Day 15: The Road to Chita, Camp Awful

We left Khabarosk, sadly saying goodbye to our new friends the Iron Tigers. As we pulled out, we went through one of the many Police Checkpoints, this time being stopped. They checked our papers, then quickly waved us through. This would be the last Police presence we would see for the next 5 days.

We did 400km our first day out of Khabarosk, before deciding to pull off the road at some random point to Camp for the first time in Russia.

But first a bit about the Road. The road from Khabarosk to Chita is part of the larger main road from Moscow to Vladivostock (Trans-Russian Highway), It is similar to the Trans-Canada Highway, as it links the entire country.




But it's not finished. There will be sections of pavement, as good as anything in North America. Then it will end. And it will just be a dirt track. There are sometimes signs pointing this out, sometimes not.

So you are driving along at 100km/h, and suddenly, you are driving through waterfilled potholes, and rocks.. fun stuff.

We have seen hundreds of road crews, dump trucks, graders and pavers. They are making a huge effort to pave the entire way, and in a few more years, this road will be done, and the trip will take a couple days. As it is now, it's a mess of pavement, dirt, rocks, gravel, and a few more surfaces I couldn't identify, that changes every 20-30 KM.

The first 1000 km is more pavement than not, so it was fairly straightforward. The next 800km was more hard pack than pavement, and we were much slower.

So, after 400km of this, alternating between 100km per hour, and 30km per hour, we decide to start looking for a place to camp. There is no hope of finding lodging out here, there is nothing.

So after a few false starts down some side roads, we picked a dirt trail off the highway, and drove as far as we could into the trees to hide us from anyone who may want to steal our stuff.

This led us to a dirt, grassy trail in the trees and long grass, that was literally the most awful place you could imagine. Hot, humid, 1000's of mosquitos, fly's, Big Fly's, flying things, buzzing things, spiders... you name it, if it crawled or flew, it was trying to get us.

So we were sweating, stinking, covered in bug spray, with mosquito nets on our heads, in our full riding gear, setting up camp, in a field of long grass.

It was awful, and it was hot.

I saved it on my GPS, it you ever come this way, please stop by.. it's lovely. :)

So we crawled into our tents, along with all our gear, sweaty boots, sweaty clothes, and listened to the bugs try and get in, and tried to stop sweating, before we fell asleep.





Today: 400km