Time2Go - Introduction & Preparation

The Dream
[November 2020]

Although I just announced it on social media, this project has been in the works for several months, and truth be told, it has been a dream of mine for much longer than that. The spark of this idea ignited during my teenage years, when I immersed myself in adventure and travel books, particularly those set in Central Asia. Joseph Kessel's "Les Cavaliers," which unfolds in Afghanistan, left a lasting impression on me. Strangely, anything related to the region resonated deeply within me, like the movie "Urga - Territory of Love" (or "Close to Eden" in the US), which evoked an intense fascination for the vastness and remoteness of Mongolia, despite not having a specific storyline that I recall.

Another influential book was "L'usage du monde" by Nicolas Bouvier, introduced to me by my dear friend Hugues Defline. We both cherished it so much that in our early twenties, we seriously considered embarking on a similar trip from Turkey to China. However, life took its course, and our plans were put on hold.

But now, the wait is over, and I'm thrilled to share the news: my friend Dirk Kessler and I are embarking on a 100-day motorcycle ride covering 15,000 miles (24,000 km) from Istanbul to Magadan in Siberia. This epic journey will take us through legendary places and roads, including the renowned Silk Road, the majestic Pamir Highway, the untamed Altai mountains, the challenging BAM route, and the haunting Road of Bones. The excitement is palpable as we gear up for this incredible adventure of a lifetime.

The complete itinerary from istanbul to magadan. each color represents (in theory) a riding day.

Teammates
[December 2020]

I’m lucky to have quite a few awesome motorcycle friends in my life! The chance to have one or more of them committing to such an adventure was very slim though, even if many are tempted. One needs to be available at the same period, have the necessary budget, work approval, and even more importantly, the support of their family.

Knowing how improbable that would be, I resolved myself to doing this trip (or at least until Lake Baikal) solo. Some riders do travel around the world that way and for my own experience, I really enjoyed my time riding solo in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.

I could not have been more thrilled however when my friend Dirk decided he would try to make it happen!! I could not find a better companion for such a trip as we’ve been riding together often in the last 20 years. We’ve raced the Tuareg Rally in Tunisia (Dirk also competed in the Dakar rally in South America), toured the whole West, Baja California and Chile and Patagonia.

Some things are really important when riding such a long and challenging trip and Dirk checks all the boxes: he is crazy enough to enjoy the challenges but smart enough to not ride over his head. This is not a sprint, this is a marathon so endurance and persistency are key! He’s also an excellent rider and a much better mechanic than I am.

In addition to get along well, what matters is to have similar ways of traveling: same pace on the road, similar pace off-road, willing to put long days on the wheels but also take the time to learn about the history and culture of the locals.

Finally, he is true to his words and commitments, so I knew that I could count on him to make it happen, which he did 👍.

Dirk in the Tuareg Rally in Tunisia

In Death Valley where we rode together countless times

Dirk always comes prepared :)

Itinerary 1/2 - The Silk Road
[January 2021]

“For centuries, the great civilisations of East and West were connected by the Silk Road, a fragile network of shifting intercontinental trade routes that threaded across Asia's highest mountains and bleakest deserts. The heartland of this trade was Central Asia, whose cosmopolitan cities grew fabulously wealthy. Traders, pilgrims, refugees and diplomats all travelled the Silk Road, exchanging ideas, goods and technologies.

There was actually no such thing as a single 'Silk Road' – routes changed over the years according to local conditions. Parts of the network might be beset by war, robbers or natural disaster: the northern routes were plagued by nomadic horsemen and a lack of settlements to provide fresh supplies and mounts; the south by fearsome deserts and frozen mountain passes.”

Just perfect! If the Silk Road is a very evocative name and inspiration it still leaves a lot of opportunity to improvise around it and create our own adventure. The most obvious start for it is Istanbul and we tried to ship our bikes directly there but it was not possible so we will technically start our travel from Normandy instead.

The biggest choice to make is probably how to go around the Caspian Sea:

The south road goes through Iran, then Turkmenistan or Afghanistan. Iran is fascinating and worth spending more time than we have on this trip so it will be for another adventure.

The north road goes through Chechnya and Kazakhstan. That section is not particularly scenic so we decided to go for a 3rd option, right in the middle!

Ferry from Baku (Azerbaijan) to Aktau (Kazakhstan). Most travelers go from Baku to Turkmenbashi in Turkmenistan but Turkmenistan has some annoying visa practices and greedy customs agents. The ferries to Aktau are however even more unpredictable than the ones going to Turkmenistan.

Then it’s a game of what to avoid and what to visit in priority. The only country we wanted to avoid is Afghanistan even though its mountains are spectacular. We will ride on its border though, along the Wakhan Corridor. We will not visit China either, despite China being the most popular Silk Road’s start/finish. Like Iran it’s too big to visit in a limited amount of time and it’s not easy to get in with a vehicle so we will only ride along its border.

