Notes From The Road Vol III: Notes From The Road, #3

Praise For Volume IV

Spiced by self-deprecating humour and ironic wit, lucid descriptions of the sights, sounds, tastes and smells; an experience close to riding on the journey; war-torn areas, land mines; societies in political turmoil, corruption; seething ethnic conflicts barely attenuated. Yet, Mansfield finds beauty, freedom and fellowship within the chaos.

Jim Cowgill, ADVMoto

I loved it, one of the best written books I’ve read; humorous, adventurous, informative. Exquisite writing, amazing.

Nathan Millward. The Postie

I learned, laughed, sympathised and was

surprised. It’s very easy to give five stars.

Sam Manicom, Under Asian Skies

Just occasionally a book arrives that is different, brave and definitely intriguing; an observational classic, the acerbic wit pin sharp.

Paddy Tyson. Overland Magazine

A refreshing, sometimes unnervingly different approach; a ‘why-you-should-do-it’ inspirational book.

Colin Overland, Ride Magazine

NOTES FROM THE ROAD VOLUME III

DEREK MANSFIELD

HOMBRE PRESS

First published by Hombre Press England, September 2017

Copyright © Derek Mansfield 2017

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

First Printing, 2017

ISBN 978-0-9957454-9-0

Edited by Several People

Designed by Olga Popova

Printed by Zenith Media

Veritas Me Dirigit

TRUTH DIRECTS ME

Here’s a truth that I’ve discovered. When you’ve seen sufficient oceans, and marvelled at the mountains, when you’ve walked the city streets and ridden enough of the steppe... it’s the people you meet that are the most remembered.

They’re the reason for the journey.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my grand-children, Luke & Rosabella.

May they grow ever more clever and strong and explore this wonderful world for themselves.

Contents

Praise For Volume IV

Veritas Me Dirigit

Dedication

The Journey Map

Foreword

Prologue

And Off

Onward To The East

Technically Equipped

Zabreze To Kyiv, Almost

And Then It Rained

The Bikers Of Kyiv

Of Gangsters

Karma Of The Road

Riding The Russian Night

Dope In The Dark

Recommended By Hookers

The Trans Siberian Highway

Sleeping In A Nightclub

Siberia Begins

Capital Of Oil

Rocket Army

Dead Centre

Change Of Plan

Into The Valley

The Border Town

Daunted

Heading West

A Russian Biker Party

Karlag

Night Of The Bong

Maintenance

Building Blocks

The Café In Nowhere

Who The Hell Are You

The Buran

In Uralsk

Return To Russia

Centuries Of Blood

Epilogue

Addendum

Before The Off

A Parallel Universe

Changing Gear

A Digression On Bribes

Acknowledgements.

Further Reading

About The Author

The Journey Map

This is my journey from London to Mongolia and back via Kazakhstan; approximately 18,000 kilometres door to door

There are improved images of this map and illustrative photographs here.

http://derekmansfield.com

Foreword

Iam lucky to have completed this book.

I have three illnesses, any one of which is terminal, but I’m still upright and breathing today.

Certain names, places and times have been changed to protect people from consequential retribution as they helped me on my journey.

Gangsters are woven into the story and they still live. Others, friends, were involved in small but illegal acts against some Nation States

But I made it there, and I made it back.

Thank you for the love, each and every one of you.

Prologue

The much-feared Buran wind stirs into life in the north of Siberia, gathers pace on the Mongolian Steppe, and crashes into Kazakhstan. In winter, it is ice laden. In summer, in the now, on broken roads, it whips sand and soil into deadly dust storms.

Because I have no choice I ride half blinded over a hill; a burly SUV overtakes and throws more dust into my eyes. The deep sand is not gentle with the front wheel under full brake.

To the road bed, pain shooting through my body from ribs broken five weeks earlier. Breathing is stilted; a few short gasps and new pain blossoms from my ankle trapped under a quarter tonne of motorcycle.

I turn my head and see the wheels of a giant Kamaz truck sliding towards me. Dear God, I beg, beam me up.

