Day 23, to River Camp  114km , 1952km to date,  843m up, 1658m end

I know I’m repeating myself, but another very hard day.  Riding time in excess of 8 hours, on rough dirt, rocks and a fair bit of sand.  The sand is awful, maybe because I’m not used to it, very easy to fall - I did 3 0 speed fall overs.  This ride is becoming very difficult, way harder than 2 years ago.  Another 6 days of the off-road cross country riding, then once we reach Russia, it will be back on payment - yea!

Very nice camp site tonight, on the bank of a small river - it was nice to be able to get clean in the river - not too cold, definitely warmer than almost any BC river.

It seems that most of the locals have a motorcycle as the primary transportation means.  On the road when they meat you, almost always they stop and want to talk - although the talking is limited to charades, but always very friendly and curious.  I have a map of our route on my phone, which I commonly show them - makes for some fun animation.

Speaking of Russia, we are about 30km south of Russia.

Last night got a bit cold, probably about -3 or -4C.  Serious ice on the tent fly.  I had to chip the ice off my bike seat.  You should have heard the South Africans and southern US folks crying and whining.  I made a point of wearing just my riding shorts to breakfast - this prompted several “f’ing Canadians” comments.  The good news is that the tent was quite warm.

Some pics:

Typical evening rider meeting:

Riding over the countryside:

First stream crossing - rather than get shoes/socks wet, I walked through barefoot.

Typical landscape: