We just checked the website statistics, and it turns out that we have on average between 120 and 180 different people reading the site every day. Thats pretty cool. Thanks to all of you for following us along the way, we are almost at our destination, but the blog will continue through our adventures in Mongolia, and then hopefully the train ride back to Moscow as well!

Due to the insane delays and roads being closed, resulting in massive detours that take much, much longer than anticipated, we have been forced to keep moving these last few days. Since leaving the Mexican  restaurant just after getting the new rear suspension, we have not stopped driving!! Not joking, aside from quickly pulling over to refuel every 400km or so, we have been driving non-stop for the last 4 days and three nights. The car has been moving and running for over 72hours straight, and we have been taking turns driving and sleeping in about 4-7hr shifts. Our clocks have adjusted well to this, and even though it would be a nightmare to most people, we have actually still been having a lot of fun. 

Soren has been taking the evening until the middle of the night shift, where I take over and drive from the middle of the night until a few hours after sunrise. It has been very cool seeing the sunrise three mornings in a row, from total darkness. I can’t recall having done that before, as those of you who know me, know that I am NOT a morning person. 

Anyway, this constant driving has paid off, and this morning we reached the shores of Lake Baikal, and are currently driving around the bottom shore in  order to hit a town called Ulan-Ude, where we then begin our drop down into Mongolia! Lake Baikal is the largest freshwater lake in the world… and we can’t see the other side! It is also kind of crazy that 20% of all of the fresh water on the entire Earth’s surface is in this lake!! The sheer scale of the stuff we have seen in Russia so far is incredible. This country alone covers 1/6th of the earths surface!

If we continue moving as planned, we should reach the Mongolian border at some point today! And we will then decided wether to drive on through as late as necessary to our final destination of Ulan Bataar, or spend the night camping somwehere in Northern Mongolia.

We have mentioned a couple of times that the roads around here are bad, so we thought it was an idea to post some pictures so u can see for yourself… 

All over we have to watch out for animals. Geese to the left and ducks to the right, please! 

And of course a herd of cows…  

A normal road all of a sudden turns into a small lake… (this was in Ukraine)

… and further down the same road we really needed all of our off-road experience!

This is more or less how all the bridges in Russia looks like. 

And there is road-construction all over Russia, so often we are led off the highway and onto dusty gravel roads…

… which explains why Ben is dressed up like Dick Turpin (legendary Highway robber…)

We do get a lot dust etc. into the car because we drive with the windows down. This is so we not get carbon monoxide poisoning since we don’t have an exhaust and the exhaust fumes are let out right below our feet!   

Today as we crossed a particularly deep railroad track, there was a loud BANG and a crunch, and we knew what it was from…

Our exhaust system had suffered some damage the other day when the heat shield was torn off, and had broken a hanger or two, as well as part of a pipe. The front muffler is actually the lowest part under the whole car, and has a flat front, perfect for catching things…. like railroad tracks.

So, I suppose we should say that the front muffler “was” the lowest part under the car because it, and the whole entire exhaust system in fact, were torn off and left laying in the middle of the road.

We are now a few pounds lighter… and surprisingly not that much louder. I seriously wonder how this engine makes like no noise… but its probably because it makes no power either. Oh well, onward we go! And without any more low-hanging bits.

Lots of parts…. being moved to the side of the road!

With our new Russian suspension, we are able to go SO much faster! It literally rides like an SUV now. We did decide to drive through the night last night, taking turns to drive and sleep, which has put us far out on the far side of Siberia! We have covered 1,800km in the last 20 hours or so of driving, even though some of it was TERRIBLE! There are patches of road here with giant holes in the big enough to hide a Samsonite suitcase, and big huge things just sticking out of the road, and ridges that are half a meter high.

We are now past a city called Novosibirsk, and are making our way towards Lake Baikal where we hope to spend a little time enjoying the lake, and the smoked Omul fish that can only be found there, before our final drop down into Mongolia! We may drive through the night tonight too, as we are very fond of our new progress, and give ourselves some time actually IN Mongolia to explore the Monasteries that are spread around the remote parts of the country.

And better than ever!! We arrived into the nearest city, 100km away, early in the morning after leaving the creepy motel, and began our search for shocks/springs for the Golf. We just started by walking in and playing charades at one shop, who then pointed us in the direction of the Volkswagen dealer/repair place, and gave us a newspaper w a map of town in it to point out where it was. The Volkswagen dealer, as we suspected, did not have parts for our car, since she is less than new and VWs have only been officially imported into Russia for a little while now. 

So, we were pointed in the direction of several German car parts stores… and began our search. From store to store we drove, around the city in search of parts. We scored and found ONE pair of Bilstein rear shocks that would fit our car, and bought them immediately. Cost - 80 Euros. But, they didnt have any springs at all… so on we went. 

After exhausting every single source in the city for possible VW springs, we decided to head to a Russian shop and go about at least having the shocks put on. We could do this ourselves on the road if we had to, but since the shop labor cost here is really cheap, we decided it would be faster/easier to get it done at a shop…. plus, we had a spring to think about too

So, again, shop after shop we went, until we found SOMEONE willing to work on our car… a little hole-in-the-wall shop behind another shop.

We played charades yet again, and were told that yes he could work on it. So, he set about pulling the shocks off, and pointed out the broken spring… and then tried to direct us to the VW dealer nearby to buy new ones. We explained that we already had tried that, and showed him the map of all the places we had been, and said Nyet, Nyet at each one. So…. what to do? Well…. here is where a little Russian “whatever works” comes into play.