In the priorities, Uzbekistan was on top of the list for the history and beauty of legendary cities like Samarkand, Kiva and Bukhara. For the top sceneries one of the highlights is the famous Pamir Highway (Kyrgyzstan), the second highest international highway, that traverses this sparsely populated 'Roof of the World'. Mostly unpaved, potholed, often flooded and one car wide, it's an experience not to be missed.

Source: Lonely planets

Itinerary 2/2 - beyond The Silk Road
[January 2021]

As seen in the previous post, neither Mongolia nor Russia are part of the Silk Road, but they will be a very important part of our trip. Instead of heading to China we will enter this “4 corners” area (for Americans) where one point is the border of 4 different countries: Kazakhstan, China, Russia and Mongolia. Mongolia has always been part of the plan but seeing amazing ride reports from fearless adventurers added to the list the Altai region and Siberia. The mountains seem to be very beautiful, lush and so remote!

Siberia might not be as scenic but will definitely be as wild and even more challenging. There is such a strong appeal to go from one end of Asia to the other end, in the furthest place reachable by road.

After crossing most of Mongolia we will head to the fascinating Lake Baikal and then head full East via the BAM road and the Road of Bones.

The BAM is a road that was once the only route across the country with for sole purpose to maintain the BAM rail tracks. This road, for most parts hasn't seen maintenance since the Soviet Union and is so overgrown and eroded that only 6WD trucks can drive it: A road impassible to normal 4WDs: A road that is so sparsely populated that some stretches include a ride of 3-4 days, just to get to a settlement of 300 people.

The main issue on the BAM is the MANY rocky river crossings! Depending on the water levels, some might be impassable.

Even further East, it’s the Road of Bones, “a track of gravel, mud and, for much of the year, ice that stretches 1,260 miles west from the Russian port city of Magadan on the Pacific Ocean inland to Yakutsk, the capital of the Yakutia region in eastern Siberia. Snaking across the wilderness of the Russian Far East, it slithers through vistas of harsh, breathtaking beauty dotted with frozen, unmarked graves and the rapidly vanishing traces of labor camps.” The bones of Stalin’s gulag prisoners who built that road were integrated in it, hence its name.

The wild mountains of the Altai [Picture from Advrider.com]

One of the many destroyed bridges of the BAM [Picture from Advrider.com]

The Bikes
[February 2021]

In previous updates I described how we picked the main destinations of the trip. The next step is a detective work: looking at topographic maps, reading ride reports and scrolling through many pictures to evaluate with trails are actually rideable and on which type of bike. We’re lucky to have each a couple of bikes that could potentially do such a trip but for adventure riding it’s about picking the best compromise as no adventure bike is perfect for 100% of such a long ride.

Size matters! Big adventure bike (>1000 cc) have multi cylinders engines that are very powerful, vibrate less and are better suited for long mileage. They often require maintenance less frequently, are much more comfortable, and can carry a good amount of luggage with ease.

Weight matters! Especially off-road and in challenging trails. Despite modern electronic aides like traction control, weight is still key when going uphill for example, and will limit the tires traction.

Weight matters as well when there is a need to push the bike across a deep river or for picking bikes after a fall. Therefore smaller bikes have their advantages, being way more capable off-road and not wearing tires and chain as quickly as more powerful bikes.

Considering how challenging many of the roads we chose are, we decided for a smaller bike: a KTM 690 Enduro R, from 2009. It’s a risk to go with +10 year-old bikes that have already been through hell, but that’s what we have! At least we know them very well and have adjusted them to our taste over the years so very few modifications are needed to tackle this trip. It’s also a big advantage to have both the same bike as we can share spare parts, tools and knowledge.

Anyway, after months of preparation our 2 bikes are now ready to be shipped!

Gear and Shakedown Ride
[March 2021]

People not familiar with Adventure Riding probably don’t realize how crucial it is to bring the right equipment for such remote places. In the age of being spoiled by Amazon’s same-day delivery it’s hard to imagine that ordering parts from Kyrgyzstan for example, would take at the minimum 3 weeks to be delivered (with clearing customs and all). That is, if/when you can reach a town that can receive packages. So bringing spare parts and tools is essential to not jeopardize the whole trip.

We also need bulky camping gear, electronic stuff (GPS, satellite communicator, camera, and a way to charge all that on the road), riding gear (for freezing to really hot weather), walking shoes and a minimum amount of clothes. Oh, let’s not forget the mosquito nets for Siberia That’s potentially a lot of weight and bulk on mid-size bikes so we spent months refining the best compromise for our packing system.

It was then time to test the theory in the field by doing a shakedown ride with the exact same gear and tires that we will use for the Silk Road. We rode a few days in our favorite playground in Death Valley where we encountered all types of terrain: deep sand, rocks, technical climbs and even snow. The only thing missing was mud.

