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Oakland

 Latest
Sep 142011
 

Parked up in the heart of the Bay Area – Alameda Point. The ex-military base reminds me of somewhere Eastern Europe, except for the views across the water to San Francisco.

After a couple of days enjoying the urban after all that rural we get confirmation that our Burning Man tickets are ours. Thanks again to the Dutch guy called Joost. We have six days to go before the 350 mile trip to the Nevada desert and a growing to-do list:

  • Get cool box, water tanks, rope, bucket, torch, etc.
  • Check brakes and belts.
  • Fix broken computer.

Where whisky freezes

 Blue Team
Mar 302011
 

Northern Alberta, Goodfare – another few kilometres up north, and you won’t see any farming settlements anymore. Just a few oil fields and that’s it. As far as production of food goes; you can’t get much higher on the world map. Life is hard, and the winter makes everything just a little more difficult. However, you can live happily in a land where contact with the outside winter world can be sometimes painful – just follow five simple rules: Continue reading »

Gomye Klyuchy

 Latest
Sep 052010
 

I think that’s how you spell it anyway.

We took ages to find a good spot to chill out for a few days – the highway runs right down close to the border with China and there just weren’t any good places to turn off.

We’re by a series of murky ponds full of lotus. Our Russian friend we kidnapped from Blaga, Lyosha, keeps telling us that if lotus grows on a lake then the water must be clean but none of us are too convinced. Luckily the mighty river Ussuri flows nearby – fresh, warm and a lovely swim if you don’t stand in one place for too long before something nibbles on your feet. Lyosha says that they are leeches and they’re good for you. We’re not too convinced of that either.

Olkhlon Island

 Latest
Aug 082010
 

Okhlon Island is the largest island in Lake Baikal and after more than a month of driving our first few days of just doing nothing/relaxing.

This area has been inhabited for thousands of years by people who held shamanist beliefs and understood the area as spiritually significant. One theory that seeks to explain this is that the island traps an expanse of water that becomes warmer than the rest of the lake – an important point as the lake – being fed by glacial rivers, frozen for most of the time and the deepest, most heat consuming body of freshwater on the Earth – is bloody cold all year round.

The guidebooks say that western tourists rarely last more than a minute in the waters of the lake but can swim more comfortably here on the west coast of the island. I think that’s an exaggeration: we had watched Conny and Radka go in with their wetsuits but, apart from that, in a day spent on a well-populated beach by Shaman’s Rock, I didn’t see a foreigner last more than 20 seconds.

Kemerovo

 Latest
Jul 312010
 

We’re pretty much in the dead centre of Russia, the heart of Siberia. The middle of nowhere. Miles upon miles of road, empty landscapes and enormous skies bounded by the furthest horizon seen away from an ocean.

And then we happen upon a city – a large city by the looks of it; an industrial, urban centre full of factories and shops, new bridges and flyovers entwined with the giant, rusting water and gas pipes common to Soviet architecture. It looks we’re in East Europe but if we drove directly south from this pont we’d end up not far from Calcutta.

As night descends we stop in a meadow behind some trees by the road and prepare the evening meal. It is about this time, when the roads are quiet, that we hear the trains on the Trans-Siberian Railway. The tracks are close by as they have been since crossing the Ural Mountains and every night it is the same – the haunting sound of very long goods trains rolling slowly past or possibly the taunting passenger trains laughing at us trying to drive across this mammoth country…

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