The Road of Bones

More dust the next day was the start of the Road of Bones or the Kolyma Highway, there are two ways you can go, one is to continue on the Federal road (or the M26) and the second is to take the old summer road. This way is the hardest as it is only serviced as far as Tomtor, after that nothing goes anymore. The bridges have all but gone and this makes the river crossings hard or if the water levels are high almost impossible. I chose the federal road for a umber of reasons, 1) I was on my own 2) 10 days before I got there Magadan had three months rain in a day! Causing flooding and prompting the authorities to declare a natural disaster. I don’t think anyone will do the old summer road in 2014.

I don't know what this stature was for but it was impressive

The first part of this road is what they call the wetlands. It soon becomes apparent why, and in days gone by it might have become a problem with the amount of standing water around but these days not so much.

The wetlands

Some of the old bridges are still used

The roads are obviously better than they used to be

The trucks were starting to thin out a bit now. I was doing really well on the way up to Khandyga, until I came to the ferry across the Lena River. I got there at three O’clock and soon found out that the ferry leaves when it is full. At 20.00 there was still room for two more but I guess that was enough and it was getting late. As we got to the other side an hour and a half later, the sun was getting very low and I still had another 30km to get to town. That took me an hour and then I found out I’d lost another hour so by the time I found the only B&B in town I found out they had no room. Now I really was in trouble. Too late to carry on going, and nowhere that I could find to set up the tent. In desperation I knocked on the door of the last supermarket on the way out of town that was just closing and asked if there was anywhere I could sleep or pitch the tent. I must have looked really desperate as they ended up letting me sleep in the building site at the back of the shop. Not great but I was grateful for it and got the sleeping bag out to lie on the dirty mattress they had found. I covered myself in anti mosquito cream and went to sleep straight away.

The new building at the back of the shop

A bedroom of sorts but gratefully received

The heating pipes in town stay above ground because in winter they would freeze

Having had no dinner and no breakfast I was happy after the first 60km to find a café and have some fried rice and pork with some bread to eat. The road then got better as they have completed a lot of the improvements and sitting on speeds of 90kmph is easy. You do have to be careful though as every now and then there are sections that are full of potholes and bumps that make you slow down fairly quickly. It’s 560km which took me a good ten hours to do and when I got to Ust Nera the hotel again is basic. Sometimes you find yourself put in a twin bed room with someone else. I was lucky to be put in with a Russian Geologist who was working there looking for gold. He spoke good English and told me that there was no hot water in the room but if I went to the reception they would let me in room number two which did have some. He also told me there was no café or shop so it looked like dinner was out again. Luckily he had bread and cheese and sausage which he shared with me and even a bottle of whiskey to share a wee dram or two before bed. Sometimes things work out better than you expect.

Plenty of these by the side of the road

This candidate just lost his truck in the fire

This one was a bit stuck but still living in his cab!!

Thursday saw me get an early start for what was going to be a short 380km day from Ust Nera to Susuman. The day before the road had climbed as high as 3000m just before Ust Nera and but today was out over rolling hills and although the road wasn’t in as good shape I made good time until the last 60km when the rain started. The loose black (coal?) that a lot of the road is made from covered everything, the bike and me, and life was pretty miserable. Just as it had started I passed the city of Kadykchan which had been abandoned years back when the coal ran out and they just turned off the heating. It looks strange to see such a big place and know there is nobody there anymore. I stopped at the turn off and once again the risk was too high to go see. The road leading to it is becoming more difficult to ride and there is always the risk that someone (hunters) are living in there in the summer and should anything happen when you are on your own nobody is going to know. So another thing I only saw from afar. 

Snow still up at 3000m

The ghost town of Kadykchan just before Susaman

The hotel in Susuman was a welcome sight and I dripped very dirty water all over the reception area even though I had tried to wash the worst of it off with the water falling from the broken drain pipe outside.

Susaman in the rain is a grey miserable place

Made harder by the hard winters and short period to repair anything

A nice remnant from the old days

An imaginative use for an old airplane

I was going to get a really early start for the last push to Magadan, but when I came out to the bike the next morning the front tyre was flat. It was raining and I was in no mood to rush to maybe fix a puncture and then still have to do 620km so I went back in and took another night. I took the pump down to see what was going on and found that the valve cap was missing?? And it had been there the night before as the valve was clean and no muck inside. I pumped up the tyre and over the course of the day monitored the pressure. No problem. Some bastard had let the air out of the tyre the night before. So I took a walk around Susuman and got eaten alive by the mossies. It’s another town that lives on the mining in the area, so there has been very little building or improvement since the end of the USSR. It’s a pretty dull and grey place, made even worse by the rain and the knowledge that someone had it in for me.  

Some images from the road of bones