As it’s been a fairly slow couple of days, I’ve taken the opportunity to do some planning on where to go after Russia. It’ll be Europe obviously, which is near enough home, but there are quite a few options from St. Petersburg to England.

It’ll be cold, but I’m thinking of bombing up to Murmansk. Being the furthest north-westerly city it’ll mean I’ve have traversed all of Russia. (Rather than leaving Russia from St. Petersburg). From Murmansk I can cross the border to Norway.

This is the only border between the former Soviet Union and NATO. It’s well inside the Arctic circle, which means I’ll have ridden from a point on the earth where the sun is directly overhead – to a point where the sun never gets above the horizon. Cool! (Or cold, I’ll let you know!).

Norway is notoriously expensive and I’m (allegedly) notoriously tight, so I’ll drop down into Finland ASAP! I’ll also be glad of the rising temperatures again for sure. Once I get to the Baltic sea I’ll follow the coast round to Sweden, take the bridge to Copenhagen in Denmark. Germany, Holland and maybe the ferry from Hamster Jam.

All of the borders are open and I don’t need visas. I just need to man up for the freeze!

At the end of the night more people arrived. They were tattoo artists and their work was stunning. One guy had portraits on his legs that looked just like photos.

They were very friendly but they were also very pissed. On a scale of 1 to 10 of being drunk, I’d put them at around 14. Consequently they were very very friendly. It was time to call it a night.

In the early evening we went to Kiril’s garage to see if I can do an oil change there. No problem of course. Kiril had a few goldwings apart there and it was interesting to see how Honda engineers them. The free riders turned up and before long the BBQ was on. Dinner was laid on and a great night ensued.

The free riders, as far as I can gather, is a kind of non-club of friends. I didn’t fully get the concept, but they’re a great bunch. Bankir (with the bowler on) lives in Omsk, and already we’ve been invited to stay there. That happens to be our next major city before Kazakhstan, so once again the planets are aligning nicely.

We found out later that Ken’s shock is in Moscow right now. It’ll be a couple of days yet before it arrives. (Hopefully by Friday and not Monday!). I have good quality oil on order which is also due on Friday. It could turn out to be a busy day!

I’m not sure who these three people are, but they were flanking Lenin in the square. Their reflection in the puddle made quite a striking image.

I would have taken a picture of the whole square, but the scale of the statues means I’d have to stand in the middle of the road. I’ve seen how people drive here so that wasn’t going to happen!

After a slow start to the day, we met up with Mikhail for a tour of the city. The weather was miserable and I was glad we weren’t riding anywhere. We started off with this small monument, located at the centre of the Russian empire as was in 1913. It has been destroyed and rebuilt since then.

After that we took a trip to Lenin square to say hello to Lenin. Most cities have a Lenin square and Novosibirsk is no exception. We did a bit of window shopping before coffee, which I really needed!

Having spent most of the day moping around with a hangover, by 8pm I was almost feeling normal again. We were just thinking about what we should do for dinner when the phone rang. It was Yujin, would we like to come round for dinner? Of course!

We stopped at the bottle shop for a couple of nice bottles as gifts, then waited for our host to arrive. He’d bought a huge smoked goose and a Turkey from the countryside. We had Georgian soup and cold meats before we hacked into the birds, delicious!

It was good to meet the family, Irine, Roman, Max and Alice. Misha bought his family round too. A great evening, thanks guys.

Ken’s shock hasn’t arrived yet, so we’re going to have a look around the city. I might see if I can pick up some oil and get an oil change in too. It’ll be good to drop the oil that’s been round Mongolia, if it’s like everything else it’ll be full of dust!

One of the Russian traditions I’d been wanting to try for a while is a visit to the баня (Banya). It’s a Russian version of a sauna, where you wear silly hats and get beaten with oak vines. (It’s actually a lot better than it sounds!)

