Day 86, 25th August Isil’kul’ - Moskalenki - Mar’janovka A nine o’clock start and rain immediately. The wind had made a 180 turn too and was blowing directly into our faces. It was utterly miserable. After 25 miles there was the first very welcome café, then after another 30 miles, the next - we were totally soaked through. Our goal was Omsk to meet Rory who was waiting for us. There were no phones to establish contact, so we decided after 60 miles to leave the next 20 or so to Omsk for the morning. I was glad to get into [View Full Entry]

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Day 84, 23rd August Petropavlovsk We like this place so much so that we decided to stay another night, which means a rush to the border tomorrow before our transit visas expire. Today, we ate at a great restaurant, enough food to fill us up for hours. Then I went off with Tobes to find the post office and the internet café to do some emailing. There was a huge police presence in town due to a diplomatic visit by some Turkish delegates. The town is quite pleasant with a huge pedestrian street cutting through it. There seems to be a [View Full Entry]

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Day 82, 21st August Nalymovo - Makuchino - Zotino We’ve been sleeping twelve-hour nights because the days are getting shorter. The day was spent going along quieter, straight roads. Good weather, the wind behind us. We drank lots of coffee, ate at cafes, and near the last police checkpoint (where they wanted to see our Kazakh transit visas) a few miles before the border, we drank lots of beer before cycling off to find a place to camp. On the way, I had another problem with my front rack which I managed to repair while Toby cooked *gretchka. It had been [View Full Entry]

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Day 79, 18th August. Chelyabinsk - Styuchi Today we leave Chelyabinsk, except for Rory. His leg is quite bad and he needs to see a specialist. We have arranged to meet up in Omsk in a weeks time, he’ll catch the train there. Natasha has sorted Scott’s visa out, Toby is fine. Dima, the guy from the bike shop has decided to join us for the day. He checked my bike over and was shocked by the state of my front wheel. After a phone call we set off and I picked up a new wheel from a good bike shop [View Full Entry]

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Day 76, 15th August. Chelyabinsk Woke up with a bad hangover and hearing stories of my terrible drunken behaviour. They thought it was quite funny actually. But I vowed to keep off the alcohol for a month! I spent the day doing stuff, washing clothes, putting my new front pannier rack on, and changing the tyres. The bad news was that my back wheel needed replacing at a cost of around 40 pounds, due to the bad buckling I received on a bump in Moldova. I managed to phone my mum and dad, all at home is well except that my [View Full Entry]

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Day 75, 14th August. Miass - Chelyabinsk (link to current route map) http://www.travelblog.org/gmaps/map_1Lj.html I was up and ready to go before the others, so I set off alone to find the first roadside café and have a coffee and cake. The others turned up and we ate a big breakfast in the better café next door. It was a 75 mile ride today, we were out of the mountains, and the landscape flattened out considerably, the wind behind us made good speed. We saw some roadside *Samovars and stopped off for a real cup of Russian tea, only to be disappointed. [View Full Entry]

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Day 74, 13th August. Ust’katav - Satka - (EUROPE / ASIA BORDER) - Miass Woke up for an early start and began with a great four and a half mile downhill to blow the cobwebs away, there were uphills to follow but they didn’t seem that severe. The Urals kept going on and on into the distance, huge tree-covered hills with a few bare mountain tops. They kind of reminded me of Scotland and it was hard to think that I was in Russia. Just over ten years ago this journey would have been impossible. On an uphill, I left a [View Full Entry]

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Day 68, 7th August. Marx - Balakovo - Pugachev It was raining when I awoke, my legs were aching, I felt tired, my body said to me, “one more hour, you have every excuse to sleep … go on”. But my mind told me to get up and get moving. So I did just that and hit the road in the rain. Not long after, the rain stopped for the day and the wind was in my favour as I headed east and slightly northwards. There were cows at the side of the road, no cows further south than here. I [View Full Entry]

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Day 65, 4th August. Kalac na Donu - Volgograd - Primorsk Today was to be a day of great changes… We headed the 30 miles into Volgograd stopping for bread, cheese, eggs and milk on the way. Scott made a good roadside find; a Soviet passport complete with leather holder and 1,500 roubles! I don’t know what he’ll do with it. At the Volgograd sign we made a stop for photos, then headed for the centre, ending up right outside the Hotel Volgograd where we thought Toby may be. Rory checked, and he was there! Toby had had the chance to [View Full Entry]

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A NOTE ON PHOTOGRAPHS: As you will notice during this journal, the quality of photos vary greatly. This is due to the sharing of images from four cameras, and the different formats they posess, not to mention the ways that images need to be sent. As the journey progresses, it's worth looking back through the travel journal for extra images that have been added which will be made available over the next several months. Thanks. ANDY. Day 62, 1st August. Rostov na Donu - Sahty - Belaja Kaltiva Two months on the road already and over 3,000 miles cycling done. That’s [View Full Entry]

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