The Pan-Eurasian Bike Trip

Winston Churchill may have put it best when he famously described Russia as, “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Cycling along a rough dirt road in the middle of Siberia, I finally begin to understand what he meant.

To say Russia is immense would be an understatement: The country contains one-eighth of the world’s total land mass, spanning northern Asia and Europe. We have now traveled 3,000 miles across Russia on bicycles, but we are only halfway across the country. Cycling the length of Russia is equivalent to driving from New York to Chicago nine times.

Gazing at a map of Siberia is a visual playground for your imagination to run wild; there is simply so much space that one can only speculate what exists within its borders. With so many miles still ahead of us, and the quality of the roads here still subject to frequent changes, we can often only stare at our map and hypothesize about what future obstacles may confront us.

Major Siberian cities are often separated by 500 miles of forest and rural villages. The one federal road that crosses the country continually changes form. At times we ride along a road resembling a major U.S. highway, but as you stray farther from civilization, it often transforms into a mere country lane filled with potholes, or a rough dirt road. On a map, the federal highway appears as a single red line. But what this bright splash of rouge really signifies in reality remains a constant mystery.

Before arriving in Russia, we knew road quality in eastern Siberia would slow our progress. More than a month ago, for 500 miles, the Russian Federal Highway dissipated into a dirt road until we reached the city of Chita. For three weeks, we traveled through remote country between small villages with no running water or indoor plumbing. During this section of the trip, while looking on our maps at the vast sections of Russia fanning thousands of miles westward toward Moscow, I imagined a more developed world would appear after Chita with paved roads and small towns with flush toilets instead of outhouses.

Obtaining accurate information about the reality of the road ahead can be extremely difficult. Most people who we speak with are villagers who have never strayed far from their place of birth. Oftentimes, our most reliable sources of information come from young Russian men we meet from the Russian Pacific Coast, who make a lving by investing in cheap used cars imported from Japan and drive them into central Russia to resell for profit.

Several weeks ago, we met one such driver named Alex who had driven cars across the length of Russia four times. We sat over several vodka's and examined a Russian map together, then asked him questions about the road ahead. As he spoke, I listened to his words as if receiving an oracle’s proclamation.

“Soon you will reach sections of road with no pavement again,” he said, pointing to a section of central Russia spanning nearly 600 miles. “There the off-road sections are not as long as before, but the road quality is even worse. This is a very poor section of Russia,” he explained.

His answers caused my fantasy that we would soon enter a more developed world to disintegrate like a sand castle beneath a crashing wave.

Several hundred miles down the road, Alex’s prediction became reality. One afternoon, I spied a car in the distance with a hazy cloud of beige dust trailing behind it. I immediately knew we were headed for more off-road.

There are few things so disheartening as regressing. In the coming days, we hit the odd juxtaposition of paved roads interspersed with rough dirt roads. We assume these strange transitions exist because frost heaves and brutally cold Siberian winters destroy the roads so much that construction crews only have time to cover bad sections of road in remote areas with gravel instead of repairing them.

For four days we continue down some of the worst roads we have encountered yet. Clouds of dust emitted by passing vehicles coat my body in filth. I try tying a handkerchief around my face to avoid breathing in the dust, but the summer heat is too intense to put anymore clothes on. When trucks drive by, I simply hold my breath. Removing my sunglasses at the end of the day, I discover that my eyes are the only area of my face not covered in dirt. I look like a raccoon.

Hitting a stretch of good road here, I speed up in a vain attempt at escaping this part of Russia, and then suddenly must brake to swerve around a stretch of potholes. At one point, we hit a several-mile section of road constructed of large concrete blocks which have been ripped up from an old airport runway and recycled on the road before me. I must ride slowly to avoid hitting bits of rusty rebar which jut out into this makeshift road and might puncture a tire. Clouds of huge horseflies and mosquitoes surround me as I slow down, whirling around me in circles like satellites revolving in the earth’s orbit. I try to swat them as they bite me, but it only slows me more.

As our second day ends, we reach a small village of several hundred people. We locate the one store in town and stock up on food. As we walk out, the women who run the store offer to call the principal of the local elementary school to let us sleep there. An hour later, I am unfolding my sleeping bag on the floor of a large log cabin-style building which serves as the local school.

That evening, I sit in the schoolyard and observe the village around me. Several goats and a cow graze freely by the sides of buildings. Strangely, I don’t exactly feel like a stranger here. I grew up on a small farm with cows and sheep as a child in a small town in Maine called Sedgwick and attended kindergarten in a two-room schoolhouse built in the 19th century. I often become frustrated when Russians in these villages assume that I come from a modern American city and have led a very different life than their own. When I tell them I that I grew up in an old farm hourse, in a small town about the same size as this one, they don’t seem to believe me until I tell them it is located somewhat close to Boston.

‘‘Oh, Boston,” they finally say with glimmers of recognition in their eyes.

“Do you have roads in America like the ones here,” they routinely ask.

“Yes, many,” I reply, recalling dirt roads running through blueberry fields behind my house that I used to ride my bike on as boy, “but the difference is that our highways are paved.”

Ellery and I set forth from the elementary school the following morning and continue down a gravel road which resembles a logging trail. We make jokes to brighten the rough start to another day.

“How can Russia, a country with a seat on the United Nations Security Council and a member state of the G8, along with countries like France and the United Kingdom, not achieve what countries like Guatemala and South Africa have done: put one paved road across the entire country?” we say laughing, yelling at the trees.

In two more days, we arrive in the city of Krasnoyarsk. We are now halfway across Russia.

“After Krasnoyarsk, the road finally improves,” Alex told us before we parted ways.

From there we continue, further within the enigma.