I owe you $A6.50 898km I left Chita feeling great, completely revived after having the Far East beaten out of me with some dryed branches in Andreys sauna from hell. They're onto it these Siberians. I forgot to mention that while at Andrey's place with all his mates I expected the bottle of Vodka to be cracked open at any second and for all of us to be good and hammered by midnight. But, as with my bikey mates in Vladivostok we had drank nothing but tea and Kva...

The Kindness of strangers continues... 23km I left the hotel about 11am after a decent sleep. The day before had yelded no tyre and even worse some information that it would be impossible to find such a tyre in Chita or maybe even anywhere this side of Moscow! Giving up is not one of my strong points so I loaded up the bike and decided to attempt to ask all 600,000 residents of Chita if they had a rear tyre for a DR650 lying around. Ended up in the right sort o...

Russian roads 3000km in 6 days I might try and fill in gaps later but for now I'll give you a quick run down of were I've been. I left Vladivostok about 12pm the day after getting the bike and made my way towards Khaborovsk, I stuck a few sections on road works, but it was mostly good road. Camped off the side in what looked like a rubbish tip, but I don't think it was... Made another 500km or so the next day on again mostly good roads, broken up with sections ...

Watermelon 437km I think that motorcycle riding is a balance of confidence and self preservation and that if you have a little too much of either you will come off. Sometimes this results in bruises' other times you get to find out whats on the flip side of life... This little thought was something that I had promised myself to keep in the front of my mind for this particular ride. I knew that I had in the past suffered from both too much confidence and lack...

The First Day in the Rain 503km Packed up and took off feeling very hungry, since leaving Vlad I had only eaten a bit of rice that I bought with me from Japan and some biscuits. I was getting hungry for something a bit more real, time to try out one of these roadside cafes. Spotted one shortly after leaving that looked quiet, a good sign of bad food, but I was in Far East Russia and how many people where really out here anyway? The traffic had died down a lot s...