The problem with this kind of thing is that you can’t just wander up to the nearest баня and go in. I had no idea what to do, how it works or what the баня etiquette is. Making a faux pas whilst naked generally makes things worse!

Parked up in Novosibirsk, we left Ken with the bikes while Chip and I set off to find the most hidden hostel in the city. The stop house hostel is in a tower block on the second floor, round the back with no signs. You have to get past the female security guard who looks like the woman from the old Bond movies, but once you’re in it’s great.

Anyway, I digress. Back at the bikes Ken had attracted a couple of passing goldwing riders who stopped to say hello. Mikhail and Yujin were interested in our travels and invited us out……. To the баня! We weren’t sure what to expect and I think Ken wasn’t too keen, but we went along and it was awesome.

More like a private health club and country club combined, we rented the Moscow room. We started with a few beers while Yujin cooked up a storm on the BBQ. More people arrived, Alex, Kirill, Alex 2 along with Marguerite. The food was great and I’d almost forgotten about the sauna part until the men all got naked save for a loin cloth.

The баня was very hot, until Misha pure poured water on the coals. Then it got really hot! The hats are necessary to stop your ears from scalding. The cold plunge pool was a welcome relief before another round of beers and then back in the баня. Round 2.

I found out that the first round was a gentle break in. The second time I got to lie down and get flayed with the oak bush. It doesn’t hurt, the leaves are soft and they’re also wet. The wet leaves are held over the hot coals before the flaying commences, the effect of which increases your body temperature dramatically.

So lying there I went from “shit it’s hot” to “holy fuck I can’t breathe, I’m going to die here” in a nano second. It’s one of those experiences that’s great once it’s over. We had the traditional 5 rounds of баня, beer and plunge pool before calling it a night. At 5am!

Just another example of Russian hospitality and an amazing experience I’ll never forget. A huge thank you to the Goldwing club of Novosibirsk. This morning my skin feels so fresh, that wretched Mongolian dust has finally been exorcised!

This is one of the coolest don’t drink and drive posters I’ve seen. I thought you might like it too.

As we left the Алтаиский Край the landscape changed, flattening out from mountains to farmland. There was an impressive sign announcing this, but nowhere to take a good photo of it. I saw a sign for a memorial museum, so I pulled in for a look. I think Chip and Ken were keen to keep going, but it was closed anyway. It was a memorial to cosmonaut German Titov, the second person in space.

As I couldn’t go in, I’ll have to give you the Wikipedia version of who he was.

“Titov’s flight finally proved that humans could live and work in space. He was the first person to orbit the Earth multiple times (a total of 17), to spend more than a day in space, to sleep in orbit and to suffer from space sickness. In fact, he also holds the record for being the first person to vomit in space. He was the first to pilot a spaceship personally and he made the first manual photographs from orbit, thus setting a record for modern space photography. He also was the first person to film the Earth using, for ten minutes, a professional quality Konvas-Avtomat movie camera. A month short of 26 years old at launch, he remains the youngest person to fly in space.”

There were no Soyuz rockets for sale.

Almost through the Altai mountains, we camped about 20km south of Бийск (Biysk). Any closer and it would have been too built up, as Ьийск is quite a big place. I found a track running into farmland, with a small patch of grass in the corner of a harvested field. There was a combine harvester in the far corner, which got Ken all excited!

Within minutes of my tent going up a truck came by with the local farmer in. He asked us to move our bikes near to the bushes so he could get his machines past. Ken showed him a picture book of his farm in the US, he was very interested. It’s a great idea for showing people about life at home, I wish I’d thought of one. The farmer told us to have a good rest and was on his way.

I thought that was nice of him. I was just wondering how many farmers in the UK would do the same if you turned up and camped on their field, when he came back again. He’d brought us a jar of home made мёд (honey). It was good stuff too, I haven’t had honey in my porridge for a long time. Any Russian adventure motorcyclists planning to do this in England are going to be disappointed!