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Another few hundred k's
700 or 800km?
It's starting to look the same, this kilometer thing.. 600 here 900 there. I seriously love it though! Sitting on the DR for 12 hours a day riding through the rain is the best thing I could think of.... still! Although the places have changed and the roads have got better it's still exciting. As I look towards Europe, Russia too looks more like Europe, the cafe's are cleaner with more varity of food and higher prices to match. The roads begin to actually become more like roads than goat tracks and of course the traffic increases', a lot. I'm sure I've passed 4 million trucks in the last few days, proper Aussie/Seppo sized trucks too, not these European baby ones! The roads from the Mongolian border to here in Tyumen have been mostly good and pretty well dead straight. Theres a few bad parts on the way from Omsk to here, actually they're really bad, but after Vladivostok to Chita and the corrigations of Mongolia I'm starting to redifine what "bad road" means. Cruising speed is somewhere around 130kph and I have almost got used to being run off the road by kamikazi Russian drivers trying to overtake in places that normal humans wouldn't dare try. They are seriously mad drivers and seem to be getting worse... keeps you awake.
Sorry about the lack of photo's, I have taken heaps but havn't been able to upload them on dodgy Mongolian/Russian outback computers. Hopefully soon?!?
I had my first real proper meal here last night in a while, I'm staying at a hotel here (AGAIN!) that has a resturant with an English menu! Its a bit of a novilty to order something and know what you are going to get! Up to this point I have been living on one meal a day of Borsh (Russian soup that is made from whatever they find lying around and therefore always different) and coffee. It usually only costs about $A2.00, although the price seems to be going up as the conditions of the roads get better. I top this up with Russian biscuits and the odd Mars bar. So eating some real beef last night was amazing. Hooked into the buffet breakfast this morning too, with the staff giving me that "Are you ever going to stop eating" look. After covering just over 10,000km accross three countries in just over a month I thought a decent meal might just get me that bit closer to Denmark.
It is actually starting to get a little intimidating now (only a little) that there are so many people, so many big city's, so few places to camp. And of course more expensive. I also lost my GPS the other day, it finally decided to shake itself loose from it's mount on the bikes bars and free itself onto the central Russian bituman. I didn't notice for an hour so didn't bother to go back and find it, figured if it survived the fall one of the million truck woulda finished it off. This resulted in me having to buy a map, but didn't do much use when you forget to look where the country borders are and end up at the Kazakistan border with no Visa to enter. I, of course, met a Russian who worked as an English interpreter who helped me out with some directions and confirmed for me that I could not, no matter how many rubles where involved, bribe my way into Kazakistan.
So Europe here I come.....
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