27 August - 12 September, Altai, Russia to the Ukraine border

We leave the mountains of the Altai Republic and descend to the Siberian plain which continues to the



Whole villages are still full of quaint little cottages



Urals where we visit Ekaterinburg.  Like when we left Mongolia we felt we were just keeping ahead of the cold weather as leaves began to fall or change colour and we needed the extra blackets at night.   The Urals are not as high as we expected  and we are soon over them heading for the Ukraine which will be the subject of the next post.  The weeather got better the last couple of days in western Russia and in Urakraine the sun shone all day. 

This one has been visited by a double glazing salesman!

A disfiguring part of most villages is the gas pipes (painted yellow) which snake along every street rising up where vehicles are likely to pass under.  Presumably there is a good reason why they do not go underground.

We found quite large areas along the road where all the trees had died- possibly from lack of water during recent dry summers

Road surfaces in Siberia were very variable and often bad with broken surfaces and potholds

.... and badly rutted

You could buy most things for the ktchen along the way - mushrooms sellers were very plentiful - specialising in cep mushrooms.  Note that the sellers are well wrapped up for the cold.

In western Russia perhaps the main crop was sunflowers, probably for the oil.  Here a Klaas combine harvester (one of seven in this 500 acre field) gets to work on the crop.

Sunrise over the tab

Carol enjoys her birthday  lunch in the Urals - we had Black Woodpecker at this site. 

Horse and carts are still common in Russian villages, one even crossed the border into Ukraine with us.

Road through the Urals

There are more trucks on the roads in Siberia than private cars and tend to congregate around cafes at lunchtime

After mushroom sellers the next most common roadside vendors are honey sellers.

This guys just sold Carol about 6 lbs of honey - perhaps thats why he is smiling.

The only windmill in Siberia - possibly.

The next pictures were taken at the Novosibirsk raiway museum - they should be at the beginning of the post but blogging does not seem to be that easy.

The railway museum also included a lot of road and farm vehicles - here is there world reference collection of Ladas

Possibly the prettiest railcar ever

A typical camp site in Siberia.  We try always to get a few hundred yards of the road behind some trees so we are shielded for the road - see the truck in the background.  The grass is short because it has just been cut for hay.

Typical Siberia meadow in late August after the hay has been cut and put into small stacks all over the field.  In the more mechanised west hay and strraw was baled and stacked.

Two deer appear near the camp site (above)

Melons are very popular in early September

Sometimes we did not find suitable camp site and needed to pull into a cafe car park with a dozen large trucks for company

This the 'Church over the blood' in Ekaterinburg, at the spot where the Tsar and his family were murdered by the Bolsheviks  

Attached to the church above is a small museum  of Tsarist artefacts.  Here Carol knocks out a popular number on the Tsars old joanna.  What is she wearing?  The headscarf was required becuase it was a religious site and the plastic booties were to protect the museum environment.  Strange that visitors were allowed to play this working piano.  Note the odd visual effect of the floor tiles 

Mike meets the Tsar

A cold day in Ekaterinburg

Downtown Ekaterinburg

Road side monument - there are lots tothe 1941-45 war and every village has a memorial like in England

Semey (Kaz) to Ulan Ude (51deg 49'N, 107 deg 35'E), Siberia, Russia : Eight time zones and 8319 miles

We passed the World Harmony Run  near Irkutsk - can anyone tell us more about this relay? We thought it was the Olympic torch got lost

Carol dips a toe in a very cold Lake Baikal

Gas: Our two 6 kg Calor propane bottles run out in Semey and as expected we were unable to replace them with anything similar. Three gas bottle companies had never seen this size or type of bottle. We need gas to cook and heat water when it is too dangerous to light the Kelley Kettle for fear of fires, and to run the fridge when we are camped without any mains power supply (East of Slovakia = that’s never). The only available gas bottle (‘gaz ballon’ in local terminology) was a 10 kg compressed gas monster which would not connect to our existing regulator. To achieve a solution we needed to buy a gas bottle (£15), a regulator (‘reductor’) and a metre of gas pipe (£6). I had a few jubillee clips to connect it all up with the gas inlet nozzle on the Tab. The new gas bottle had to be strapped where one of the water jerrycans goes on the front of the Tab as it would not go in the gas bottle container. (We added a padlock and chain as it would have been too easy to remove otherwise). Luckily however the displaced water jerrycan fits neatly into the now redundant gas bottle holder - plus a few other bits and pieces to stops things knocking around together. A hole needed to be cut in the gas bottle box and lid to achieve a neat connection.

