False statement

Despite the heat and a few mosquitoes that made their way from the woods here to the third floor to suck on defenceless cyclists, we slept quite well. After a Rapunzel muesli, we get everything back downstairs. While Tanja buys some food for today, I tighten the mudguard mount and the mirrors that came loose during yesterday’s ordeal. “What, you’re going to Irkutsk on your bikes? Don’t you know that the road is in total disrepair? It’s going to be difficult for you,” a man says to me. I ask him to show me the route he is talking about on the road map. He puts on his glasses and points to the section of road between Nizhneudinsk and Tulun. “The entire 130-kilometre route broken?” I ask in horror. “But yes, everything is in a mess. “Otschin plocha Daroga”, (“Very bad road”) Already battered by the past few exhausting days, it’s not easy for me to maintain my confidence. But I try not to let it show. It makes no sense to demoralize Tanja as well.

We push the bikes in front of the office bunker, carry the trailers and saddlebags through the narrow door. It’s already 40 degrees in the sun outside in the morning. “You want to go to Lake Baikal?” a van driver asks us, shaking his head in amazement. “Yes, we do,” I reply. “Well, they’ve got their work cut out for them. “Otschin plocha Daroga” (“Very bad road”) “We already know. How many kilometers are broken?” I ask again to confirm the other person’s statement. “ßto Kilometer” (100 kilometers), he says with a smile and points to his van, which is loaded to the brim. “You should take a ride with me,” he invites, making it sound as if he wants to make a deal. We shake our heads and wonder where he could possibly find room for a single saddlebag.

Tanja is sitting on the stairs of the office complex, her head between her hands and looking exhausted. “I’ll be done in a minute,” I say, tightening another screw on the handlebar stop. I am aware that the time has come for a few days’ rest. According to various travelers, the mountain range in front of us stretches as far as the city of Ulan Ude. This means that we still have well over 1,000 kilometers of mountain and hill country ahead of us. So we must not burn out our bodies under any circumstances. However, it makes no sense to stay in such a terrible bunker for more than one night. I can’t write in there without running the risk of heatstroke. At the end of the day, I have to ask myself at the core of my being whether we made a mistake yesterday. Should we perhaps have accepted Iwan’s offer after all? Was it our ego that’s now knocking the gravel and grit around our ears again? And yet we knew that the bad slope would return. However. There’s no point in going crazy about it now.

The drive through Nizhneudinsk is like an endless snaking line around the deep potholes. Then, at the end of the village, we are unexpectedly surprised by asphalt. We pedal our horses up a hill and pass the town sign. As is so often the case here, it is made of concrete and looks more like a monolith. Nishneudinsk 1648, is on it with a lion-like heraldic animal, shaped in bold letters. Judging by the date, this place was one of the early harbingers of Russian civilization in wild Siberia. At the foot of the proud city monolith lie endless shards of glass, the result of people gathering here for special occasions such as weddings. At the end of the meeting, bottles of champagne or similar are then thundered against the monolith. If the glass shatters, it brings good luck. Directly opposite is an Orthodox wooden cross, about three meters high, with colourful cloths hanging from it. The trees in the immediate vicinity are also draped all over with these cloths. According to what we have been told, it also brings good luck and the fulfillment of wishes if you tie such a cloth in a tree in such a place. I look at the place with interest, then we drive on. It only takes minutes and a strong stench replaces the scent of the forest. Clouds of smoke billow across the street and bite into our noses. It’s hard to believe, but here all the city’s garbage is simply thrown into the taiga and set alight. But we don’t want to judge, because there certainly isn’t enough money in Siberia for high-tech waste incineration plants. So what is the solution? We humans pollute our environment. We pollute the forest, which in turn supplies us with air. At the end of the day, it’s as if we were defecating on our own plate, from which we then eat again. A vicious circle from which there is hardly any escape.

Contrary to what the two bad news spreaders from the city say, our bikes are still rolling over asphalt. Ranges of up to 652 meters have to be overcome. Some of the forests have been destroyed by a forest fire. Fresh green stretches across the wounds of the bare trunks. Then the forest alternates with a plateau covered with a colorful sea of flowers. It is only bordered by mountains at a distance of around 20 kilometers. At around 3 p.m. we take a break at the side of the road and satisfy our hunger. A road sign next to us is literally shredded by scrap metal balls. Obviously it was misused as a target. At 18:00, our bikes have been gliding over asphalt for 52 kilometers today. So it was a good decision to turn down Iwan’s offer after all. “And what else does that tell me?” I ask myself. It makes no sense at all to allow yourself to be boxed in by people with negative statements. Often it is simply not true. And if this is the case, there is still enough time to think about the situation. We humans tend to let ourselves be frightened in advance, which then has us in its grip. We are ruining a large part of our lives. It is decidedly healthier and more satisfying to live in the moment and not to think about what would happen if we were doing badly when we are doing well. As a result, we suddenly feel bad, even though we are actually doing well. Sounds complicated, but it’s not. The bad news disseminators from the city are a classic example of this. If we had jumped on their negative wave, we might have tried to find a place with the van man. In the end for nothing and nothing again. You could spin the situation further. Maybe the delivery man would have had an accident with us? Who knows? We didn’t let ourselves be tempted and that proved to be very good once again.

We drive past the village of Bolschewerstowskij. We don’t find any Gastiniza at a petrol station here. “Never mind, we’ll camp then,” I say. A sparse birch forest grows to the left and right of the road. Behind it are large pastures. “There are excellent camping spots behind the trees,” I say. “Let’s drive a little further. I think it’s better to leave the village a few kilometers behind us,” Tanja suggests. It is after 6 p.m. when some of the farmers stop working and head home. Ideal for us to hide unseen in one of the already mown meadows. Not far from the Trans-Siberian Railway line, I find a perfect place to camp for the night. We let our bikes roll into the meadow, push them through a thin barrier of trees and actually reach a piece of mown meadow where we set up our tent. “Hardly any mosquitoes,” I say happily. “Yes, it really is a great place to spend the night,” says Tanja with satisfaction. Because the log files and archiving of the pictures don’t take much time today, we can enjoy the wonderful evening for hours and watch the Siberian sun go down.

We look forward to your comments!