Up late as my arm had been giving me pain through the night. I have had problems with a dumb arm after the off roading in Mongolia.
Anyway, I spent the morning and to about 2 o'clock cleaning Xena the warrior Princess (my beautiful lesbian bike - named my some lovely friends of mine) in the river, fixing the brakes, fixing a slow puncture, having a leisurely breakfast and coffee and chatting with Alex. He has been good company.
We went into town and I tried to pay fine at the bank in town only to find that it was closed because it was the weekend. It was interesting to have a wonder round town and to see the statue of Lenin etc. Mongolia and China were totally different to how I imagined them to be before I visited. Siberia is actually very similar to expected. It appears that most places have mains electricity, some have running water but the toilets are still just holes in the ground.
I was interested in what Siberian food is like and so we had a late lunch at the only cafe we could find in town. I have to say that the food was rather uninspiring. It was very bland and a bit like gruel! It was my first experience of Russian food. Different to Mongolian but no more interesting. I wonder how it will change as I get closer to Moscow. One of the main reasons for going to a cafe through was just to charge up my electronic items and to spend some time writing my blog and organising my photos. I have been so busy biking and meeting new people that I am about 1 month behind on the blog. I have still not written about the amazing time I had with my Dad biking around Beijing (last month) let alone Mongolia. I want to write about it before I forget everything. I have also been biking so much recently that I was very happy to have a chilling day off the bike and catching up with my diary etc. We spent several hours in the cafe, with me trying loads of different dishes and eating too much and also organising my photos.
It was really useful to talk to Alex about Russia and where I should cycle. He said that it would be more interesting to cycle to Novosibirsk than from Moscow to St Petersburgh and also there are daily trains to Moscow from Novosibirsk where as there are only trains every few days from Biysk. So that is my new plan: cycle to Novosibirsk (about 1000km) and catch the train to Moscow from there. If I have time I will bike to St Petersburgh from Moscow but if not I will catch a train/hitch.
Once we had been kicked out of the cafe when it shut at 5.30, we wandered to the office about the local supermarket where they had kindly let us use the internet yesterday. The shop shut at 7 and so I could only use the internet for a short time and so I did not get a fraction of the things I wanted to do done! Oh well. I have missed being in constant contact with the outside world while in Mongolia and I have loads to catch up on.
We met a French man that was hitching to the next village (where he lives - doing PHD research into Siberian culture) and he said that there was a good place to camp next to a lake about 1 km out of town (rather than the river). I had planned on cycling out of town much further today and get back on the road again but it was getting dark by the time I had finished on the net and done some shopping and so I decided to camp once again with Alex, this time at the location suggestion of the French chap. It was actually a very good choice of campsite.
Alex has a large back pack and I have all of my bags on my bike. So that we could set up camp in the day light (rather than in pitch black as last night), I took his backpack on my back and rode next to him while he ran. We must have look such a funny pair with me heavily loaded and him running. We got so many stares from locals and beeps from their horns as they drove past! 
It had been a rather cold, gray afternoon and I really did not fancy biking anywhere today and so I was very happy to spend several hours in the cafe out of the rain organising my photos and writing notes for my blog. 
No comments:
Post a Comment