Barnaul

13th July 2014       31’C          0km by bike
Barnaul

Today I had assigned myself a rest day, although only a rest from riding, as there was much administration to do.

I started the day with a bit of work on the bike. Now that it was semi-clean, I could look it over for problems and make sure I hadn’t lost or damaged anything in the 3500km offroad in Mongolia.

First priority was to fix the fan, which had jammed. A known problem on this model of bike, rocks and dirt get stuck in-between the fan and the fan motor, stopping it from spinning.  It had not been a problem in Mongolia as the air temperature meant that the fan never needed to kick in, but now in the heat of Russia, if I wasn’t moving the bike it could be the start of a problem.  I blew all the dirt and gunk out of the fan motor, which unseized the fan and checked its operation, all was good again.   The air filter was completely full of dust, dirt and flies! Obviously it had been doing it’s job as there was no dirt on the clean side of the filter, so I shook it out and reassembled everything.  A few more checks of oil, lights, chain, etc and I was satisfied that the bike is ready for the next stage.  For the next few thousand kilometres through ‘The Stans’, there will be very little chance for comprehensive maintenance or parts, until reaching Turkey.

With the bike sorted out, I returned to the room to do another “load” of washing in my home-made washing machine.  The amount of black water that came out of my jacket was unbelievable. I had to rinse it 8 times before the water ran clear.  It now appears a completely different colour to before it was washed, as do my jeans, after they had been washed and dried I could have sworn they were new jeans. They had so much dust in them that they were 4 shade lighter in colour than their real colour!

I took another walk around Barnaul admiring the old timber buildings, that are becoming rarer all the time as new apartments go up. There is some very beautiful timber work in these old houses and it is a shame to see them slowly disappear.

After lunch it was back to the hotel for more administration.  Both my Uzbekistan Letter of Invitation (LOI) and the Iran visit authorisation code, had been issued successfully, so I printed those ready for the visa applications and then did some route planning for Kazakhstan, which is now only a few days away.