The Sibirsky Extreme book is now available on Amazon and other online retailers, but the best prices are exclusively at Adventure Spec …
Adventure-Spec, Sibirsky Extreme Book
The Sibirsky Extreme DVD is finished and is shipping now:
Just days before the final cut is sent off to the DVD printers, the Sibirsky Extreme DVD is now on the Adventure-Spec website and is available for pre-order! Woo-hoo! When it emerges from the printers, there will be both an NTSC (North America) and a PAL (rest of the world) version.
A preview of the DVD footage which has been professionally put together and edited by a adventure sports film making company, is available here:
A short collection of clips that were discarded from the Sibirsky Extreme Project film (still almost ready). This is a just a brief look at life on board a northern Siberian barge, as Tony and I “sailed” north from Ust Kut to Lensk over 3 days, in June 2009.
The book related to The Sibirsky Extreme Project (2009), is also around the corner, with the manuscript, images etc at the printers.
The Sibirsky Extreme Project film is almost done … A preliminary cut of the Sibirsky 2009 video was indeed shown at the recent Horizons Unlimited meet in the UK. Some technical sound problems plagued the debut screening (3rd party equipment). It was only the 2nd time I had seen the film (it was shown to me by the editor 5 hours earlier).
There are still some minor bits of tuning to be done. Sound levels balanced, colour balanced, and a few clips are in the wrong order and wrong place. A few subtitiles (translations) need to be added. But its almost there 
23.10.10
After the emotional visit to Lone Pine at sundown, I rode on, into the night, towards the Turkey – Greece border. By 10pm I was into Greece … land of Zorba … I rode 30 minutes into the night before finding a seaside hotel in Alexandroupoli.
24.10.10
The next morning I woke and went to refuel … only the machine chewed my 20 EUR … told me there was a problem, and told me to come back on Monday to get a refund from the service station (It was an automatic service station). Monday was no good to me. I needed to be on the move. Help came in the form of a Romanian biker who pulled into the station on a Varadero. He was on tour visiting some Greek friends. The greek bought my reciept off me for 20 EUR and led me to another station to refuel.
Greece and Turkey have a lot on common … they may not want to admit it … but actually there’s a huge commonality. Both are very old cultures that have existed for thousands of years. Both have occupied each other for several hundred years at times. As a result, both have mixed with each others genes extensively. Both have beautiful coastlines. Both are mountainous and great riding countries and perhaps most important of all, both share very, very similar taste in motorcycles. Almost every bike I saw in both Turkey and Greece was a big trailie. Between the two countries, I don’t think I have ever seen so many Varaderos, V-Stroms, Africa twins … there was a healthy amount of GSs and 950 / 990 Adventures too. It seemed over half the bikes in those countries were Adventure style bikes. What cool guys!
After filling up at Alexandroupoli, I headed for my next compulsory cultural pilgrimmage. Pella today is nothing more than a small out of the way village in Macedonia, but for several hundred years, at least two thousand years ago, it was very important. And for a decade, was the centre of the universe. It is the home town of Alexander of Macedon, otherwise known as Alexander the Great. Pella today is the site of extensive excavations, but almost zero tourists. A site of significant historical and cultural significance, but no tourists exactly fits my bill for being worthy of a visit.
I pushed on from Pella … I had to get all the way across Greece by sundown. There was a ferry with my name on it, leaving from Igoumenitsa for Ancona in Italy at 8pm. But there was one more thing I really wanted to see in Greece before I left. I checked my watch, checked the distances involved. It was going to be tight … the GPS had me arriving in Igoumenitsa about 7pm … for an 8pm ferry … and I had to stop, explore and take pictures at my final tourist stop – Meteora – a collection of greek orthodox monasteries atop impossible rock cliffs.
I made it to Igoumenitsa about 7:25 and bought my ticket at the port for 78 EUR. I was hastily shuffled onto the ferry and began to relax for the overnight ride to Ancona in Italy.
Western Europe:
It was midday by the time I unloaded in Ancona. I stopped for lunch and petrol then rode north past Venice to cross the Alps between Udine (Italy) and Klagenfurt (Austria). Day turned into night, but I was determined to get to Vienna where my friend Lukas, a fellow biker, would welcome me with open beers.
