too much vodka and because he
wasn’t eating, he drank way too much
and got a bit carried away, but that’s a
story for another day. It was our first
experience of Russian hospitality and
it was brilliant.
The following morning, we woke
feeling a little hungover and we were
staring down the barrel of the most
isolated part of the journey.
From here we would have to
continue north to skirt around the
top of China before we could start
heading south again towards Chita,
the next big town, some 2,000 kilo-
metres away. We knew there would
be many villages and roadside motels
in between Khabarovsk and Chita
but a look on google maps would tell
us that there could be stretches of
hundreds of kilometres of complete-
ly nothing. We had Russian guys on
Facebook messaging us and asking us
not to continue, stressing that we re-
ally would go hundreds of kilometres
without seeing another person.
Armed with our hangovers, we
ventured on.
We spent the next couple of days
crawling up the side of China. With
every mile further north, the con-
ditions seemed to get worse. It got
colder but worse than that, it seemed
to get brighter. The sun well and tru-
ly had his hat on, and the landscape
was so, so bright.
All we had to protect our eyes was
our sun visor in our helmets and we
couldn’t use it because it froze up
too quickly. In fact, we couldn’t use
our visors at all. Temperatures were
around -25°C which makes the mois-
ture freeze up, causing a sheet of ice
to form in-between your visor and
your pin lock. We just had to squint
and hope for the best. We would en-
ter normal rooms and be stumbling
around thinking they were pitch
black while we waited for our eyes to
readjust.
By November 19th things started
to feel really cold. Temperatures
TRAVERSE 22
dropped in to the low -20°C’s and the
wind picked up. At that temperature,
when the wind really starts blowing,
it’s just awful. Each gust feels like it
cuts right through you and any skin
you leave exposed, even for a milli-
second, feels like it’s getting ripped
off and carried away.
Surprisingly, the coldest place to be
in these conditions is in the sidecar.
You’d think that the screen and roof
would protect you a bit but because
you literally sit and do nothing, you
just freeze up. At least on the bike,
you’re fighting the sidecar to stay on
the road and you’re keeping warm
that way.
Around midday on the 19th, I
had been sat in the sidecar for an
hour and was properly cold. We just
needed to get inside to reset. I asked
Reece to pull in at anything we could
find. Travelling at around 60kph, this
can be a long time.
Fifty kilometres passed and noth-
ing. Sixty kilometres, nothing. Sev-