Last camp in Kaz near the border

Mike gets us in a mess

Tow rope needed to haul the tab out

......but the camp site was worth it

The trans Siberian highway, typical  between Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk, later it opened out into rolling hills and wheat field near Irkutsk

One of several small new churches along the way

Typical old style vilage house along the highway

The road avoids most villages but not this typical one

At 90 degs east - a quarter of the way round the world at this latitude, still some way to Irkutsk

The Trans Siberian railway runs beside the Trans Siberian highway for a lot of the time

Most houses were already making provision for the next winter by the stock piliing of firewood 

Our campsite at the Irkutsk municipal offices

Camping idyll, pine forest beside river : by Lake Baikal

Siberian Chipmunk

A section of the highway gets a new bridge - presumably road works like this can only be done in summer

Lunchstop by Lake Baikal

Baikal Herring Gull

The young mechanic who reparied our UJ

Alec the caretaker at the Irkutsk municipal buildings was very kind to us



One of the many rivers entering Lake Baikal




 We had heard that the Semey road to the border was the worst in the Kazakhstan so we were prepared for the worst. However perhaps they have caught up with the road maintenance schedule as we found it generally good. The endless steppes are ending here with much sandy soil which supports pine forest. Out last camp site in Kaz was a pine forest just southwest of the border - there were nightjars calling as we went off to sleep. Our immobiliser alarm has been going off a lot and it went off again that night before we had even got to sleep. Not sure why - we will not be setting it again. Each time it has gone off in the night Mike has fallen out of the Tab in just his underpants, immediately shouting because he forgets his shoes and steps on pricklys. Enough to scare off any would be prowler.

The border routine including getting new insurance for the Landrover, took two and a half hours, all very agreeable officials but very slow. We were among about 15 passing through, one wonders how they managed with four coach loads.

We were quite startled that immediately on entering Russia everything changed. The steppes seemed to stop abruptly . It was much greener for a start and a lot more agriculture. More trees. The houses looked much more modern and better constructed and the familiar oriental faces seem to have disappeared altogether. Also the roads were much better and we were easily able to achieve our preferred cruising speed of 50 mph for most of the time.

Novosibirsk is a big place and there seems to be no bypass so the only option is directly through the town. It was hot and sweaty with long traffic jams but then there was a terrific thunderstorm with local flooding in the streets. Most of the towns to Irkutsk (1800 km away) were a pain, either no bypass or a bypass which was very erratic and usually along very poor secondary roads, not roads constructed as bypasses. Krasnoyask was the exception it had a good bypass a pleasure to drive along. East of Poyma 97 deg E the road gets bad for probably a total of about 50 km whilst they repair and replace old tarmac. There is no part of this leg that is still wholly unpaved track.

At Novosibirsk you have definitely swapped the endless steppe for the endless forest. Miles and miles of birch, sometimes with pine, rarely all pine. There are surprisingly many areas where the trees have been cleared and agriculture is practiced. This part of Russia is the land of mighty rivers. We crosses the Ob at Barnaul and the Yenisey at Krasnoyarst, both flow north to the Arctic Ocean. There are many minor rivers much bigger than you would find in the UK. It is also a land of swamps and wet ground and this means mosquitos, thousands of them, Siberia also specialises in very big flies which are basically harmless but buzz round you like hornets, you cannot afford to take you eyes off them as some are horseflies which sneak in a grab a mouthful very quickly. We had our first tick attachment on this leg - Mike found one attached under his right arm during a rare encounter with soap and water. It had only been there a few hours and was not yet distending and it came off easy with Carol’s special tick tweezers.

