2010 Planned Route

Beginning from Magadan, we head inland to Yakutsk via the Road of Bones, then further west to Mirny and Lensk via the Vilyuisky Trakt.  From Lensk its south to Irkutsk and Lake Baikal, before onto either Mongolia or Europe.

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(for actual2009  route travelled details, go to Trip Data section)

2009 Planned Route:

Despite the hundreds of people motorcycling across Siberia every year, and the vastness of Siberia (Siberia itself is larger than any other country in the world), there has been a tendency by western adventure motorcyclists to stick to the one route across the vast territory, from Novosibirsk to Skovorodino, before splitting out to the two end points at Vladivostok and Magadan.

The Sibirsky Extreme project will explore a couple of alternative tracks across Siberia, and in fact the theme of the Sibirsky Extreme Project’s route will be to avoid, where possible, established routes and to seek out that which is interesting and unridden. There is an enormous body of undocumented territory and roads in Siberia, and we plan to ride thousands of miles of it all.

Quite apart from the main Siberian Extreme stage, the fascinating journeys to and from Siberia are significant Adventure Motorcycling projects in themselves, and will lend themselves particularly well to photographs and film. These routes include:

• The beautiful but dangerous North Caucasus mountains in Russia
• Exploring the remote and rarely visited Russian republic of Tuva, and riding a new unridden track between Kosh Agach in the Altai, and Kyzyl, the capital of Tuva / Uriankhai.

Route Overview

Travelling thru Europe, our planned route will spice up an otherwise vanilla route by taking in 20 countries in the first 15 days of the project, including Bosnia, Albania, Kosovo, Serbia and Romania. Then its on to the volatile Russian North Caucasus area, including a trip to Europes Highest Mountain, the 5642m (18,510 ft) Mount Elbrus, before leaving the region via Dagestan and Europes only Buddhist Republic, the Republic of Kalmykia (An amazing ethnically pure offshoot of the Mongol Empire that took root in the European Russian steppe).
Entering Central Asia just north of the Caspian Sea, the project will travel down a rarely travelled route in between the Caspian and Aral seas, to end up in the oases cities of Khorezm and Khiva before on through Bukhara and Samarkand to they incredible, dynamic Pamir mountains of Tajikistan. The route through Tajikistan follows the Afghan border for a few hundred kilometres and then passes an altitude of 4655 metres (15,270 ft) before passing into the equally mountainous Kyrgyzstan and the Tien Shan mountains.
Heading North through Kazakhstan, the project will again seek to avoid the “Standard Kazakhstan Route” and explore the more remote mountain and desert roads on the way north to the Altai region in Russia. Sticking to the theme of the project, the route will lead us to an obscure border crossing and  minor roads thru the Altai region before the first probe into the motocycling unknown – The obscure Russian republic of Tuva.
Tuva, originally part of the Mongol Empire fell into Chinese hands in the 1700s, and Russian hands after the Chinese revolution of 1911. Between the wars, Tuva was actually independent, and today its interwar postage stamps are considered among the rarest of all collectors items. Tuva was absorbed into the Soviet Union and Russia during the second world war and has remained there since, although Chinese maps from Taiwan (nationalist China) still mark Tuva as being part of China. There is only one “road” into Tuva, so as an out of the way dead end, it has been avoided by all but Tuva “enthusiasts”. However the Sibirsky Extreme project is confident of getting into Tuva by obscure mountain trails, thus allowing for the first motorcycling crossing of the little republic, the original home of “throat singing”.

Stage Two – Siberian Extreme
Heading north from Irkutsk through forest trails known only to locals, the Sibirsky Extreme Project enters is main adventurous stage. From here its 10 weeks and 7000 miles through some of the most remote regions, rarely travelled by westerners of any means, and most of the trails we cover will never have been visited by a foreign motorcylist.  We follow the Lena river North from Lake Baikal to the city of Lensk, before a mad dash north along mining roads to reach key objective #1 – the far northern city of Udachny – and hopefully on across the tundra to the Arctic circle in Asia. A first by Motorcycle.
From Udachny, we face the second major objective … the 1000 mile Vilyuisky Trakt east thru Mirny, Nyurba and Vilyuisk towards Yakutsk. From Yakutsk eastwards to Magadan we ride the far more familiar and reasonably well ridden “Road of Bones”, but unlike other traverses of the Road of Bones, we dont plan to stop in Magadan.
We plan to push on beyond Omsukchan to ride further east than the present benchmark of 155.8 degrees to the abandoned settlement of Merenga (excepting bikes flown or shipped into Kamchatka or Chukhotka, thats as far as anyone has yet ridden on the Eurasian land mass).
A couple of hours journey south by aeroplane takes us to Khabarovsk.  There we hope to link up with some Moscow based Russian riders to ride Sakhalin  Island from top to bottom, before returning to the Russian mainland at Vanino, the start of Russia’s strategic northernmost railway across the country,  Started it he 1930s, and finished only in 2001, it is known by its acronym, the BAM. The BAM is famous for the ruggedness of the terrain through which it passes; notably tougher and far more scenic than the far larger Trans-Siberian Railway, hundreds of miles to the south. We will ride the service road beside the BAM starting from the Pacific Ocean and ending 4000 kms away in Taishet, in central Siberia, where the BAM begins. Arrival in Taishet signifies the completion of the 4th objective; The first known full length BAM ride from Vanino to Taishet.

Stage Three – Southbound Exit
From Taishet the project heads south to Mongolia, before being escorted thru China to the Khunjerab Pass and Pakistan; one of only two border crossings across the entire Himalayan Chain. The project winds down as the road winds down through the worlds most dramatic mountians and valleys – the High Karakoram – before entering India and preparing to fly home – but not before a few weeks relaxing on the beach in Goa.

Edit:  Due to unforeseen circumstances, I was unable to end the trip on the beach in Goa relaxing.  Instead after Mongolia, and a maintenance stop at Almaty, the plan has been amended  to head directly back to Europe.

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Two maps of Siberia. The map above shows the two standard routes typically used by today’s Adventure Motorcyclists. The pink line is the Trans Siberian Highway, the main road that runs across Russia. The red line represents the Lena Highway up to Yakutsk and the “Road of Bones” from Yakutsk to Magadan.

The map below shows the new alternative tracks The Sibirsky Extreme Project will navigate in Green.