Days 24-25 UB-Khyagt-Ulan Ude

28165-28761 596 km

Holy crap how freezing it was to ride from Ulaanbaatar to the border. We got everything: rain, snow, wind. The temperature varied probably from -2 to +4. All the time I was worried the snow would start staying on the road and then we would have been in a rel trouble. Riding on slippery roads is just impossible without studded tires. And it would be extremely difficult even with those.

After freezing our a**es of for about 360 km we finally arrived at the border. The system went as it always goes in the borders. Go from one booth to another just for collecting stamps to small pieces of paper which the eventually will take away from you. This collecting stamps seems so ridiculous.

Crossing the border took about 2 hours. Luckily on the Russian side there was a lady who spoke English. It really helped a lot. Getting out of the country is usually a lot easier than to get in.

After the stamp collecting party we just drove a few kilometers to the closest town, found ourselves a hostel to stay for the night and fell asleep right after a dinner. The day had been extremely hard. Riding about 30 km in such a strong side wind is very hard. I have never experienced such a wind in Finland.

In the morning we did the normal maintenance for the bikes and started to head towards north. Oh, the smooth, paved Russian roads. You cannot imagine how easy the driving was after Mongolia. We traveled 230 km in bit over two hours. It was easy to keep up a speed of 110-115 km/h almost all the time. Some constructions of course made us slow down a bit but riding was easy and felt good.

It really felt good to get to Russia. It seems everything work here better than in Mongolia. The buildings are in better shape, toilets are real toilets (not just holes on the floor), internet is reasonably fast and especially the roads are so much better. Still almost nobody speaks English but the Russian people are so helpful. At the railway station young bus driver translated us the menu to get food and at the hostel one really nice local guy got us a lot info about the trains. It's unbelievable how nice and helpful Russians are. They do anything they can to help you. With Google Translator things will sort out somehow.

We got ourselves in to Ulan Ude and drove directly to railway station. Our mission is to get the bikes to train and travel that way to Vladivostok. It is really getting way too cold and too dangerous to drive the whole 3500 km to Vladivostok.

Sorry, no photos this time. I published one in Instagram but at this moment I cannot get it from the phone.

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