Mechanical trouble struck about half way between Novosibirsk and Irkutsk, one of the front universal joints began to collapse resulting in a juddering of the steering. We had a couple of spare UV spiders and a local garage put one in for us. It was the same UV that went last September coming back form Scotland so only about 10,000 miles out of that one!! The mechanic who did the job did a master class on UJ spider changing for Mike and three mechanics under training which was very helpful to all. The vibrations of the collapsing UJ has caused a secondary problem as oil is now seeping out of the transfer gearbox where the UJ sits. This may yet develop into a serious problem.

We got badly stuck at one point crossing a ditch to get to a camp site. Mike misjudged the amount of mud in the ditch, the wet sides from recent rain and selected the wrong gear to get us through, he had stalled before he realised the problem. We needed to unhitch the tab in the ditch, and slew the Landrover sideways so that it could get a grip in some vegetation and haul itself up the bank. We then needed to drag the tab out by the towrope from a position where the Landrover could get a grip. But it was a great camp site in a hayfield stuffed with wild flowers.

Our route on this leg follows more or less constantly the Trans Siberian Railway to Vladivostok. There are an amazing number of trains go along it , mostly goods trains hauling coal, timer, oil and other bulks east and coming back with cars, and imports. The trains seem to be only about 5-10 minutes apart in both directions and once a day we see the Moscow - Vlad ‘express’. On arrival in Irkutsk we got lost looking for somewhere to park up and doing a U-turn in the municipal offices car park stopped to ask the caretaker the way. We were offered the security of parking up in their car park for the night and the caretaker Alex took good care off us, including plying us with cups of tea, fruit and biscuits and showing us his photos of local sites and wildlife. Pity his dog could not keep quiet. We have found little kindnesses like this all through Russia, people seem to start off all conversations appearing rather stern but usually by the end they are very friendly and always helpful if we can make ourselves understood.

After Irkutsk we camped a couple of nights near Lake Baikal, the world’s deepest lake at 1637m deep and measuring 636km from north to south. It holds 80% of Russia’s freshwater - apparently more than all of North America’s five Great Lakes put together. The lake is home to lots of unique marine life - and large numbers of nerpa seals - sadly we didn’t see any. There was still some snow on the tops of the mountains behind the lakeshore.
Birds in Siberia
The journey between Semey and Ulan Ude saw a distinct change in the weather, bird habitats and birds compared to Kaz. For the worse! I was surprised to find that the endless birch forest was almost empty. Very few birds, those you could see and identify were of a relatively small range of species, but there were another group you could hear, which were unfamiliar and very difficult to come to grips with. Entering the forest was often not a good idea on account of the mosquitos and this became very frustrating. OK so we were traveling fast on this section with limited opportunities to watch birds, but that cannot be the only reason. What was most surprising was that with so many large rivers, numerous lakes large and small, swamps and ditches everywhere, there were almost no waterbirds! Unbelievable. In the 2000 + km between Semey and Irkutsk I did not see a single duck, only about one heron and three species of wader. There were a few Common, Herring and Black-headed Gulls. I was at a lost to explain the absence of waterbirds as habitats seemed healthy and perfectly acceptable to many species and there was an abundance of invertebrate life. Maybe there is a limited accommodation for birds from this region in their winter quarters? The details of observations will be available on the file sharing site after 1 July.

Weather
As well as the landscape the weather has changed on this leg. We had a couple of hot humid days followed by huge thunderstorms (a welcome relief) then things cooled down to mid-high 20's rather than 30's, with a mixture of sunshine and clouds. Near lake Baikal we experienced a clear microclimate with a persistent very cold wind blowing off the icy water bringing daytime temperatures down to 15C and nighttime to 8C. Parts of the lake freezes deeply enough in winter to be driven across and it’s temperature rarely rises above about 3-4C even in summer - Carol would have had a swim in it if it had just been that little bit warmer!

See also new invertebrate pics and notes on Food Page.