We had tons of fun and bikes and luggage managed well, even if the tires showed their limits in deep sand. Tires is a whole topic by itself and are probably the biggest compromise in Adventure Riding, as the better the tires perform off-road the less mileage longevity they will usually offer. Since most of these countries have only small bikes, finding tires adequate for ours requires finding the very few shops available and order the tires in advance.

Should I stay or should I go?
[April 2021]

More exactly, should we go now or push it back to next year? As you may remember we initially planned to start our journey mid-May. With so many borders still closed because of COVID we delayed our start to July 1st, which meant sacrificing the Siberian part of the trip, east of Lake Baykal (snow in September). Still a fantastic adventure though!

We’ve been in starting blocks for months now, bikes, luggage and itinerary perfectly ready. We’re monitoring weekly the borders situation, the COVID numbers and vaccinations, the reports about a “Vaccination Passport”, trying to anticipate what the situation could be in July to determine if we should ship the bikes (6-7 weeks for arrival to destination). Really hard to predict, so not a comfortable situation.

Frankly it doesn’t look good. But pushing it back by a year is unfortunately very risky as Dirk might not be able to join next year.
Decision beginning of May.

Trip pushed back to 2022
[May 2021]

It’s been going that way these last few months so it’s hardly a surprise but it’s still painful to finally accept that our trip is not going to happen this year with 7 out of 9 borders still closed and with no way around them either.

As you can see I’m still sending my bike to France for it to be ready as soon as the situation improves. I hope that she’ll be in great company in the container, like this gorgeous Jaguar Type E!

I will be riding in Europe for a couple of months this summer, wherever borders are open so that will be fun!

Next update on this site when this part of the world will finally open again

The project is on again!
[December 2022]

The 2020s keep throwing us curve balls, but if we wait for the world to be trouble free we would wait forever. Now that most borders are finally open, we are firmly planning to go in the Spring of 2023. A few changes are necessary to make it happen this time, first and foremost a different itinerary, skipping the part of Siberia east of Lake Baikal. It would be extremely difficult to ship bikes from Magadan with the current situation in Russia, so we will go back to Ulaanbaatar after our visit of the Lake Baikal and ship the bikes from there. The second issue is that Azerbaijan land borders are still closed because of Covid (!) so we have to plan an alternate route if the country does not reopen by then. Here is the updated itinerary that totals 24,000 km / 15,000 miles

Bikes
[December 2022]

Last post indicated that the planned route changed quite a bit, but the excellent news is that the team has not changed and I’ll have the huge pleasure to do this ride with Dirk!!

There is a big change though as we will go with a different bike than initially planned. Two reasons for that:
1. My KTM 690 broke down in Italy last summer and cannot be repaired at an acceptable cost.
2. Shipping Dirk’s KTM 690 from California now costs 3 times more than when I shipped mine so hardly worth it.

Therefore we have to start from scratch and buy bikes in Europe to avoid shipping costs. We both love KTMs but their focus in on performance vs reliability and we decided that for this trip reliability was more important. After a lot of research and trying friends’ bikes (thanks Skip and Adam) we decide to buy 2 Yamaha Tenere 700, in France.

One could say reason over passion :)

[February 2023]

It’s not everyday that you’re buying TWO motorcycles at once!! Granted, one is for Dirk, but still!
Now it’s time to prepare them for our trip and Dirk is going to join me from San Francisco in a few days to help with that.

The blue one for Dirk and the black one for me!

A lot of parts to install to carry luggage, improve bike protection, increase comfort and performance for off-road riding

Mission accomplished!

[March 2023]

These last weeks in Périgord have been very productive and enjoyable. We got the 2 bikes, installed all the accessories, packed our stuff and went for a test ride in the beautiful surroundings.

Back in Paris, I’ve deposited my passport for the Russian Visa in a specialized agency. Let's keep our fingers crossed because without it this trip cannot happen! Now the focus in on finding tire shops along the way that would agree to order tires for our bikes.

The beautiful but cold barn where we'll be working on the bikes

Happy Dirk! Nothing beats the outside light to do some mechanic

So many old villages around here

Brantôme. A quick test ride gives a chance for Dirk to discover this beautiful area of France.

Aren't they beautiful in such surroundings ;-)

Part of the packing getting ready

The Silk Road trip is getting real!

[April 2023]

We've both obtained our Russian visas and we managed to secure reservations to get tires in Tbilisi, Osh and Ulaanbaatar.

We will be leaving in a week from now to France and have the real departure on our bikes on May 1st. It's time for farewell parties and to realize that I'm saying goodbye to my family and friends for 4 months! A big thanks to them for the fun parties we had for the send-off. Although I'm not sure that we should wear these great T-shirts gifts for our Russian border crossings :)