It wasn’t straightforward of course … it was a little colder over the Alps than I expected so early in the year:
After a few days in Vienna with Lukas, days I spent recovering from a bout of the flu, I headed off westwards, aiming roughly for Holland and England, but stopping at another mates place along the way.
Josef Pichler is a well known KTM adventurer I had also met earlier in the year in Mirny, Northern Siberia. Joe and his wife Renate are based just outside of Salzburg.
Joe took me on a tour of Hangar 7, a giant glass museum built and filled for the people of Salzburg by the Red Bull billionaire. It’s filled with Red Bulls racing cars, aeroplanes and even some motorcycles 
Also in there is Marc Coma’s spare bike for the 2009 Dakar.
After that there was another visit. Another friend of Joe’s had bought Marc Coma’s primary 2009 Dakar bike … I was privileged enough to get to jump on it … and what do you know? It fits!
So after I left Joe Pichlers place, I headed for another friend … motorcycle partmaker extraordinaire, Stephan Scheffelmeier.
Two more days were spent cruising leisurely (via the Ruhr) back to Holland, one of two home bases for me on these expeditions. While the UK is my traditional home and base, so much time has been spent in Holland for motorcycle preparation, that is has become an equal home base for me over the last two years.
Whether the project this year would finish in Holland or England was answered once and for all when I woke on my first morning in Holland to find my bike stolen.
A day of furious running around, interviewing locals myself, putting together clues I had sought and found via the internet, resulted in the bike being located later that evening. Police came and liberated my bike, but it wasn’t before thieves that taken a couple of panels and damaged a few attachments.
And so Sibirsky Extreme 2010 ends with the promise of rebuilding the bike … it’s a great chance to refresh the machine for the challenges of 2011 and beyond.
After a weekend of fun and games in Sochi with the Dutch quadracycle guys, the three of us sat down for a late lunch on the Monday 4th of October. We parted ways about 4pm … the two guys had about 360 km to go to get their record … but had probably left it too late in the day to do it all today. But they were now on their way to Moscow, where a party was being organised by Yamaha Russia.
I headed 200 yards away from our lunch spot at McDonalds to the International Port … where having said farewell to 2 travel companions, I met 2 more.
Mike and Irene from Georgia were travelling around Europe and the former Soviet Union 2-up. Both had been born there and had returned by 1200 GSA to visit their birth country, 20 years after leaving for the USA. Now they were about to board the boat to Turkey too.
The ferry arrived the following morning in Trabzon on the Turkish Black Sea coast, and along with Mike and Irene, I slowly did the Turkish customs shuffle while the rain pelted down outside the building.
Over 2 hours later, and with the rain now much lighter, we finally made it through and were about to get underway. Suddenly, the Turkish officials. who had been slowly plodding through the proceedures so far suddenly started waving and told us a big cheese was arriving and we needed to quickly leave the customs area … we were shooed out of the building, on to the bikes and out on the street. Mike had to go back for his passport and I rode on ahead.
I rode towards the town of Giresun, stopping first when I saw an ATM by the side of the road, and about 30-40km from the port, with the weather clearing a bit, I stopped at a roadside cafe to wait for Mike and Irene and to have lunch.
By the time lunch came and was eaten, there was still no sign of Mike and Irene. I assumed they had either stopped for lunch themselves, or had gone a different way.
It was now 1pm, and I was still less than 50km from Trabzon. I wanted to get to Cappadocia, and the town of Goreme tonight. It was about 650 km away. I had to hit the road.
I followed the coastal road west until the edge of Giresun, before turning south. The next 3-4 hours was a fantastic road. The road would from sea level up to a mountain pass at 2200 metres and the green, lush vegetation changed almost instantly on reaching the pass. From here on it was much drier, but the roads were no less windy or enjoyable.
I can highly recommend the road from Giresun to Sivas. A good adventure motorcycling route!
I continued on and passed the inland city of Kayseri just as the sun was setting. 50 km further on was Goreme. I pulled in to the touristy town in the dark, found a hotel for a good price (15TL, about 7 quid) that had internet.
I would have liked to stay in Goreme for a few days and check the place out a lot more. There are a number of valleys, churches ans even whole underground towns carved out of the soft rock. But I had to push on. I stopped for a few pics and then hit the road … towards Antalya and the Mediterranean.
I headed to Dave and Juliet’s place. They are an English couple who take in stray animals and visiting bikers in equal measure, not far from Kas, in Turkey.
