Korea, Russia, Stans To East Europe (page 27)

Lena River By Boat/Barge Day 1

As Lensk is the roads end the next 650 km are up the Lena river to Ust-Kut.

Some may say boring, some may say relaxing, depends on your views.

Me, I was first on board and sent right to the end to a raised platform, 45 parked on a ramp with chock blocks.

I took me about 3 hours to set up my tent with all the truckies, staff and just anyone coming to see what this alien was up to.

Finally set up and unpacking to take a stock of my food and get things organized it felt good to be onboard accomplishing a logistical nightmare via interpreters and google translate not to mention a slight start time change.

I say a MASSIVE thanks to the Mirny and Lensk moto crowds because without them it would have been tenfold harder and especially to Kim for telling me about this route option, it is all doable without Russian but stressful and I say it again, while I am proud to own one of the best GPS’s on the planet but this type of information is NOT in the POI’s LOL.

So what does a man have to do at this point....just check it out, a discussion was had on what to do....!

Lena River By Boat/Barge Day 2 

So day two starts after a good sleep, cool night and the sound of water relaxing me down. I have my breaky then the boats captain sends a guy to say I can not use my cooker on the barge, it is too dangerous, a bit of a joke really. My mates behind me eventually surface and say come for breaky, I said I will come up but I have already eaten.

That didn’t seem to matter and they had already fried up onions and mince with a cup of tea and there was already three plates and three of us, Ok, rude to say no and it was a nice feed.

Breaky done and dusted, some larfs via translate and chatter out comes the Vodka, a fresh 500ml bottle and chilled.

They ask if I want one, for me no thanks (it is actually considered rude to say no to a drink offer), with that in mind the second offer with a look on their face that I didn’t like their drink so I accepted and said a small one please.

So a few cheers, wayhays, etc 500mls between three of us disappeared in no time. They pull out a second bottle and at that point I said no thank you I want to write today before the last couple of days drop off into the abyss and they were cool with that, truthfully a nice chilled Vodka in the heat was bloody nice LOL.

The following are just snippets from the day, it heated up big time and was sun so very nice indeed.

The day passed pretty quickly along with varying scenery and several large forest fires filling the air with smoke.