possible stopping only at an interesting grave of some sort. There was a family of four next to it. I assume it was their child inside the grave because it was very small. Then they all got on ...Read More
I learned that Gale and Craig are also part of another organization and they will be donating their motorcycles in Ulaan Baatar just like the other Mongol Rally teams. I think this creates a difference in riding style because they don't seem to care about the vehicles. Both of their suspensions are broken. Their fenders have cracked and fallen off because the rear wheel had been banging on it for so long. The engines were leaking oil all over. They were pushing very hard on the washboard and sand. I suggested going slower but they seemed to think that it ...Read More
When I woke up, my ankle and knee was worse. I decided to wait for it to warm up, so spent the morning fixing a few things with the bike and sewing my crash-bar bags. There was a hot shower set-up in the compound and I badly needed one. I left around 10 am after filling up in the city. There is usually no electricity so you have to find a pump with a working generator. The day was entirely composed of washboards alternating between gravel and sand. I had to take side roads which were less consistent but had ...Read More
I spent all of the first day riding on washboards, hoping that it wouldn't be the same for the next 1000 miles to UB. It was very hard on the suspension. Trying to float over them at high speed -like the locals do- felt very dangerous, and there was no in-between. No matter how hard I tried, I wasn't doing proper mileage. I couldn't ride on the third gear for long enough to maintain a proper speed. There was always some sort of an obstacle ahead. There was a gravel stretch for a few miles where I felt comfortable to ...Read More
I used to have a recurring dream when I was a little boy. In fact, it was more like a nightmare, surfacing from the depths of my mind, whenever I was sick with high fever. I'm in a desert, trying to walk on top of a white (oil?) pipeline suspended in the air, half a meter from the ground. It extends towards the horizon for as long as the eye can see. I try to keep in balance on the round surface like a tightrope walker. It's hard, and I sometimes fall down on the ground. It's not a sandy ...Read More
I have to admit that I was a little scared. First, the little incident in Kyrgyzstan that served as a prelude, then the story of a cyclist I met on the road - poor guy had been attacked by four men, who stole everything except his passport and bicycle then left him in the middle of the desert tied up with the cover of his sleeping bag around his head - and Jehan's SMS message - stating that he had been attacked, fleed a home at night and spent another one in jail... It seemed almost impossible that I would ...Read More