I left Dave and Juliet to their menagerie, and hit the coast road. It was great weather, sunny and warm but not hot, and the scenery was as easy on the eyes as a Vladivostok bikers party.
I rode north … another great windy Turkish road, between Fethiye and Denizli. A couple of hours later I arrived at the modern Turkish tourist village of Pamukkale at the bottom of the hill … and its ruined twin … the Greco Roman ruins of Heirapolis, a spa town, at the top of the hill.
This place is kinda famous for its thermal springs … and travatines. Calcium rich water deposits calcium down the side of a hill over time to make these things:
I met up with a Marmaris based biker, Ihsan, for a ride out to see some local scenery. Ihsan has a local TV show about adventure biking. But he had recently sold his bike, a 1200GS, and will get a new one for next season. So we went around to Yusuf’s place to borrow his 990 for the day. They have a club in Marmaris called Marmaris Riders. Almost everyone in the club seems to have an adventure bike. Yusuf’s KTM (pictured here) will be shipped to Alaska at the start of next season, for his planned ride to Tierra del Fuego.
I have been really impressed with the rugged and beautiful Turkish coastline … we headed out beyond Datca to have lunch with a mate of his, Cem, who also has a 1200 GS and rode to Baikal and back a couple of years back.
I left Marmaris, now firmly heading for home. I was getting reports of very cold weather back in England. Its a bit unseasonally early for that sort of thing, but I had to move my ass.
I had a few places I wanted to stop and see on the way. First cultural stop on the way home was the city of Troy. For a very long time, people thought the mythical city that features in Homer’s Iliad was just fictional – just legend. Until they found it .
The Hellespont or Dardanelles is the strait that separates Europe from Asia in this part of the world. I headed for Canakkale, where there are regular ferries across the narrow strait. Above Canakkale was a massive Turkish reminder … a symbol of pride dating back to the rise of Mustafa Kemal and thus the rise of the modern Turkish nation.
18th of March 1915 … it was the date the Turks turned back a poorly planned and wildly overoptimistic British plan to simply sail up the Hellespont and capture Istanbul by naval bombardment. It was a plan from the “soft underbelly” theorist extraordinaire, Winston Churchill. But they didnt get anywhere near Istanbul. They didnt even get past the first obstacle, the Hellespont / Dardanelles still 200km from Istanbul.
After the Royal Navy failed to sail, let alone secure, the Dardanelles, Churchill sent the Army in … British, French, Australian and New Zealanders landed 6 weeks later on the Gallipoli peninsula, to take the Dardanelles by land. But that 6 week delay had given Mustafa Kemal, a young officer in the Ottoman Army, just enough time to prepare a defence for what was pretty obviously going to happen next.
The result was about 9 months of trench warfare, in which the ‘Allies’ got nowhere … failed to take the Gallipoli Peninsula, failed to take the Dardanelles and never came anywhere near Istanbul.
The repercussions were that Churchill was forced to resign, Australia gained “national conciousness” (such that it would never again blindly follow Britain’s lead or blindly put its soldiers under British military command) and Mustafa Kemal began his amazing rise to becoming the father of modern Turkey. So for both the Turks and the Australians, the Gallipoli Campaign is central to the birth of their respective Nationhoods.
Crossing the Dardanelles here took me directly to Gallipoli Peninsula. And here there were a number of memorials I needed to see.
I was unprepared for the huge array of military cemeteries, dozens and dozens of them, very well preserved. The peninsular is largely national park, in order to preserve the graves and battlegrounds. As mentioned earlier, the region is very symbolic for the Turks as well, for the role the battles played in the rise of Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk), and that helps preserve the region as a sacred site.
A lone motorcycle stands watch over the Australian cemetary at Lone Pine, sundown 23.10.2010:
One of the more touching follow ups on the Gallipoli campaign was written by Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) himself in 1934 … 19 years after the battle.
He wrote a tribute to the ANZACs that is now found in the Ataturk memorial in Canberra, and on the ANZAC memorial on the Gallipoli peninsula.
Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives; You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country, therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us, where they lie side by side now here in this country of ours.
You, the mothers who sent their sons from faraway countries; wipe away your tears. Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land, they have become our sons as well.
