On our day of departure we’d left the Alpha hotel in Takaoka at GPS: N36 44.525 E137 01.056 and paid the equivalent of $83, cheap by Japanese standards and ridden the 10 minutes back the FKK offices in Fushiki at GPS: N36 47.691 E137 03.768. We were courteously dealt with and shown to a small plain room on the 2nd floor to wait for the guy in charge of Russian exports. Five minutes in to the meeting and he explains that we need to pay 10,000 yen per bike ($100) for their services and five minutes after that, we’ve explained that we don’t require any services. We have our JAF authenticated carnets, and the JAF authentication form itself. The only other document that Japanese customs required is a plain paper print out of the vehicles details, engine size, weight etc. all of which is copied from our docs. After a little while he agreed that he could charge 5,000 yen per bike instead. A little while later again and he’d become bored of us and simply stated, “OK, no charge”. It was as easy as that. No clever words or arguments.

With the plain print sorted Mr. FKK accompanied us to the customs’ building at GPS: N36 47.633 E137 03.716, just a short walk. At the customs building on the second floor, the customs officer, filled out the carnets and processed our docs with all the urgency of a constipated tortoise. It was physically painful to watch. All the time we stand, watch and smile, like lobotomy survivors on E.

With FKK and customs complete we headed to the ticket office which sits right in between FKK and customs. By 12:00pm we’d been in and picked up our ferry tickets and it felt like we were really leaving Japan.

Two doors up from the ticket office is a dock workers café serving great traditional food, and so not ready to jump on board the RUS just yet we headed in for a plate of Japanese curry and rice.

We’d asked Mr. FKK to speak with the purser several times to see if it was possible for us to load our own bikes on to the ferry. Initially the problem is that immigration is carried out onboard at 3:00pm Japanese time (5:00pm on board Russian time) and that bikes are loaded last at around 4:00pm Japanese time (6:00pm onboard Russian time)and once immigration is complete, your passport is held by the purser until you disembark. Therefore you cannot go back onto Japanese soil, i.e. the dockside to load your bike. Well, that’s the argument, but as we found if you ask the purser nicely enough, he really doesn’t care and so by 4:00pm we’d run back down to the dock and with a nod from the purser had ridden our bikes onto the ship and strapped them down for the crossing.

With the loud speaker announcing in Russian and English that dinner was being served we headed for the restaurant. We’d passed a back packer several times who turned out to be English. Charlie had been traveling for months around Asia, not an easy task but all the more challenging when you’re on crutches. An ex soldier Charlie had suffered a broken back, which had partially severed his spinal cord and hence the crutches. His outlook on life and upbeat personality were great to be around, well that and his incredibly suspect and often wonderfully inappropriate English military sense of humour.

All in all the crossing couldn’t have been smoother and on the second morning the sea looked eerily still. Milky hues of black, peach and mauve as the sun light is diffused by a light mist. We’d heard the onboard food was awful which turned out to be bollocks. OK, it wasn’t all to our taste but that’s mainly because some of it was just traditional Russian fare. We never went hungry and every meal, breakfast, lunch and dinner is a three course affair.

Rolling into Vladivostok port on the morning of the 2nd August we were up on deck early and by 9:00pm the ferry workers were throwing huge mooring ropes down to the dockside. Imposing dark grey Russian war ships were moored to our right and in the distance we can see chimneys belching smoke into the air.

With our bags packed we picked up our passports and copy of our ‘bill of laden’ from the small office just inside the main passenger entrance and exit. With the bill of Laden in our possession at least we can prove our bikes are aboard.

Off the ship and we already know there’s no way we’re going to get the bikes today. It’s Sunday and customs, well, their simply closed! So now with Charlie from the UK, Turu from Japan and Dan from the USA and newly formed international group disembarked and headed for Russian immigration and customs inside the ferry terminal. No-one got stopped at customs and Lisa sailed straight through immigration, I was not so lucky. It took three separate female immigration officers to conclude after staring at me a bit too intensely that I was the person in the passport photo. It was a close call, initially they really weren’t convinced.

Across the bridge that leads you away from the port and over the Vlad’ train station we turned right at the main road and 5 blocks down found one of the few banks open on a Sunday, where we all managed to change yen and dollars for Ruble and then following the crowd headed down to the beach a further 10 minute walk to watch and film what turned out to be a mini military display. Children in their brightest red and blues, twirled batons and danced whilst black face painted military types displayed their parachute packing finesse, which was in all honesty as boring as watching paint dry. Think about it, two soldiers simply packing an old parachute into an even older pack.

