Motorcycle Explorer Issue 6
‘A
bout half of the complete circle was on broken up asphalt or off road. The roads
were bad pretty much from the other side of Prague, and there were times further along when I
felt completely out of control; Mongolia is the perfect example of that. It’s a stunning country,
but it was the real challenge. It was the furthest from Western civilisation I’d ever been and with
my job I’ve been to a lot of places; from the movies I’ve done my favourite was Emerald Forest
which is set in the jungles of South America. In Mongolia, everyone outside of Ulaanbaatar is still
living like Genghis Khan in nomadic tents. The first four or five days I was there was a roller
coaster of emotion. I wasn’t scared, I was terrified.’
‘I was nervous of the tracks which were frequently in really awful condition and would suddenly
split off in ten different directions; you’d have no idea which was the right way to go. My brain
just sort of fogged over so I had to sit back and try to put everything into perspective; you have
to start to be a bit more relaxed and fatalistic about things. The belief that a solution to a
problem will present itself to you is an amazing thing to have learned by the time you do the
‘Road of Bones’ in Russia. Most of the rivers don’t have bridges and some are too deep to ride
across. I remember one where we just sat and waited; in the rain and quite happy. Even though it
was the ‘Road of Bones’, we were sure that someone or something would come along to help us
sooner or later. It did, in the form of a massive truck specially designed to deal with the depth
and speed of these rivers. This is a fantastic road and one of the highlights of the trip. It runs
across the tundra and is literally made in part with the bones of the hundreds of people who
laboured to make it, and died in their efforts. When you are riding this you are surrounded by the
massive vastness of Russia and as you battle with the road you just have this amazing sense of
awe. There are hundreds of thousands of square miles around you and just this one road.’
‘The load we were carrying on the bikes didn’t help us to deal with the roads. We’d been told so
many times that we were carrying too much kit. Even so we set off with far too much, though in
our minds we only had the bare essentials. It wasn’t until half way through the trip that we had a
radical throwing out session. The bikes were top heavy and they were awful to ride as a result;
we’d managed to break the frames on them! I was able to get rid of about twenty kilo’s.’
‘The only bit we didn’t ride was one section in Russia where we took the train. I didn’t really want
to do that but common sense dictated, and it was quite an incredible adventure just getting on
the train; another highlight of the trip. It was a great feeling when eventually we heard the words
“Ni Problem” because at last we knew that it was going to happen. We ended up on a box car,
having to hide because we’d blagged our way on board but we could open the doors when the
train was underway and the scenery was spectacular. Getting the bikes back off the train over a
five foot drop on a tiny plank that was almost vertical was a nightmare, but good fun.’
What is it about your personality that helped you do a trip like this? ‘Doing this trip emphasised
my faults and there were a few things I had to address; one was that I have a short fuse and I
wasn’t helping the trip with my behaviour. I also tended not to listen to people if I thought I was
right, and that wasn’t very healthy but I also realised that I do have a pretty good sense about
situations and people. Once you get rid of unfounded fears the trip hones this sort of ability.
About half way through the trip I realised that, instead of being quite nervous about people, and
I guess thinking that everyone was out to get us, they really were just interested in us as people
and what we were doing. It’s a great feeling when you discover that you don’t have to be wary of
everyone. One of the things that amazed me the most about this trip was the kindness of the
people we met. The Mongolian people, for example, have an amazing tradition of hospitality and
everywhere we went we found people who put our own western standards of hospitality to
shame. People who had the least were the most open, kind and friendly.’