lator: "I'm just tired. 3 hours sleep,
rode bike 12 hours and no food since
yesterday."
She gives instructions; the Russian
man sharing my room makes me
sugary coffee and my lady host pre-
pares borsh and fusses about me like
a mother ...
Trucks that blunder their way past
me fill the air with a cloud of white
dust so thick that all visibility except
for a few metres in front of the wheel
is obliterated. Slow down and you
risk being killed by a truck coming
from behind; in that obscuring cloud
of dust, no driver would see you until
he felt the crushing of your bones
under his wheels.
It is two long hours before the
road begins to improve and I ride in
the heat through a land bleached of
colour, an atmosphere paled by dust
and the smoke from forest fires that
plague the taiga each summer. By
now I am filthy with a layer of dust
covering my clothes, sand in my teeth
and my eyes, oil from the blown forks are something to behold and almost all are
spewing onto my jeans and boots
documented ... something we at Traverse
which absorb a thick layer of sand
love.
only to be coated with oil again. The
After a lifetime of teaching Lawrence has
heat is enervating and by midday I
found the time to indulge in his passion for
can feel my body weakening …
travel and adventure and shares it through
A ferry is about to disembark. I
his books, all available at Amazon in ebook or
ride up the metal ramp, park my
paperback form.
bike between two large 6WD Kamaz
Lawrence's piece on Russia is explained in
trucks, kill the engine and drag my-
greater detail in his book Two Fingers On The
self wearily off the bike.
Jugular, it too can be found on Amazon.
A group of men watch me. I
approach them, and ask, "Yakutsk?"
It's a stupid question but I don't want
to make a mistake when so close to
home.
"Da," they nod, taking in the state
of me with their eyes.
It is done. LB
Lawrence Bransby is an award winning
author of several novels plus non-fiction
travelogues that follow his many adventures
on both two and four wheels. His adventures
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