And Off

It’s the drugs that take up the space.

There was a time, employed as I was as an ambassador of an august international newspaper, coloured pink, when I was provided with an expense account with which to entertain clients.

The entertainment was supposedly to persuade the clients to spend their corporate funds on advertising in said organ. Many of the advertisers were bankers in the City of London.

Some of the more corpulent entertainees actually and audibly smacked their lips over food and wine thus freely provided, and told stories that the hills in the vineyard that made this wine faced south, or north or somewhere, therefore improving the wine beyond human capacity of description, adjectives or judgement. Thick lips, smack smack, guzzle guzzle, glug glug.

I never heard a geographic or geological discussion over the merits of marijuana or cocaine or other recreational drugs. But then I may not have been listening; I lived for a couple of decades with more than my share of blackouts.

No matter the provenance, my sole interest in fine or any kind of wine, alcohol or other recreational stimuli was always the same. More. Now.

But personally, no lips were smacked.

Drugs needed for recreation can be purchased almost anywhere on the road; but the maximum allowable prescribed drugs needed to keep me alive for four months take up a great deal of room. In the days of the brown glass bottle it was much easier to pack, but today the pills are divided by paper, card and plastic the easier to forget and administer in the wrong order. Or time.

I’d packed most things two days ago. Clothes, tools, tent and cooking kit. Plus, because I’d read about it, duct tape and nylon ties.

The hard-plastic luggage and top-box were brimming and jammed tight.

And last night at exactly midnight with nerves hammering and fear enveloping I had emptied and repacked everything. Twice.

Here and now in the morning, my wife and I discuss my toilet habits. She has years of experience taking children on journeys and toileting them before the off.

But I’m wondering, smart in my red wax jacket, about two related things. Did I realise that I looked like a Mountie, Canadian RCMP? And would a Mountie’s wife say in a sweet Canadian drawl, to her man high up on his horse, Hey Honey, have you been to the toilet for a wee?

No answer comes. To answer my wife I nod my head, a final kiss and loving hug and I’m ready to mount up too.

Normally the prospect of a long ride and new horizons fills me with excitement; any biker knows that too few hours on the road creates a craving for wind in the face, but this time I am somewhat beset by nerves.

Is it because the bike is still new to me? The Stelvio is a very large machine, I am physically small, and still learning to ride it with confidence.

Or maybe it’s because I have spoken to other riders who have ridden through Mongolia and the thought of riding over trackless deserts on my own is just a little daunting.

But here we are, early on this bright and shiny blue skied morning, birdsong at high volume, and I’m ready to leave.

Helmet on, gloves on. Gloves off, helmet secured, gloves on. In fitted black jeans with kevlar cladding, my leg is swung over the saddle and then sitting tall with the nerves yammering and fear in the pit of the stomach.

A final contrived smile to hide the stretching of the fear and rolling off the drive onto the road. Nerves quieting, fear leaving, and, with the acceleration, the thrill of adventure beginning.

To Dover, and brief nauticalia. I was a sailor, and indeed a nuclear submariner, in our good Queen’s Navy almost fifty years ago. So, I prefer the tradition, and sometimes for cost, to cross the English Channel by ship.

There is an anticipation and a finality about leaving my Island; crossing the sea, disembarking to touch the soil of a new country and knowing, unmistakably, that I’m finally abroad.

For once I’d got the time right for the Ferry with the wait just thirty minutes; motorcycles are no longer at the front of the queue for the off which is a shame but, well, the advantage was only ever minimal.

Boarding. Up the scary clanking metal ramp into this gigantic steel space painted white, blue, and yellow, the occasional patch of rust, and sailors ready to hook up and strap down my motorcycle with me thanking anyone who’d listen that it was dry with no skidding on the deck. It’s the mid-morning ferry from Dover to Calais in France.

Sunshine still abounds, blue sky but a bit of a chill and bluster introduced with the ship rocking lightly in the wind.

