Olgii – Kosh-Agach (Russia)

7th July 2014      11-14’C      189km
Olgii – Kosh-Agach (Russia)

Leaving Olgii at 9am, I rode out on a beautiful new road towards the Russian border.   It was cold, 11’C, and Mongolia shed a few small drops of rain to farewell me after 3500km and 30 days of off-road fun and adventures.

Reaching the border, I was asked to pay some form of tax, which amounted to 2000 tugrik, and was given a receipt by a man in a dirty uniform, and then waved onto immigration.

Immigration and customs processes took about 20 minutes to complete, and with that, I was sent out to cross the 6km no-mans-land between Mongolia & Russia.    Passing over grassy hills, the road eventually led to two big red gates, which was a little strange as there are no fences or gates in Mongolia, everything is open, and now reaching Russia two red gates stopped me in the middle of the road.   I pulled my camera out, and took a quick photo, knowing that if I was caught it would be a problem, and of course the two Russian soldiers saw me and told me off, “Niet photo!!”  They looked quite angry, and I explained I had not taken any photos.  And so here is the photo.

The soldiers checked the bike registration and my passport, and then sent me on my way, another 20km up the road to the immigration and customs offices.

On reaching the gates there, I spoke with another solider, who gave me an immigration form, told me to fill it in and wait.    While waiting, another guy came over and indicated that I needed to ride through the disinfection pit. Strangely, the pit was just full of liquid cowshit.  I rode through it, and then my tyres were sprayed with some disinfectant.  Bizarrely, they never cared about my boots.

After waiting about 20 minutes, I was waved past the rest of the waiting cars and into the secured area.  There I was told to go to immigration first, my visa was checked, passport stamped and then they bought in the sniffer dog and checked over the bike and luggage, asking me if I had drugs or weapons.  Once that was given the all clear, I proceeded to customs, where I filled in the import form in duplicate.  But when I looked up from filling in the form, all the offices were abandoned.  It was 12:59, and everyone had gone to lunch.  I was now locked in the secure area, in the cold, biting wind with nothing to do until the customs staff returned from lunch.   I used to the time to check over the bike and pump up the tyres back to road pressures, as I’d reduced them in Mongolia for riding off-road.

At 2:10pm the staff all returned, as did a number of truck drivers who also wanted to move through customs to Russia.  There was one customs lady working in a small office, and about 8 truck drivers.  It didn’t take long before she got upset, kicked everyone out of the office and back into the cold wind, while she worked on one set of papers at a time.  This took forever.   She had to type the forms into a computer, print duplicates, stamp them multiple times.  Given her now crappy mood, all this was done slowly and then redone again, even slower.

Trucks and cars, came and went during this time.  Eventually she waved me forward and worked on my papers.  Transposing & translating the English import documents into Russian, stamping the document three times with the same stamp (why I don’t know)   after about 40 minutes, she handed me my papers, saying “Welcome to Russia” and I was free to proceed.   It had been almost 4 hours since I started the process and the waiting game. Welcome to Russia and Russian bureaucracy.    I rode to the last gate, my passport was checked a final time and I passed through the gate and the crowd of waiting, and upset, people who were begging with the guard to let them cross, to no avail.

It was cold, sitting out in the wind at 11’C all afternoon, and the mountains around the border all now had a fresh covering of snow.  It was beautiful.

I rode the last 54km into Kosh-Agach, finding a basic, albeit pricey hotel with a shared bathroom, for 1700 rubles. ($35)

Finally in Russia.