Route Map – Turkey:
From Novosibirsk to the Black Sea (Click on map for larger version)
29, 30 Sept
I left Kazan optimistic that this change of plan would bring me warmth and headed south past Lenin’s home town of Ulyanovsk, then Syzran and by the end of the day found a motel outside of Saratov. By the end of the day I had reached 51 degrees north latitude. Since Novosibirsk I had been travelling across Russia around 55 – 56 degrees north. I was making progress towards warmth. I had thought of stopping a couple of times today … Ulyanovsk has some great Lenin memorabilia, museums and the like, but time and the cold that accompanied it was weighing on me. I decided I would just focus on heading south.
The 30th was another day of heading south. It turned into a day of 2 unexpected features … one was Dutchmen, and the other was traffic fines.
While continuing my march southwards I saw two foreign looking bikers and two bikes saddled down with metal boxes filling up with fuel in a petrol station. I slammed on the brakes and stopped for a chat. Two dutch guys from Eindhoven were heading for Novosibirsk … and were planning to go via Kazakhstan. I explained to them its already very cold up north, and getting colder … then I told them how I was frozen in on the Kazakh steppe not too much later than this last year. It sounded like I was the bearer of gloomy news, and I wished them well, but at the same time, I knew they would have quite a few unpleasant days ahead of them.
As for me, things were looking up. I reached Volgograd by early afternoon and took off one jacket. (I ride with 3 in the cold … a fleece, a Klim windstopper and then the Klim Adventure jacket on top of that). It was warming up. I figured mid teens by now. Watermelon stands lined the highway.
I thought about stopping off at the monumental war memorial, the Rodina Mat (Mother Russia) statue atop the Mamaev Kurgan, for a few fotos. But I had been to Volgograd twice before – significantly for me, I had been there in winter. The memorial has a completely different feel in winter when it is cold and bleak, and you feel how insanely miserable it must have been for the 1.1 million Russian and 400,000 Germans soldiers who died here. The scale of the battle of Stalingrad is insane, add in the civilian casualties and the total toll of the battle is between 1.7 and 2 million lives. The life expectancy of a soldier arriving into Stalingrad to join the battle was less than 24 hours. The Mamaev Kurgan itself is probably the biggest burial ground on earth. Entire divisions were wiped in a morning trying to take or retake it. A visit to the museums and memorials in Volgograd is an intensely moving experience. It’s one thing to visit it on a bike, but to really soak it in, nothing beats a winter visit.
More info here; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stalingrad
For a deeper perspective, read Beevor’s book “Stalingrad” before you visit. It’s a great primer and the great names that feature in the museums – the Chuikov’s and the Rokossovsky’s etc – really mean something once you have read up on their roles in history.
Taking pictures on a warm autumn day doesn’t do the memorial justice. I will defer to my winter pictures:
I passed a police checkpoint on the southern edge of the stretched out city and was asked where I was headed.
“Sochi” I replied.
“Ah – there are two Dutchmen that went through 20 minutes ago, also headed for Sochi.”
“20 minutes? OK I better head off and try to catch them, Spasibo!”
“Don’t worry, you will catch them, they are on tractors!”
I headed off, still southbound, now thinking to myself …. Tractors? I guess that means they are on 1150GSs or something like that.
100 km south of Volgograd, I caught the Dutch guys … they were on Quads! We stopped and chatted. They were just 1400 km from breaking the world record for longest journey by Quadracycle. From Rotterdam they had driven their quads to Mongolia and were now headed back. I noticed they had also tricked out their quads with Hyperpro suspension.
For more info, see http://silkoffroadsurvival.com/
The dutch guys were headed past Elista tonight to camp somewhere on the open steppe, and I was headed into Elista itself to hook up with Zhenya, the Kalmyk biker I had met last year when passing through Elista. We agreed to meet up somewhere on the road to Sochi tomorrow and I sped off, leaving the guys fielding questions at a Kalmyk police checkpoint.
I went into the Kalmyks in last years posts, so anyone wanting more photos and info on the Kalmyks, see here: http://www.advrider.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9811659&postcount=24
I myself ran into a Kalmyk police officer sometime down the road and was shown a photo of me doing 102 km/h 15 km back down the road. 90 km/h (56mph) is the open road limit in Russia.
“You must pay a fine” the cop scolded.
“Come on mate, it’s only a small bit over the limit.” I pleaded
“Then make it a small fine” he said, exasperated …
I slipped 300 rubles (7.50 EUR) into by driving permit and handed it back to him in the time honoured method. In 3 seconds I had my emptied driving permit back and a “good luck” from the cop.
