North Baikal

I awoke to see the sun and set off to try to find a fix for the foot peg. Almost immediately I met a Russian guy on a motorcycle and he led me to his garage where he had some an extra foot peg that fit with some welding and improvisation. Incredible how I always seem to meet people at the right time! By midday the sun had been replaced with clouds, but fortunately it came back out in the afternoon and I decided to ride south 45km to the village of Baikalskoe and was rewarded with some spectacular views:

The next morning I awoke early – I would have to retrace my route back almost the entire 180km to Magistrali. The rain held off all morning and the road proved much easier during the day and slightly drier (no doubt the foot peg helped as well!). On the way back I had a chance to see some of the scenery I had missed at night:

I made it to Ulkan, the turn off for the road to Zhigalvo 300km south, in good time and thought I could easily make it to Zhigalvo by early evening. You've heard that by now and can guess what happened... The road was in truly bad shape – whereas the other dirt roads had been hardpacked enough not to turn to mud, the Zhigalvo road was much looser dirt and had turned to deep mud in many places making for very slow and treacherous going. In between the mud it had long stretches of potholes and corrugations. After about 100km I heard a noise coming from the front brake – I stopped to inspect it and incredibly one of the front brake pads was worn completely down to the metal! When the mechanics in Ufa replaced the disc I had given them new pads to install. That was less than 3000 miles ago – the pads are usually good for over 15,000! The other pad looked barely used – the mechanic in Ufa had incorrectly installed one of the new pads and it must have been wearing against the brake disc the entire time. Thankfully I had saved the old pads which still had plenty of life and I was able to change the brake pads on the side of the road or I would have been riding with no front brake.

This caused me to lose more precious daylight and I was pretty upset at this point – at the morons in Ufa for screwing up an extremely simple job and at myself for not checking their work or just insisting on doing it myself in the first place. To be fair it was just some bad luck, overall I've been extremely impressed with the ingenuity and mechanical skills of Russians – they can fix nearly anything it seems, probably a necessity when you have roads like this!

I once again didn't make it to civilization before nightfall. I won't relate another woe is me tale in full, but suffice it to say it was a very bizarre night and I met many strange characters.

South of Zhigalvo the dirt roads continued, but they were in excellent condition, following the Lena River and passing through many small villages. In Tsarist times many prominent revolutionaries were exiled to these communities: