Graeme: This post has no title because we are speechless. Is that a bit corny? Anyway, it's a result of having driven one of the most scenic roads on this planet.
The road from Khandyga to Kyubyme - wow X 3. I regretted bringing the DSLR camera as it's very bulky in it's waterproof box, and changing lenses is tiresome when compared to how flexible our new video camera is. I think however it may have paid for itself. We've captured maybe 200 stills, 100 of which are stunning. Not artsy stunning, but the subject is captivating.
These Russians know roadworks. Well kinda. They don't do it by half at any stage. If they need to repair a bit of road, they build a diversion. What they don't do well is signs. We would have sped past 30X 20kph signs all of which indicating nothing. Crying wolf gets old.... except this one time. We came over the crest of a hill at 60kph to a surprise stream having cut it's way through the road surface, by about one foot deep, by about 5 meters wide. We pulled up in time, but only just.
We got 5th gear today... in low range. In fact, we haven't used 5th gear since the turnoff to Tynda. At one stage in our road works today, we waited ten minutes for a bulldozer to clear a path for us. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful, but there is no way anything less would have made it up that muddy boulder slope.
Today, at the top of one of the most breathtaking mountain passes I've ever seen, I discovered oil... a lot of oil! my mind turned to panic, thinking the oil spatters down the side of the car and on the back window is coming from the engine. I discovered it was our half full oil bottle on the roof leaking. gawddammit! It's filthy, even after wiping it off today with a paper towel, todays dust has stock to it like paint. I _think_ I've got it all off tonight with our bin bucket, dish washing liquid and about an hour.
Damage report: The cable tie that held the trailer light connector has snapped, leaving the trailer light connector hanging. It has been reattached with another cable tie. nah I actually did stash it into the frame of the car as I won't be using it for a while.... then cable-tied it. As you might have picked up, this is a bit of a mock damage report. Thankfully nothing big has gone wrong.
From our spot message, you will have noticed we're in the middle of the river. The river seems pretty low so we're camped in the shade of a broken bridge. Don't worry people, the river is way lower than our camp site. I think we found the turnoff that Jon mentioned, it was literally in front of the sign that said Tomtor right, Kyubyme ahead. Little goat track that meandered it's way to the rocky river bed. We had grand plans of camping next to the ice shelf, but the river was a bit high to chance without having waded it. I gave the waders a test today in a river near our lunch stop. They have very stiff souls, like gumboots which make walking on slimy rocks precarious. That, coupled with flowing water meant I could only wade mid-thigh. I figured if I fell over in them, I'd have to ditch them as they would act like a parachute, filling up with water.
A gentleman from Italy in a troop carrier (yep, 2nd one we've seen now) pulled up across from our camp site and willingly informed us that the road is closed after tomtor. Which if true, is depressing. Then again, we met a cyclist named Sean from California who said no one has been down that road for four to five years. Well, we know that's not true! So hopefully it's rubbish information. I do expect the road to Susuman to be closed, but I'd already resigned to that fact.
The plan for tomorrow is to duck into Kyubyme for some fuel, then find a route across the river then drive to Tomtor. Apparently there is a wealth of things to do there, so even if the road is closed from there on, it won't have been a wasted trip.
It's funny, I was in such high spirits until that Italian man told me it wasn't an option - why has this knocked me for six? It feels like I've been told that Santa won't be coming this year.
Cassie has written her post before me, so it looks like I'm crazy repeating her... but I said it first!
Looking forward to sending this off, getting the messages from home and watching some telly. I may even be able to sneak in one photo.
Cassie: As Graeme said, we think we've found the river crossing that meets up to the road to Tomtor, the next trick will be finding the road on the other side. Our camp tonight is beautiful but marred as usual by the horrible mosquitoes. It would be wonderful to sit outside and enjoy the surrounds, but I need to stay in the car or get eaten alive by the darn things! Graeme doesn't believe me, but they always find and bite me before him, so I always end up covered with mozzie bights on a camping trip and he might get one or two. Thankfully Graeme has made our car into a comfortable sanctuary and it's easy to be in here, particularly with the windows open to let a breeze through. Graeme's outside, braving the mozzies to wash the oil off the car and is doing a bang up job. Oil certainly isn' the easiest thing to wash off. The exterior of the troopie is starting to look particularly grimy, and I dare say we will end up giving it a proper wash at some point. The romantic notion of
letting the dust and grime build up on it to reflect our many miles is fading. To be honest, the exterior of the car is so filthy it's becoming embarrassing. And yes, embarrassingly filthy by Russian standards....now that's saying something!
It's been 11 days since we set off from Vladivostok with 2 nights stop in Yakutsk. In some way Vladivostok feels like so long ago because it's a far cry from the remote areas we're in at the moment, and in another way if feels like just yesterday we were walking the streets, sipping coffee, enjoying hot showers and clean hair and waiting for our car. Actually no, scrap that, it does feel like light years away, full stop!