Just 50 km from Elista I was pulled over again for speeding … more overzealous Kalmyk policery … this time I was apparently doing 55 km/h through a 40 km/h zone for roadworks. Fortunately the head honcho among the 4 cops started chatting to me and asked where I was going. “Elista” I relied. “To see the Grand Hurul.”
His face beamed with pride. The Grand Hurul is a huge landmark in Elista and the biggest Buddhist temple in Europe. Kalmyks are very proud of it. “The Grand Hurul!” he roared with a huge smile across his face. Then he reached out and hi fived me and told the junior officer to give me my documents back and let me go.
I reached Elista and was met on the outskirts by Zhenya. I was now down to just 46 degrees North. Another 5 degrees south today. We parked the bike up and Elista Lada, his workplace, and he gave the bike a good check over. My starter button was non-existant. I had been starting it for the last 24 hours now by touching two wires together. Zhenya said we will get a new button and fix it tomorrow morning. We went back to his apartment that he shared with a room-mate and dinner was prepared by his roommates girlfriend.
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01.10.10
Zhenya woke early and headed into to work at 8am. He works as a mechanic at the local Lada dealers service centre. When I rocked up about 10am he had already been playing with my bike for an hour. The chain had been cleaned and relubed. And we jumped in the car to buy a new starter button. The button was replaced and I eventually was escorted to the outskirts of town by Zhenya about 11:30am. I said farewell and hope we meet again next year, then hit the road south-west, towards Stavropol.
About 70 km out of town I crossed into Stavopol region, via a serious police checkpoint with machine gun toting guards and concrete barriers – a reminder I was now in the North Caucasus, a volatile region on Russia’s southern fringe. I chatted to the cops there and asked about the Dutchmen on quads. They passed through at least 2 hours ago, was the reply. I had some serious chasing to do!
I rode hard into a very strong headwind – I figured I would make good ground on the quads in headwind. Their cross-section must be 3 times that of the bike, and they had a similar size engine to push it all.
3 hours later I passed the city of Stavropol, and decided to stop for some lunch. I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet, and it was now 3:30 in the afternoon. I found a good shashlik place on the corner of the Kavkaz highway and ordered a big portion. As I sat and waited for my shashlik to be cooked up, a local came up to me and asked me if I was headed to Maikop. Yes I replied, I am heading through Maikop. He turned around and yelled to his wife “This guy is heading for Maikop too”.
I stopped him … what do you mean “too”?
“2 guys on tractors asked for directions to Maikop not long ago”
“How long ago?” I asked, knowing that was the Dutchmen.
“No more than 20 -30 minutes”
So I was catching them. I set off after feasting on my shashlik, dodging traffic along the Kavkaz highway. 45 minutes later I caught them. They were fixing a flat tyre about 100 km from Maikop.
We all rode into Maikop together and found a nice pizzeria. We were all headed for Sochi, so decided to ride there together … but for today we would just go a short distance outside of Maikop and find some accommodation – I wanted a cheap roadside hotel and the boys were going to camp in the woods. After failing to find a cheap hotel, I decided to join them – for my second camping night of the trip.
- – -
02.10.10
The road to Sochi was a twisty one, and surprisingly took us most of the day to cover the 260 km. The quads are not as quick as the bike on the road and they need to stop often for fuel. Mark looks concerned at this fuel stop. He had a problem with one of the rear seals on his quad.
It was raining when we finally reached the Russian Riviera city of Sochi, and as expected all the hotels in town were expensive. The boys resorted to a tactic that had worked for them several times in the past … go to an expensive hotel, talk to the manager, explain that they are doing their Guinness world record attempt and would like to stay at their hotel – if they can get a super duper rate. A couple of times they had managed to stay at 5 star hotels for 10-15 USD a night. The Radisson in Sochi whose basic room rate is about 250 EUR a night, was the target. They got as far as getting the duty manager to agree to a 10 USD rate for the 3 of us, but he didn’t want to pull the trigger without confirmation from the general manager – who was away until Monday. Close but no cigar.
And so we rode down the road to find a smaller hotel, where I did some sweet talking and got us some rooms for 1000 Rubles (25 EUR) each instead of the normal 1600.
A quick visit to the port told me there was a ferry leaving for Turkey in 48 hours time. We had 48 hours free in Sochi!