In the VW Service/Repair manual we have on-board, in chapter 11 on “suspension”, the section on replacing the shocks/and or springs… it specifically says “when replacing the springs, do so only as a pair, and ONLY with the correct springs for your model, which are color coded.” Luckily for us…. the Russian mechanic doesn’t speak any English… 

He returned from the back room with a pair of take-off springs that were still in great shape. The donor? A LADA!!! Yes thats right, we were about to get Russian LADA springs custom-fitted to our Golf. Ghetto? Yes. Fabulous? HELL YES!!

The guy set about measuring the springs, and laughed at the “puny” VW springs… which are half as thick, with the coils twice as far apart. “Not for Russia” he said in Russian, and held up the two cross-sections showing us the difference. We also got them cut so the car would sit just a touch taller than normal too, for a bit of much-needed extra ground clearance.

Our beautiful new LADA springs… being custom fit for the Mongolf.

While we were waiting, we even got to help pitch-in and fix the LADA that was on the lift next to our car! The were working on IT’S suspension, and they asked if we could hang from the back of the trunk to lower it some more, so they could get a bolt through. So, there we were, one guy cutting springs with a cut-off wheel next to us, and Soren and I hanging jungle-gym style from the back of a LADA…

Here is the LADA just before we joined the guy hanging from the trunk!

And when we weren’t working on LADAs, we took time to sit and relax in our hello beach chairs… and enjoy the beautiful scenery..

A few hours later and The Mongolf was off the rack… we marvelled at her new stance, soooo much better than before, and as soon as we got in a drove it, it is freaking amazing!! It literally feels like an SUV, it is much stiffer but soft, and just EATS the terrible roads here… freaking awesome! The cost for a half-days shop labor, a new pair of springs and other miscellaneous parts scavenged from other Russian cars? 50 EUROS!! 

Total repair cost for a whole new rear suspension including all parts and labor - 120 Euros… amazing.

And one final shot of The Mongolf in her Russian Hospital.

We decided to stop at a nice outdoor Mexican restaurant, “the cockroach” on our way out of town for the first real meal in about 4 days, and possibly the last for a few more, and ate a ton of good stuff. And with that, we are off, and hauling ass!! We can literally go TWICE as fast on the crappy roads now, it is such an amazing difference! We are probably going to just drive through the night to make up the time we lost being at the shop, as we can now race our way across Russia!!

This has literally got to be the most disgusting place that either of us has ever stayed… ever. They were out of rooms (they only had like 10 down one crooked, sagging hallway) so we were handed a key to the little shed out back, literally… Keep in mind this entire thing is happening with charades and us pointing fruitlessly to words in our “Russian phrasebook” which we will have to make a post about, since we bought it in London and is very Britsh… anyway… we opened the door to the shed and found literally a bunkhouse, packed full of people sleeping in sweltering heat on metal bunkbeds. We both looked at each other with a “hell no, lets sleep in the car. Even though we had set a new record and had not left the car for more than 5 minutes in OVER 90 HOURS including the last 3 nights sleeping in it, it was better than this.

Just as we were leaving, a guy came up and was began talking to Soren in English.. then as I stepped out I could hear him saying “you dont want to stay there, it is for the workers” and we told him that we already decided we didn’t want to sleep there. He turned out to be a Motorcycle Journalist from Moscow named Vladimir, who was a nice guy. He had just bought a new motorcycle in Novosibirsk and was driving it home to Moscow, and had stayed there for the night because he didn’t want to cross the shitty roads of the Ural mountains that we just had in the dark, while tired. Long story short, he had purchased an entire room for the night which contained 4 beds so that he didnt get stuck in a room with “undesirable people” and told us we were more than welcome to join him if we wanted. So, since it was then after 3 o’clock, we took him up on his offer and all sat and had a beer and chatted about world politics, motorcycles, and traveling for a while before calling it a night.

We woke up early this morning after only a few hours’ sleep, took our first showers in about 4 days (mmmmm) and then headed towards the next big city about 100km away on our dirty laundry suspension…

We will post a pic of Vladimir and his bike soon…

Hahaha, well, the roads in Russia are baaaaad. We have been driving super carefully to avoid car-sized potholes, ridges etc. which is super tiring. Far more difficult than just highway cruising. Well, so in the middle of the night last night, we hit a particularly bad patch and knew something was up with the rear, as we were just pogo-ing up and down at every little bump. Then we got a flat in the rear and had to pull over and change it… this is when we took the opportunity to take a look at the suspension, and sure enough, we exploded BOTH rear shocks AND broke a spring in half too! Hmm…. not good.

It is 2am in the middle of nowhere Russia, 200km from the next town, so what to do? Make our own temporary shocks of course! We took some of our dirty t-shirts and wrapped them into tight little packages with duct tape, jacked up the car and wedged/duct taped them into place at the fulcrum point in the joint of the rear-end, to dampen the rear so we arent just slammed against the frame. The car is reeeeally low now, haha. This worked remarkably well, so well in fact that we could probably make it all the way like this if we have to! Anyway, it has allowed us to go at a moderate speed until we came to a dirty creepy trucker hotel at the side of the road. We are going to look into staying here because the next big city and our last best chance of finding some parts is a town only 100km more, which we will get up early and go into to try and find what we need.

An exploded shock…

And a broken spring… a bit hard to make out in the pic. But the best of all is…

The home-made, or should I say “roadside-made” shock absorbers!

So, lets see if we can find a room and don’t get kidnapped in this creepy motel and then set about fixing the Mongolf again in the morning….