I'm looking forward to seeing the remote town of Tomtor. We're not convinced that the Italian guy is correct when he said the road from Tomtor back to the main road is closed. We don't know where he got his information and people tend to flippantly say these sorts of things without questioning or confirmation. For example, Sean from California told us that no tourist has been down that road in over two years. Well, we were happy to respectfully correct his knowledge on that one! Anyway, his next breath was that he knows a guy, Walter Colebatch, who runs motorcycle tours from London to Magadan and he went via this "Old Summer Road" just last year - so yeah, that's a bunch of tourists. I guess what I'm trying to say is that we've got three different opinions in the space of an hour, and two of them were from the same person. Either way, we'll know once we get there and see for ourselves. And as Graeme has already mentioned, Tomtor is worth seeing so there's no problem if we hav
e to turn back and go to Magadan via the new road. It'll be great to have another rest in a hotel in Magadan before chucking the trip into reverse to backtrack our way towards Chita.
Position: 12-07-09 18:44:31 +1000 +0000
http://maps.google.com/maps?&ll=63.43419,140.5943&q=63.43419,140.5943&z=16
The road from Khandyga to Kyubyme - wow X 3. I regretted bringing the DSLR camera as it's very bulky in it's waterproof box, and changing lenses is tiresome when compared to how flexible our new video camera is. I think however it may have paid for itself. We've captured maybe 200 stills, 100 of which are stunning. Not artsy stunning, but the subject is captivating.
These Russians know roadworks. Well kinda. They don't do it by half at any stage. If they need to repair a bit of road, they build a diversion. What they don't do well is signs. We would have sped past 30X 20kph signs all of which indicating nothing. Crying wolf gets old.... except this one time. We came over the crest of a hill at 60kph to a surprise stream having cut it's way through the road surface, by about one foot deep, by about 5 meters wide. We pulled up in time, but only just.
We got 5th gear today... in low range. In fact, we haven't used 5th gear since the turnoff to Tynda. At one stage in our road works today, we waited ten minutes for a bulldozer to clear a path for us. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful, but there is no way anything less would have made it up that muddy boulder slope.
Today, at the top of one of the most breathtaking mountain passes I've ever seen, I discovered oil... a lot of oil! my mind turned to panic, thinking the oil spatters down the side of the car and on the back window is coming from the engine. I discovered it was our half full oil bottle on the roof leaking. gawddammit! It's filthy, even after wiping it off today with a paper towel, todays dust has stock to it like paint. I _think_ I've got it all off tonight with our bin bucket, dish washing liquid and about an hour.
Damage report: The cable tie that held the trailer light connector has snapped, leaving the trailer light connector hanging. It has been reattached with another cable tie. nah I actually did stash it into the frame of the car as I won't be using it for a while.... then cable-tied it. As you might have picked up, this is a bit of a mock damage report. Thankfully nothing big has gone wrong.
From our spot message, you will have noticed we're in the middle of the river. The river seems pretty low so we're camped in the shade of a broken bridge. Don't worry people, the river is way lower than our camp site. I think we found the turnoff that Jon mentioned, it was literally in front of the sign that said Tomtor right, Kyubyme ahead. Little goat track that meandered it's way to the rocky river bed. We had grand plans of camping next to the ice shelf, but the river was a bit high to chance without having waded it. I gave the waders a test today in a river near our lunch stop. They have very stiff souls, like gumboots which make walking on slimy rocks precarious. That, coupled with flowing water meant I could only wade mid-thigh. I figured if I fell over in them, I'd have to ditch them as they would act like a parachute, filling up with water.
A gentleman from Italy in a troop carrier (yep, 2nd one we've seen now) pulled up across from our camp site and willingly informed us that the road is closed after tomtor. Which if true, is depressing. Then again, we met a cyclist named Sean from California who said no one has been down that road for four to five years. Well, we know that's not true! So hopefully it's rubbish information. I do expect the road to Susuman to be closed, but I'd already resigned to that fact.
The plan for tomorrow is to duck into Kyubyme for some fuel, then find a route across the river then drive to Tomtor. Apparently there is a wealth of things to do there, so even if the road is closed from there on, it won't have been a wasted trip.
It's funny, I was in such high spirits until that Italian man told me it wasn't an option - why has this knocked me for six? It feels like I've been told that Santa won't be coming this year.
Cassie has written her post before me, so it looks like I'm crazy repeating her... but I said it first!
Looking forward to sending this off, getting the messages from home and watching some telly. I may even be able to sneak in one photo.
