Biysk – Barnaul

12th July 2014        31-41’C         182km
Biysk – Barnaul

The road from Biysk to Barnaul was like a freeway for most of the ride. Boring.

It was hot, flat and there was fairly heavy traffic, although most of it going the opposite direction to me, thankfully.  That said, the overtaking was a little bit frightening, as there are a mixture of left-hand & right-hand drive cars in Russia.   So when a right-hand drive car wants to overtake, he needs to pull right out to be able to see if it is clear to overtake on the opposite side of the road.  Usually this means the overtaking car is completely on the wrong side of the road before he realises it isn’t safe to overtake, and then needs to pull back into his lane, swiftly, to avoid the inevitable head-on collision with oncoming traffic.  Madness.   Add a little bit of excessive speed (and some vodka) and you can imagine the potential outcomes.

I arrived in Barnaul in the early afternoon, where the temperature was just nudging 35’C, by the time it was 7pm, it hit 41’C.  It was hot.

I made a quick stop at a car wash and had the bike blasted with the pressure washer for 100 rubles, removing the majority of the caked on dirt from Mongolia.  The last wash the bike had was in Beijing, 4000km ago. It needed it.

I located the Hotel Barnaul, right in the centre of town, parked the bike and offloaded the gear.  Of course the security guard had to be an arse, and came over insisting I had to move the bike about 80cm backwards, out of the shade and into the sun.   He was the size of the Incredible Hulk and had the temperament of an angry bull, so I obliged begrudgingly, pushing the bike back into the roasting hot sun.

After a cold shower to restore normal body temperature I took a walk around town.  Despite Barnaul being a nice enough town, there is little to see or do, so I ate before heading back to the hotel and washing all my clothes in my improvised washing machine.  Filling one of the soft bags with water, soap and dirty clothes, sealing it up and shaking it madly.  It does an excellent job as a washing machine, and the dirty black water that I poured down the drain probably contained a small portion of the Gobi desert.