It was time for the hike up the hill and by mid-afternoon we’d found the hotel Vladivostok at GPS: N43 06.812 E131 52.504. Again we’d heard less than pleasant things about it, which all turned out to be nonsense. The exterior is tired but inside there is Wi-Fi and decent looking reception and the rooms are simple and clean. We paid 2,700 Rubles per night $91, which included all hotel charges and tax. More than we wanted to pay but the hotel also offers free secure parking which we’d need once we had the bikes.

Bright and early we were up Monday morning, tantalized by the thought of having our kids’ back with us. Below and to the right of the ferry terminal we’d found the office in charge of storage at GPS: N43 06.615 E131 52.915 and after speaking with Aleg and Anna had been told to come back at 1:00pm. Here’s the deal. The original bill of laden from the ferry was now at customs being stamped, with, err, umm..more stamps??? It would then be returned to the storage office where we’d pick it up at 1:00pm. We’d then take it back to, yep, you guessed it….customs!!! (Vlad customs is at GPS: N43 05.802 E131 52.049, a good 1.5 miles from the port. Fucking brilliant! Basically the original and now custom stamped bill of laden has to be shown to customs in tandem with our own copy, also along with the V5 (vehicle registration documents), passport, IDP (International Drivers Permit) and green card (Insurance). The uptight, fru fru haired dork of a up her own ass customs women simply sighed and rolled her eyes at us every time we took a breath. She couldn’t have been more unhelpful, sour and pained if she’d tried. Yeah, we hated her.

We didn’t have a green card having been for so long out of the UK. We were simply told to wait. More by luck than anything else we headed outside and eventually worked out that the dodgy looking blue porta shed was an insurance office and so heading inside we handed over our V5, passport, IDP and $40 each for 1 month’s road insurance.

Bus’s are plentiful and we quickly found out that all Vlad’ buses are 11 rubles for anywhere inside the city whether you’re going one stop or twenty.

In spite of having all the right doc’s we weren’t going to get the bikes. Customs are very used to dealing with agents and quite clearly dislike intently dealing with just normal folk like you and me. They also demanded that we hand over a letter of introduction, detailing when we’d like to pick up the bikes, how long we’d be traveling through Russian and all the bikes details. Importantly they want it all in Russian Cyrillic. We left customs frustrated and without the bikes. Later the same night we joined Alexi for dinner, the young Russian that we’d met at Chris’s home in Pennsylvania, having toured the USA as a guest of ADVrider.com. Alexi kindly translated the document I’d now written into Russian and printed it out.

The next morning we went back to endure more quiet scowls and verbal intolerance. This time with the help of a young Russian guy we handed over all our doc’s, including our newly printed Russian letter and waited, and waited and 4-hours later were issued our pink Russian registration document and bill of laden. 22 Rubles later and back at the storage office, we handed over the paperwork and were then asked for 3,200 rubles per bike. Disembarking and storage fees, so we were told. In their defense, all this info and pricing is printed up on the wall. After protesting a little and speaking with Alex, the chief of the office the fee was reduced without fuss to 2,500 per bike. We headed over to the 3 floor of the ferry terminal with Anna, paid the fee, picked up even more stamps and at long, long last could pick up the bikes. Which, are now sitting in the car park of the hotel Vladivostok? Shit I’m exhausted having just written that again.

I hope that for someone’s sake all this ends up being useful. In the end of the day it didn’t take us weeks to get the bikes, it was just frustrating not speaking the language and not knowing what was going on…which is why most people end up using an agent…however our dosh doesn’t go for that kind of luxury!

We’ll head North in the morning towards Khabarovsk, close to the Chinese border.

Night, night

Thirty minutes into a deep forest of silver Birch we pulled over at what looked like a derelict camper and once inside got royally ignored for a good 10 minutes as we did our best to order coffee. But with our servers full attention we thought we make the most of it and ordered 2 fried eggs and a coffee each. Actually ‘ordered’ may be a bit of an overstatement. We basically pointed at what someone else was eating and made some begging noises.

For the best part of the day we’ve swapped tar for gravel and dirt. Nothing too bad and for the most part just road work, well road works that go on for 10-mile stretches. The pot holes and corrugated section shave been tiring but nothing compared to Africa.

By Mid afternoon we covered around 300-miles and pulled over to chat to the Tony on his F650Dakar, we’d spotted 4-5 other overland ready bikes pas just moment s earlier who hadn’t bothered to stop. Tony was working for Kudu and behind Tony was the 4x4 support crew. With Lisa’s right hand fork seal blown just ½ hour earlier, they ended up giving us their spare. Brilliant.

Right now we’re stuck in the tent, deep inside a birch forest with millions of Mossies swarming, we’re tired, dirty and hungry. We have food but there’s no way either of us are going to the bikes.

Toady we’ve ridden 503-miles.

It’s 1:30am and I can barley type and we’re n Chernyshevsk.

