Ah yes… and what an experience it was. There were camels, herdsmen with their horses, nomads scattered throughout nearby their Gers (Mongolian traditional houses), some occasional vehicle traffic (good safety net), lotsa sun, frosty mornings (that’s below zero), many flat tires, a seemingly ever-changing vegetation, a guiding line of electricity posts, a never-ending series of small rolling hills, etc but eventually a little border town, adjacent to the Chinese border, appeared as an oasis would in the middle of the desert. Clearly, one much better appreciates the availability of anything, even the most simplest and typically most available of goods after a few days alone in the desert. The fragility of life and our vulnerability to the elements becomes dangerously evident.

That said, we did have to face some serious challenges. About 120 km to the end (a day, a day and a half of cycling in the desert), a new highway under development splits from our guiding line of telephone post and railway line. We followed it, reasoning that it would reach every, albeit rare, village along the way. Well, we were wrong and ran out of provisions. Meals were skipped and liquids became quite scarce but thankfully, we magically bumped into Cynthia and Dominique who, filled with provisions, generously offered to help us for the next little while until the border. To them, we will remain forever grateful and we wish them the best of luck on their cycling adventure (cnouskonpedale.wordpress.com). But eh, drama aside, a little adventure in the desert makes for lovely story-telling afterwards All is very well now and we are incredibly excited to finish in Beijing in a matter of days now.

China, here we come.

Damien, Mongolia / China Border

We are now officially out of Russia.

A lot has happened, and it would take a lot of time to make a linear story, so I am going to summarize.

Past couples of weeks were quite movemented. Bike breakdowns, weather, roads…

It was all fun in the end (But I suppose it depends on the definition of fun )

We managed to make it to Irkutsk as per Damien’s post. But shortly after we had some police issues of the street coming out of the Internet Cafe. Our first paperwork examination with the police lead us to their office in an armored jeep. No money lost, just a little cultural exchange

What can I say about Russians… ?

Maybe they don’t care about their environment as much as in Canada. Lots of plastic bottles and garbage on the side of the road, black smokes coming out of various places… The good side is that the train goes across the whole country…and bus stops are everywhere. Even the most remote places there is a bus shelter.

Throughout Siberia, a lot of people were selling vegetables and products they were directly getting from their environment. It is important to note that these people, already modest, depend a lot on their environment. A degradation of it would only increase their poverty. Truck drivers have been very courteous when passing us. The car drivers a bit less. We received a lot of honks… It is now just a reflex for me to wave a “hello/thank you” with my left hand. It is a well intentioned honk 90% of the time, but it is not the greatest thing to someone on a bike.

Along the road we met a lot of people… Very often we had the same questions (where are you going, where are you from, how many kms per day, how many speed your bike has, how much does it cost…)

Again this is a well intentioned gesture, but after 7000 kilometers, getting the same question day after day can take a toll on an individual. Russians have been very helpful to us. Very often people would come on their own to help. Sometimes not realizing how serious of a breakdown is a broken rack… people would still ask questions and try to chat while we were working hard to fix the issue…. But everything was out of good heart and without people’s help everything would have been harder.

Russians were also very generous. We were offered from coffee to Vodka passing by bottles of beers (even started ones… !) Apples, grapes watermelons (hehe carrying it on a bike is interesting )

So lots of help and lots of bike shops as well. There are many people we should thank (and we will do it once back in Canada) but I have to thank the people at Alpindustria.ru, Kemerovo.

A very special thank you to Den, Ilya, Nastya, Artim, Ksuna, Alex, Ivan…