For the first 8000 kilometers of our journey we had few choices of routes in that, over most of the Eurasian Steppe there are few roads connecting any two places. We would pick our next destination and ride there on the only route we could find. Sometimes this meant small, remote tracks where we were excited to see another car, horse, anything that could confirm our choice at the last intersection. At other times, however, this reality put us in heavy traffic on the only through road across huge distances. Russia was particularly rough as only one main road plies the whole of Southern Siberia and we shared that road with a never ending flow of aggressive trucks and maniac drivers. In Romania we found a New England-esque "you can't get there from here" sort of ... read more

Riding across the vast plains of southern Russia we had a hard time imagining what any government could possibly want with all of this flat, dry land. As it stands now, the federation is the largest country in the world. Trying to picture all of this PLUS the former CIS states is mind blowing given that Moscow is closer to New York than the Russian Far East. Here in the Crimean Penninsula, however, it is easy to see how a superpower would want to lay claim to a destination so removed from its core. This place is truly gorgeous and different in every way from the rest of the landscapes on our route. Riding through vineyards high above the sea in the shadows of alpine peaks we are exhaulted after 5000 kilometers of flat, flat and ... read more

When the Soviet empire collapsed in the early nineties it was heralded in the west. The thought of centrally mandated collectivism makes a capitalist's blood run cold and many (if not most) Americans view, or were taught to view this shift as a great victory in the name of the human spirit. The communists doubtlesssly had innumerable failings but, as western popular media triumphed through "kill-a-commie" films and the end of the "Cold War" was heralded, many Russians suffered and starved. The loss of a way of life that was a full two generations thick proved stifling and left many without the means to survive. To us, these casualties never had a human face, untill now. Things have doubtlesly stabalized these days but many older Russians still have warm regards for the good old days when ... read more

Definitions: gol -mongolian for river, nuur -Mongolian for lake, aimag -a mongolian state or province, asalam aleykhem -Kazakh for peace be with you. The Bohmoron Gol drains several lakes high in the boundary ranges which seperate Russia from Mongolia. It then flows through a large, wide (50 km +), rocky valley rimmed with 4000 m + peaks before dumping heavily turbid water into broad, shallow Achit Nuur. Along this course, the river devides Uvs aimag to the northeast from Bayan-Olgii aimag, the western most political division in the country. In dividing the two aimags, the mighty Bohmoron also divides two distinctly different cultures. On the Uvs side, the virtually plantless, rocky plains are occupied by a mostly Kalkh Mongol population, who ethnically make up roughly 90 percent of all Mongolian citizens. Two days drive over high, ... read more

We hit a strip of pavement a dozen kilometers before Moron. It felt like riding into some glassy, fourth dimensional plane. After a few days the riding style becomes adapted to dirt roads and a brief return to pavement can be an exulting (if eerie) experience. Two weeks of pounding the dirt have brought us here healthy and sure footed with only one slashed tire to show for it. We heard many a sadistic tale of the horrors of Mongolian roads but, knock on sand, few have come to fruition in the 700+ kilometers since we left the scruffy pavement of the capitol. The multitude of tracks leading off in all directions has proven to be more of a help than the navigational nightmare we had imagined. If we do not like the conditions of ... read more