After losing several pints of blood each to the swarming mosquitoes, this morning we packed away our gear in the heavy mist. Everything is soaking wet, tent gear, cloths, everything. We must have trapped several thousand mossies in the tent when we packed it, it’ll be gross when we open it next.

The new tar we’d been riding last night lasted another 20-mile and then as we become accustomed too, simply stopped. The track was still wet form an early rain storm and was about to get another soaking. We managed to throw on our water-proof jackets, before the rain hit hard. Big drop rain like South America. The rutted and pot-holed track was now running with water. Puddles quickly replace the pot-holes giving us no chance to determine the depth of the hole; do we ride through it or over it?

To make matter more interesting our goggles have fog up so we’re riding blind. I didn’t think goggles were meant to fog??? I could feel the water mixing with the dirt in my mx-boots, which now felt like swimming pools. That pretty much sets the scene for the rest of the day.

We’d found intermittent tar today but dirt was certainly the norm. We’d pulled off the road for lunch and after ordering what we thought was soup, ended p with two anorexic pancakes. We’d been accosted, by two guys, who’d been eating at the table to our right ad had polished off a liter bottle of vodka, which now sat on the table.

It didn’t matter that we speak no Russian; these guys were absolutely going to have a conversation with us. Two large shot glasses were stamped down in front of us. And whilst Lisa got her hand kissed, a lot I got an almighty slap on the back. They were clear that we needed to drink these ‘in one’. Well, who are we to offend so with our completely shit faces, can barely stand friends we did vodka shooter and pancakes for lunch and then got back on the bikes and rode away. Hang on; I forgot to mention, ‘The toilet of the month’!!!! Graham our Brit 650Dakar friend, currently in Peru does this video feature called toilet of the month. Yesterday we’d thought we found it, but no. I’ve taken video of the loo at today’s lunch time café and ‘Oh MY GOD’! Hope fully I’ve got my shit together, sorry no pun intended and posted the podcast somewhere near this diary. Bloody hell it was bad. Two cute little wooden, Austrian Heidi style out-houses, disguise a rancid coffin of pish and filth so bad that even the flies were looking to escape when I unknowingly opened the door. Lisa had been busting for the loo for the last hour but after showing her the video on the camera, she thought she’d hold off.

By late afternoon we’d found a pretty good balance, between safety and speed, we’d even gotten attuned to zoning out the holes, bumps and constant vibrations. Now it was just the norm. We’d even managed to dry out after the soaking this morning. I was running very low on gas and as we crested the next long rise, the landscape open up into a long valley, ominous black clouds loomed and a bolt of lightning shot down and hit about half a mile in front of us.

The storm was coming in fast as we scrambled to pull our water-proofs from their bag…again. Both of us at this point were heavy limbed and more than a little tired. The idea of more rain and another 200-mile of mud-slick track was crushing. With our pace slowed considerably it felt like an age before we again found tar. We’d seen no signs of life and not a sniff of gas and we’d already resigned ourselves to my 1100 running out and having to resort to stealing gas from Lisa’s 650. The orange warning low gas light had been on now for about an hour. A small petrol sign read ‘Gas 36 KM’, it lied. There was no gas for another 100-mile. As we finally pulled into s gas station it was almost dark an amazingly I’d not run out and had covered a little over 400-miles on the last fill up. I’m guessing that the fuel gauge inside my tank has been fitted at a dodgy angle and so the fuel light is coming on early. Good to know that I’ve got 400-miles and still got a little left.

At the gas station we got speaking with two local Russians in a beaten up muscle car and after asking them if they knew of somewhere we could sleep, insisted we follow them. Driving the streets of Chernyshevsk we began to wonder if our trust had been misplaced. The town had a dark edgy feel. Pot holes the size of small cars needed navigating and it felt suddenly like we were back in Tichvin in Western Russia 6-years previous. Tall dilapidated soviet style tower blocks lined the bumpy water logged road. This was more like a scene from a war film when the naive convoy get ambushed from above, caught tin a cross fire. We were attracting more than our fair share of glances and outright stares. We couldn’t have felt more conspicuous. We zigzag and weaved our way around for what seemed like an age before dropping back and finally saying to Lisa, “This feels wrong, we’ve been driving around for ages, what do you think”? With that our two new friends reversed up and with a little English expressed. “It’zz nogt far now, don’t be feeeear, don’t be fear. We want to show you where we live”. Our gut instinct had been the right one, these were just town nice guys, helping us out and who wanted to show us around their home town.

Down one last submerged alleyway and a wooden gate is opened and we pull inside, bartering a price of 700 rubles for the night. A small room, with orange light and two small beds that gave up a good 10 inches when we sat on them. It looked like sanctuary. At least some of our kit and clothes will dry, a little. The young girl who’d shown us the room looked 13 but her demanding and brisk demeanor were that of a 40-year old.