The third Russian motorcycle trip.
BY GAIL AND ERIC HAWS
Nyet, Nyet, Nyet! No, No, No! You do not have permission
to enter the Soviet Union and never by motorcycle. We were
told this over and over by both the US and USSR governments.
So we went anyway. Three times. In 1990, 1991, and 1992.
The first time we entered western Russia at the Hungarian
border. Someone had forgotten to tell the guards not to let
us in. We traveled to the Baltics, Lithuania, Latvia,
Estonia, and visited Leningrad leaving Russia at the Finnish
border. A few before had traveled in Russia but only in
groups, escorted by an official and after paying large
sums of money to the Soviets. We were the first to travel
alone by motorcycle, paying no one.
The next year, 1991, we thought we were ready for a greater
adventure, after all, we had always been able to turn
misfortune into opportunity. We decided to travel across
Russia, east to west. We crated our motorcycle and shipped it
to Magadan, a large coastal city in northern Siberia, 1500 miles
north of Vadalostok, the eastern terminal of the
Trans-Siberian railroad. We flew to Magadan from Oregon but
our motorcycle did not arrive. It was lost, on a journey
of its own, so we went by jeep a 1000 miles, met two
Russian friends and drove their motorcycles 3000 miles
across Siberia until mechanical problems forced us to stop.
In .July 1992 we returned. Our motorcycle had finally
reached Magadan and we decided to again attempt to travel
across Russia. Luck was not with us. One of our office
staff died shortly before we left and there was no time to
hire a replacement. In Magadan we found the motorcycle
shipping crate had been completely smashed and everything
had been stolen except the motorcycle itself. There was no
charger for the battery, no sparkplugs, and no oil. But,
the Russians have motorcycles so we were able to scrounge
everything even the right size sparkplugs.
Then we were off into Siberia. Larger than the US, it
encompasses 8 time zones, is thinly populated with only 25
million people, accounts for the eastern two-thirds of
Russia, but has few roads. What roads there may be are
mud, gravel, sand, dirt, or mere tracks, but not paved.
There are no roads across Russia anyplace so everyone
travels by train, boat, barge, or airplane but we were
determined to cross only by motorcycle.
Camping that first night we made a serious mistake. We hung
the food bag in a tree as does anyone camping in bear
country, but human 'bears' stole it and two other small
bags we had thoughtlessly left outside the tent on the
ground cloth. Now, we had no food and would have to live off
the land. Food is scarce in Russia and when available it is
unappetizing and bland.
When we reported the theft to the local police at midnight,
another person was also there, we thought he was an undercover
policeman , but it turned out he was the mayor of a town 100 miles west along
our route. He encouraged the local police to call out the
blood hounds, which they literally did, but to no avail, especially when they found a cat. He
escorted us to his town at four in the morning where he
replenished our camping supplies the best he could. So now
we were not foodless, Just a little foolish.
CROSSING FLOODED RIVER ON BARGE
When one goes on an adventure one likes to take little items
to help ease the pain of the harsh journey, such as mosquito
replellant. but this too had been stolen. Siberia is
very marshy in parts which means thousands of mosquitoes.
Whenever we stopped we were attacked by these pests and so
traveled 15 hours a day, stopping only to erect our tent to
seek refuge.
The third day, now going
south, and about 150 north of Magadan, the rear tire blew out. Our
BMW has a 17 inch rear tire. Russians only have 16 and 18
inch tires. There could be no local replacement and there
is no UPS in Russia. But the breakdown occurred only a
mile from a small, collective reindeer farm not marked on
the map. They took us in and radioed our contact in
Magadan to fly the spare tire we had left to Khandga, the
next city two hundred miles south. We patched the rear tire
and slowly drove there.
The roads in Siberia are designed only for truck traffic.