And usually, at the front on landing, for fear of looking like a laggard or a fool, I ride off at speed. Invariably in the wrong direction.

In fact, the ride to Dortmund was short, about four hundred kilometres, and although I rode through three languages the journey in the countryside was marked only by the general lack of features, other than complying with Continental law by riding on the wrong side of the road.

I wasn’t arrested in France for not wearing a DayGlo jacket.

Nor, dammit, was I arrested and asked for a breath test with the breathalyser and spare light bulbs in a packet. Dammit because I had panic purchased them, just in case, on the Net three days ago.

There was musical interlude, briefly, in Belgium. The motorcycle was flashing its little yellow dashboard light in such an endearing way that I knew more petrol was required. Into a petrol station, with people, which in Belgium is passingly strange. The previous year I’d found Belgian petrol stations that served petrol, air, oil, coffee, hot croissants and umbrellas with nary a human in sight. Full service; but only slots for cards or cash.

So here I am, card outstretched and the dark haired Belgian girl behind the till asking, in a voice not dissimilar to Ms. Bette Midler, if I want to dance in the moonlight. I am taken aback by such a friendly attitude especially as it is daylight outside and the girl is now singing at the top of her voice. I pay, smile and as I leave the store realise Ms. Midler is also singing at the top of her voice, but inside my helmet. And can be heard, for the accompaniment and joining in, on the outside too. A wave from the till and I smile, riding away, as the ‘Wind beneath my wings’ begins to play over the engine noise.

The cities rolled by too; from the road, the architecture mainly glass and steel with little attempt to uphold and identify with centuries of previous culture.

It may be the wrong side of the road but the wheels are spinning nicely and away from the cities and back in the countryside I’m inhaling bucolic cow, pig, and chicken manure smells that fill the air and are seemingly richer and longer lasting than those in Surrey. No wonder, I thought, we Brits import so much meat and dairy products; viewed up close, Le Continent is just one enormous farm.

The motorways streamed by, the language changes but so far understandable. No crowds to wave at, or to commune with; the weather now dull and grey so I guess the crowds are indoors watching the daytime TV.

So, all’s well. Except. And it is quite a big exception. NDrive, my phone mounted Satnav software is more than ever completely crazed. It runs for ten minutes and retires hurt, thence crashing the phone in pique.

I had decided, this journey, to avoid the expense of maps and trust ever more firmly in technology. I hadn’t even bothered to print some Google maps. Except one, on one page of A4, delineating, in very small scale, a route from London to Vladivostok.

The advantage being that it fits in the tank bag folder, the distance doesn’t look that far, and it didn’t seem to matter that Vladivostok was not the desired destination. Bing.com seems to be a better mapping tool than Google incidentally – Bing takes you across borders, whilst Google adds hundreds of kilometres by finding a route around.

Being map-less hasn’t been a problem previously. I stayed on roads going vaguely in the direction I wanted and put up my tent or found a hotel when I got tired.

Besides, I was looking forward to meeting new friends.

New friends are made at the side of the road when problems dump you there. No problems, no meetings. And, as you’ve maybe realised, I’m not a dealership tourist.

I’m a couch-surfing tourist. With friends, friends of friends and new friends yet to be met to include those from Couchsurfing, dot com, too.

This Friday, June 1st, I was to stay with Birgit, a talented photographic artist and producer whose work adorns the interweb and several galleries here in her native Germany.

I had arranged to meet Birgit about seven in the evening, calculated as a four- hundred-kilometre ride starting at an hour past noon. But I hadn’t put NDrive into the frame and was summarily, and accordingly, punished.

I dialled in the address in Calais; off to the motorway and NDrive collapsed, phone crashed, and, like the sole participant in a TV quiz show I ask myself, Which motorway?

I stopped the bike, powered the phone down to reboot, redial in the address.

Through and past Bruges and Ghent and Antwerp and then Essen, heading on for Duisburg

Said process of rebooting NDrive repeats interminably as I rode across flat lands where people spoke in different