Monday 14 July 2014

Day 16 Monday 14th July mileage xxxx. Location 200 miles west of Novosibirsk

The hotel had all it's meals outsourced and as part of the room cost, we had breakfast delivered to our rooms. This consisted of a fried egg,cold meats and cheese, toast, chocolate biscuit and a banana!

Set off and Paul's bike seems now to be working ok. We went through some light rain and there was no sign of the previous problems, but it has to be tested yet in a major downpour. We might get that tomorrow because we were talking to a Russian man at a rest point and he had just come from Vladivostock over the last 8 days after picking up a right hand drive car from Japan (this is apparently a popular import route for vehicles) and he said that yesterday in Novosibirsk they had a hurricane that large hailstones and torrential rain was experienced and that the forecast is for similar tomorrow.

When we left the hotel in Ishim, there was a no left turn sign and the Garmin was confused by our right turn. We had a scenic tour of the markets of Ishim before the Tomtom navigation system clad members put the inferior Garmin owners on the right track.
Once back on the right road, we stopped at what we thought was a motorcycle shop (a new sports bike in the window) but it turned out to be a fishing/hunting/out-board motor/quad bike shop). We'd thought that we might get motorcycle oil there but they didn't stock it.. As the shop had an outdoor theme, we asked about bear spray (a sort of high powered pepper spray that is apparently very effective for repelling bears) he didn't stock it but gave us an aerosol of mace and said that it was a gift.

Later in the day we came upon a solo motorcyclist who was kitted out with panniers and equipment similar to ourselves. When we talked to them it turned out to be a Swiss girl calked Marta who was travelling to Japan to look for work as a self employed translater.
We stopped and had a coffee with her and discovered that she was riding a Yamaha Tenere with purpose made panniers that her father had made himself as a gift for her for the journey.



During the day we came across a lorry that had come off the road and was parked in a field. The driver was making vallient attempts to get the vehicle to move and back onto the road.

YouTube Video


When we arrived at a motel we went and tried to register and all seemed to be going well when she checked our registration documents and then said it was impossible for us to stay and said we had to go a further 40 km down the road.
We thought bugger this an decided to try an hotel that Tomtom had found in a local town. Navigated to the address fine, but no hotel and when we asked locals they said there were no hotels in their small town!
Back on the main road and attune next hotel some 30km on we were accepted without any fuss, so we are now wondering whether although we have registered our visas we need to keep registering them every week? We understood from the visa information that after initially registering you only have to re-register if you stay in a place for longer than 8 days?
Ah well I dare say we will find out when we try and leave Russia for Mongolia.

Last night we all studied the Russian menu and decided we would have the lamb with a garnish of potatoes. What actually came was four servings of I think "blini" which was like ravioli with mashed potato filling and a small amount of white creamy sauce!

More later
RRs

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1 comment:

  1. he things you had (ravioli with mashed potatoes) are called vareniki (вареники in russian), they come with different fillings: mashed potatoes, eggs and spring onion, cabbage, mushrooms, cherries. Could it be that you mixed up баранина - baranina (lamb/mutton) with vareniki? ;-)) But then again, it is Russia and the cook could have decided it is safer to feed you vareniki with spuds rather than mutton.
    As per visa, I am not sure why the hotel decided not to let you in.Could be that they didn't want the hassle or maybe that town didn't have the FSB (or whatever it is called nowadays) department to send the documents to, which can be a lot of hassle. I don't think you need to re-register your visas, especially if you are travelling.

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