No one ever drives for pleasure. The roads are rough but
worse are the bridges, where they exist. Every bridge had a
large hole in it but we only fell in one. But often there
were no bridges so we forded many rivers before reaching
Khandga. We picked up the spare tire and crossed the
Aldan river by barge to find the shore engulfed in a flood
destroying all inland bridges. We loaded our motorcycle
onto an amphibious vehicle and at 9:00 p.m. motored some
two to five miles to reach dry land. Well, dry when it is
not raining. Now it was raining and we had 2 feet of mud.
But 1000 miles away was Tynda, our next goal, where we were
to meet our two motorcycle friends.
We finally arrived in Tynda five days late with a broken
transmission. Our friends, thinking we were not coming, had
just departed for the Trans-Siberian railroad hundreds of
miles south to load their motorcycles on the train and
return to western Russia. We were stranded in Tynda, the
most southern point of our trip. The year before, along the
same route, we had ran out of gas. Since there are no gas
stations one stops trucks and asks for gas. That is how we
met Slava, a Russian hunter, who now was living in Tynda.
With the help of undercover police, we found his home.
SLAVA THE HUNTER ON TOP OF HIS HOUSE GETTING WATER FOR A SHOWER BY USING THE SUNS HEAT.
That night S1ava drove us in an old army truck to the
Trans-Siberian where at 4 a.m we found Nikolai and
Vanya just before they boarded the train. Our other
problem, the broken transmission was solved by taking it
apart, finding a spacer which had broken and making
one. Three days later we were ready to resume our journey
which would prove to be the roughest and most difficult part
of the entire ordeal.
We planned to travel 1500 miles west along theðÐ Baikal-Amur-
Mainline, (BAM) a railroad built parallel to the
Trans-Siberian railroad. The latter runs south of Lake
Baikal along the China border until it reaches Vladivostok.
But the Russians were afraid that the Chinese might cross the
boarder and cut the rail line. So in the 1970's the BAM was
built five hundred miles to the north. The BAM, going north of Lake Baikal, also opened
up previously inaccessible Siberian lands. However, there
was no road. We hoped that along the BAM there might at
a service road and there was, twenty years ago.
Having already come 1000 miles alone we were not going
to let the lack of roads stop us. And, having done the same trip the year
before we knew that while it might be possible in dryer weather, it would
be very difficult, and with the heavy rains we had encountered on this
trip, it would be an awful ordeal.
Day after day it rained. It rained 45 of 55 days of our trip, raining
harder the further west we traveled. Mountains became
torrents of mud, mud became swamps and swamps became raging
rivers.
Fortunately, all the large rivers still had bridges
although sometimes we had use railroad bridges, highly
dangerous with unknown train schedules. Sometimes the
bridges had to be repaired.
The sub frame, the pannier frame and the panniers themselves, on our BMW, broke,
more than once, but we found welders at railroad yards.
The motorcycle shock broke causing a bumpy trip to become
painful. We went down so many times in the mud we stopped
counting, but never hard enough to cause serious injury. We
stopped trucks and bought or often were given gas as a
gift, usually along with food. The Russian were very
generous, not having seen Americans before. Finally we
reached the northern tip of Lake Baikal. We thought that
the further west we went the better the roads would be, we
were wrong. The road west from Lake Baikal to Bratz was
even rougher and more difficult. As before, we always
camped, traveling 12 to 15 hours a day, waking up in the
rain and eating the same monotonous food, losing 13% of our
body weight.
After 4000 miles of unpaved roads, south of Bratz, we came
upon the main highway. It was now only some 4000 miles to
Moscow. But now the road was paved except for a 1000 mile
mud detour between Novosibirsk and Omsk due to more
flooding. After forty days in torrents of rain and heavy,
dangerous truck traffic, we reached Moscow. It was along this stretch
that we missed our stolen mirrors because our motorcycle was in
such bad condition that we could not travel very fast.
Our plan had been to go to Munich but because of the
condition of our BMW motorcycle and because BMW AG refused
to help us, we headed to the nearest western
country--Finland. In fact, not only did BMW refuse to mail
us a circlip for the transmission but they asked the
Russians not to give us any more assistance. Fortunately the
Russians did provide us more help and even repaired our
shock by using the spring from ours and combining it with a
Lada shock to make us að serviceable one. When we reached
Finland and had our shock replaced, BMW
refused to return the Russian shock to us which we had
wanted to keep as a sovernier.
