TRAVEL FEATURE - RUSSIA
MATTHEW BISHOP
EAT!
DRINK VODKA?
W
e’re in Canada, wondering
where to go next. We’d just
ridden from London to Cape
Town and then Santiago
to Vancouver. We had originally
planned to ship to Singapore and
drive home via South East Asia but
despite our best efforts in the plan-
ning room; there was just no way
through.
We couldn’t pass through the
Himalayas because of the time of
year, there’d be too much snow on
the passes. Even if it was summer,
we would have struggled due to the
altitude (we learnt that the hard
way after literally pushing the outfit
through the Andes). The other op-
tions were to either go through Iran
or China.
China has the whole compulsory
guide thing so prices for our kind
of trip would have been upward of
AU$20,000 (out of our budget) and
Iran had literally just decided to stop
all people with a UK passport riding
TRAVERSE 19
through their country – even with a
guide. This ruled Singapore out. We
had to look for another way home.
There was only one – through Siberia
…
By the time we had got the bike to
Vladivostok, far-east Russia, and got
it out of the port, it was November
14th 2018. We were going to be facing
one of the harshest landscapes in the
world, bang in the middle of winter.
We tried to equip ourselves and the
scooter as best we could. We fitted
a screen as well as Oxford heated
grips and got a couple of the Oxford
scooter skirts, to keep the wind chill
at bay. Then for us, we bought arctic
parka jackets from Canada and had
some Snugpak insulation layers from
the UK too. After giving the bike the
service of its life in Vladivostok, we
were ready, and we headed out in to
the abyss.
The first few days were plain
sailing. It was a chilly -10 or -15°c
but there was no snow and very little