That was our third motorcycle tour of Russia and in all we’ve now ridden almost 20,000 kms in Russia alone – ten times the length of NZ. While we feel at home here, quite familiar with the people, the way of life, the driving style (!!!), the food, and the hospitality, the health system – […]
This season’s ride is drawing to a close. Here’s our last video clips of the land of Genghis and our return to the wonderland of Lake Baikal.
Having spent the last 3 months in these countries and getting some appreciation of their dependence on fossil fuels – oil, gas, coal – one realises how loopy is the idea popular in societies like New Zealand that have negligible stocks of any of them, that producers should just stop extraction. It would be like […]
Being lucky enough to strike Mongolia during the annual Naadam Festival we’ve been treated to th extravaganza of Naadam in the capital city, Ulanbataar – but even more enjoyably in the small country towns that organise their own wrestling, archery and horse racing carnivals to celebrate their nation’s identity and independence.
We left Russia temporarily & did a circuit in Mongolia. Here’s the footage as we bid au revoir to Eastern Siberia. We’ll be back in a week or two and by then hopefully the rain has gone – although we might welcome it after the dust bowl we’ve been promised in Mongolia.
We’re into Mongolia at last and here on schedule so we can enjoy the traditional annual Naadam Festival which celebrates Mongolia’s cultural inheritance and highlights three national sports – wrestling, archery and horse racing. It’s held throughout the country so we’re coming across the celebrations in small towns as well as in Ulaanbataar. 30% of […]
One thing indelibly etched on your mind when you spend weeks riding across Russia is the massive scale of this country – not just the 11 time zones you cross but the unbounded scale of the rural landscape – mile after mile of grassland, cropping and forest. Who owns it? Of course it was 100% […]
Freshly named in April “Nur-Sultan” after its founding President on his retirement, there are no signs pointing the way to the old “Astana” on the roads leading to the capital anymore. One might think it had been Nur Sudan since eternity. But that’s just one of the curiosities of this land which “Borat” was the […]
We’re in Balakovo, another good sized city on the banks of the Volga. The ride today was through large fields of crops – so we have left the wild grasslands of the southern Volga catchment and as we move north, the soils are supporting large scale commercial cropping. But one of Balakovo’s claims to fame […]
So begins our 3rd bike motorcycle ride in Russia. We’ve ridden both edges of this massive country the north to south and now we get to ride across it. So nice to be back and despite a bit of a laborious border crossing from Georgia, once in Vladikavkaz (capital of North Ossetia) the hospitality was […]