Our original plans where to travel from Magadan, to Moscow and
then to Munich. But because of the hostile attitude of BMW
AG and the fact that our GS was in such bad shape we did take
the quickest route out of Russia; Moscow to Finland as mentioned.
We said good by to our Russian motorcycle friends and entered
Finland on the 55th day. When we left Russia it was
very dark and pouring rain so the Russian custom officer let us park
under a shelter as we cleared their post. Then into Finland where
customs searched us by having a dog smell our GS and then they
looked over the contents of our baggage. We asked what
the dog was for and they said "drugs." We asked
about vodka and customs agent pointed to his
nose. By now it was dark and rainy but we could not find
a place to stay so we headed toward a town about 60 miles
away that we had stayed in before.
The next day we were hoping to make it the next 50 miles to Helsinki
so we bought just enough gas to get us there and to burn the motorcycle
in a bonfire.
We had been in Helsinki before and there we had a motorcycle
friend Saku and his wife Malla. Saku has an older style
GS and has two other short comings. He is a vegaterian and a
cat lover. These shortcomings are more than made up by
the strength of his wife, Malla. Unfortunately, the highest point
in Finland is not more than 1000 feet. When Saku took
Malla to the mountains of Norway she soon found that she
did not like heights. Plus she discovered that she can
not breath and scream going up mountain passes on a GS at
the same time. Later we will relate briefly
Saku's bad luck with his GS.
Unwisely, we decided not to burn our GS in a bonfire and
left it at the local dealer and thought our problems were
over. But on arriving in the US we received a telegram
saying BMW's were not selling in Finland, which did not
surprise us after our experience with the motorcycle, the
dealer had gone bankrupt, and our motorcycle was being
shipped elsewhere once again on a trip of its own.
Still we were the first to cross Russia by vehicle, received
a Guinesses Certificate for our ordeal, made numerous
friends, took over 400 picture plus 10 hours of video. We
explored parts of Russia untraveled by westerners, and saw
it before it changed with the breakup of the Soviet Empire.
We decided that we would continue our journey west and not
return to Russia. With the help of friends in Finland, Saku
and Malla, we found our motorcycle, paid $3000 in
damages, including a new sub frame, shock, and transmission
repairs. Once again, BMW let us down by refusing to pay
all the damages although the motorcycle was still under
warranty. They said that we had voided our warranty by
having service performed in Russia by unauthorized
personnel. We took our motorcycle across Finland, Sweden
and Norway to the port in Bergen, loaded our motorcycle on a
ferry and went to Iceland and toured that country.
The next year, after storing our BMW in Finland, we toured
the Baltics, Poland, and Germany. We began the last part of
that tour, heading for the North Cape in Norway, when we
discovered that the main frame had fractured. After welding
the break, the electrical system went out but we managed to
repair the motorcycle to at least run, but without any
charge going to the battery. So, we disconnected the
headlight and planned to stop every 100 miles or so to
recharge. In other words, we now had an electric
motorcycle. A few miles from the North Cape the motor
disintegrated. So much for that motorcycle.
Now, we changed our plans. We had gone around the world
east to west. The decision was to go around the world south
to north. In two trips we toured New Zealand. Then we shipped a used, BMW
GS, to Melbourne. We rode the Great Ocean road and then went to
Tasmania where we encountered more ice and snow than we did
in Iceland. But that is another story. We left the GS in
Townsville so we can return to continue the trip north,
hopefully, into Indonesia and then SE Asia.
We want to continue the adventures until we reach Siberia.
We'll ride again across Russia to Turkey, making a turn
south continuing through Africa to South Africa. From there
we'll ship the motorcycle to South America. Motorcycle
adventures are never finished, only the motorcycles, if one
is riding a BMW.
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Gail and Eric Haws
Note: A video of this journey is available. Go to Resources.
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