#4: [18-Aug-12]

#3: [24-Sep-07]

#1: [06-Aug-04]

24-Sep-2006 --

Story starts at 37N 137E

I haven’t had much time to visit any other confluences since 52N 108E. I’ve had some mechanical problems with the bike and the weather was getting colder and colder. For the three days I stayed in Irkutsk, the temperature remained under 10°. I couldn’t loose too much time on the road and I had to reach Europe before it got too cold. It had become a race against the clock. The road to Krasnoyarsk wasn’t particularly good, with plenty of places where it was only dirt and gravel for dozens of kilometers. One day I had heavy rain for the entire day to be replaced by a temperature of only 3° the next. It had snowed before I got up that morning.

Shortly after arriving in Novosibirsk on September 8th, I took part in a big parade that took a couple of hundreds bikers in the evening to a small park on the other side of the Ob river. The next destination was Omsk where I arrived on the 10th. I stayed there for three days to have my muffler fixed by some local bikers. On the day I left the temperature dropped again and I had hail for quite a long time that prevented me to ride as much as I wanted.

I reached Tyumen the next day after 380 kilometers and a day of rain and cold. I was welcomed there by Alexey and some of his friends. They spend two days fixing the rear brake as well as the rear suspension which had been damaged just before reaching Tyumen. They replaced it with a Russian suspension, not perfect but good enough to cross the rest of the country as well as Europe.

Finally on September 22nd I crossed the Ural Mountains which divide Asia from Europe. On the same day I reached Perm and met Vadim, another local biker. I stayed at his home for the weekend and on Sunday 24th, the day before I left and a much warmer day than the previous ones, we went looking for the confluence N58 E56.

We had three GPS to help us find it: the one I’ve been using for almost three years. The one I bought just before going on that trip to fix on the motorbike, and Vadim’s GPS.

We just had to ride Vadim’s car almost directly to the confluence. It was located on the southern bank of the Kama River less than thirty kilometers from his home. We rode along a small canal after going under the new bridge that opened less than a year ago. The confluence was on the other side of the canal. We rode a bit further west to find a place where we could cross and double back to come back right where the confluence is located. We just had to walk for less than a hundred meters across a field to find it.

Story continues at 56N 27E