Cassie: As Graeme said, we think we've found the river crossing that meets up to the road to Tomtor, the next trick will be finding the road on the other side. Our camp tonight is beautiful but marred as usual by the horrible mosquitoes. It would be wonderful to sit outside and enjoy the surrounds, but I need to stay in the car or get eaten alive by the darn things! Graeme doesn't believe me, but they always find and bite me before him, so I always end up covered with mozzie bights on a camping trip and he might get one or two. Thankfully Graeme has made our car into a comfortable sanctuary and it's easy to be in here, particularly with the windows open to let a breeze through. Graeme's outside, braving the mozzies to wash the oil off the car and is doing a bang up job. Oil certainly isn' the easiest thing to wash off. The exterior of the troopie is starting to look particularly grimy, and I dare say we will end up giving it a proper wash at some point. The romantic notion of
letting the dust and grime build up on it to reflect our many miles is fading. To be honest, the exterior of the car is so filthy it's becoming embarrassing. And yes, embarrassingly filthy by Russian standards....now that's saying something!
It's been 11 days since we set off from Vladivostok with 2 nights stop in Yakutsk. In some way Vladivostok feels like so long ago because it's a far cry from the remote areas we're in at the moment, and in another way if feels like just yesterday we were walking the streets, sipping coffee, enjoying hot showers and clean hair and waiting for our car. Actually no, scrap that, it does feel like light years away, full stop!
I'm looking forward to seeing the remote town of Tomtor. We're not convinced that the Italian guy is correct when he said the road from Tomtor back to the main road is closed. We don't know where he got his information and people tend to flippantly say these sorts of things without questioning or confirmation. For example, Sean from California told us that no tourist has been down that road in over two years. Well, we were happy to respectfully correct his knowledge on that one! Anyway, his next breath was that he knows a guy, Walter Colebatch, who runs motorcycle tours from London to Magadan and he went via this "Old Summer Road" just last year - so yeah, that's a bunch of tourists. I guess what I'm trying to say is that we've got three different opinions in the space of an hour, and two of them were from the same person. Either way, we'll know once we get there and see for ourselves. And as Graeme has already mentioned, Tomtor is worth seeing so there's no problem if we hav
e to turn back and go to Magadan via the new road. It'll be great to have another rest in a hotel in Magadan before chucking the trip into reverse to backtrack our way towards Chita.
Position: 12-07-09 18:44:31 +1000 +0000
http://maps.google.com/maps?&ll=63.43419,140.5943&q=63.43419,140.5943&z=16
Passing on a message from Sean...
ReplyDeleteSean Ardley
Would someone please email Graham and Cassie of twomagadan.blogspot that there's tiny cafe and petrol stn 4km past where we met. Op 9a-10p? Forgot to.
You have the same reaction we did. That run from Khandyga to Kyubeme was gold class! This is the reason why you put up with 900 km of crap road from Tynda to Yakutsk. Awesome!
ReplyDeleteI hope you get this before you turn back from Tomtor. The road was technically closed at the big bridges after Tomtor last year- there was a pile of dirt with a no entry sign. The locals were saying "most nye robota-yet" (Bridge not working). It was fairly run down, but was indeed passable to a small vehicle like a cruiser (not the massive Ural or Kamaz trucks tho). The first bridge has the no entry sign, and the second bridge is the doozy - it is worth a look even if you dont proceed further. Amanda is a bridge engineer so we cheated with expert help to assess if it was passable :) I would love to see a photo of the current condition. If you go further, the Tomtor to Susuman bit is definitely 4WD.
If the water is thigh deep the Kyubeme river is OK. So you will get to Tomtor. You have a couple of options.... visit Tomtor and then turn back to Kyubeme and head north to Ust-Nera and to Magadan. This is still incredibly scenic. .....or, try the bridges and head onward. The section to the State Border is probably the best scenery, and a challenge but was "rough forestry road" standard last year. There are only two nasty bogs before the state border, the first one is marked with "Bog - Ask Yakutia" or something on the GPS waypoints I gave you. Break out the waders for this one, it was specifically listed on the AskYakutia web site as a Turkish guy was stuck there for days - if you decide to call it quits at this point and turn back you will have seen the best scenery. This is only a few km before the state border. There is a second bog just after the Ask Yakutia one, which was deeper than the first one when we did it (actually, I dont recall whether it is just before or just after the state border).
The scenery after the state border is not soo good, so you wont have missed too much if you decide to turn back (except to say you did the old road of bones). Dont take risks... the locals dont use this road except for the occaisional hunter. But the high mountain plateau between Tomtor and the state border is some very unique scenery. That Ask Yakutia bog and the next bog are the big test.
The Lonely Planet guides say that any foreigner who comes this way is a "hardened adventurer" - enjoy the experience! We are really enjoying your blog posts here - it lifts my day at work!
Whoever invented cable ties deserves the Nobel Prize. What cant be fixed with a cable tie? Nothing. Have fun in your filthy truck!!
ReplyDelete