Kulturide East Adventure: Niznij novgorod to Ulaanbaatar

From Moscow to Ekaterinburg

We left Moscow and headed towards other Russian fields and lands.

Nijnii Novgorod, oh, you beautiful city with amazing night life. We go to a hostel we knew from Rotea, the geography teacher. Alex's GPS goes wild and we find ourselves on a trail, going down, but we manage to find the destination. From under a bridge we can see, the one and only, Fabrika Hostel.

2 beautiful Russian girls await us at the door. Dasha has a Romanian grandma. They invite us to a narghilea, in return we give them what's left from tuica and slowly the girls start to remember that when Rotea was there they ended up swimming in the river at midnight. They tell us they'd be back in 3 hours so the boys get excited, eat well to prepare for a long night, wear parfum, put on their only best clothes. After an hour of playing backgammon, Ania confesses she learnt to play well from her boyfriend who's in prison. All ships sink. We still get a night tour of the city and everybody's happy.

In the morning we wake up early to start packing but we start finding reasons to skip school today and go back to sleep. It rains all day and we congratulate ourselves for being so wise.

On our way to Kazan we encounter a problem: 2 spokes are having a riot on Denisa's rear wheel. Where the heck can we find spokes now? We're moving mountains, call at Fabrika hostel, Tania from the reception writes on moto forums and in the end, somebody calls. I can help! Oh, what a great news, do you have spokes, or do you know where we can find some? He doesn't understand a thing, laughs and sais only: I can help! That's how we met Misha, a biker from Kazan, which takes us to a shop, we buy a new set of Chineese spokes and we go together to the oldest moto service in town. There, the guys throw at us with tools and Radu manages to replace the rebel spokes. Aidar, the guy at the service, is very excited to show us around his garage, including his prototype which could make crossing Mongolia a piece of cake. They are more than nice and charge us no money.

In the evening to go out for a beer, Misha gives us some wonderful advice and Aidar insists on taking us on a car tour around the city, by night. Dear bad roads, thank you for breaking our spokes!

We spend 2 nights camping because we're also off the budget. We still have energy to feed the mosquitos and pack wet tents. The trails towards the forest become swamps in the morning. After a slalom on a muddy trail, Deni is proad she handled it well. To soon she congratulates herself. When she sees the main road - the light at the end of the tunnel, she feels relaxed and jumps off her bike. Too good it's raining and all the mistakes are washed out. Also the mud on the trousers. With all the rain, the sheep fur is still getting brown. And I swear it's just from the mud.

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From Ekaterinburg to Novosibirsk

The things got tough. We strated with a break, on the side of the road, just like we like it. We befriend a truck driver at the spontaneous stop lights on the road. First he offers us some tea, then he lets us know we have a flat tire. What a short relationship. We discover that another rebel spoke disappeared completely on the rear wheel of Deni's bike. We find it later swallowed by the inner tube, minutes after we stich it. We stich it again while Radu changes all the spokes on the rear wheel, just to be sure. 3 hours of rain and mosquitoes and it's done.

Straight roads, many kilometers and nothing much to see around. We've been sleeping with mosquitoes for quite a while now and we think it's time to set camp around a village. There things could be easier for us. We found a village - checked, started looking for a store to buy food and met 2 very happy Russians guys. We will help you guys, don't worry - and throw in our arms their barbecue leftovers. Because we understand 3 words in Russian, Dima and Miha believe we can handle 300 in a minute.

Deni and Alex are taken for a ride again, this time to look for food. After a while the car stops and Dima says something about some cows. Here's the store? Here? Noooo. And our friend makes 2 more steps and gets ready for a number 1. As a compensation for having to wait, we receive his opened beer. We realise we should get somehting for them to drink as well and order 10 beers. The women at the store throws disperately at us 6 plastic bottles of 2l each. That's all I have, but how are you gonna drink so much any way? That's not what we expected, of course, so we leave only with 3 bottles which rest unopened all night because everybody is in the mood for vodka now. Nothing gets left behind so we use the left beer to wash 2 apples in the morning.

We put the tent and plant a fire with our now good friends. Dima's wife calls and he is proud to tell her that he's drinking with some Romanians and yes, yes, he will get her barbecue plate back. We manage not to burn down the fields, to convince Miha it's not ok to go for a ride drunk and that Radu's mosquitoes bites are not serious enough to take him to a hospital. At least that's what we thought then.

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From Novosibirsk to Baikal

We relax on the shore of Baikal lake, at almost a month after we left Romania. Guys, we've been through so many together. Nobody is like they said they were but it's alright. Alex changes his mind a lot, Deni is still not riding well enough, Radu is not enjoying this trip as he should, Tudor knows it all and Codrut, well, Codrut just left by himself to Mongolia. Dar vce normalna, we get along just fine!

But we didn' fly from Novosibirsk to Baikal, actually we moved slowly. We get a windy day and Denisa stops on the side of the road and refuses to be blown by the wind between trucks. The men are not content, they threaten to leave her behind but in the end the spirits calm down and we set camp early. Many jokes follow but what are friends for if not making jokes?

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PART 1

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