Watch the real Siberian video done on the Kolyma Highway (the Road of Bones) by Oisin Hughes, an Irish adventure biker, who yesterday made it to Magadan from Yakutsk just for 4 days only. In this vid you will see, how close to the edge he was biking in the Verkhoyansky mountain area. Fantastic and thrilling! That’s Siberia! That’s the Siberian challenge!
Oisin says, “Jesus, I nearly died when i rewatched it… Got way way way too close to the edge here, gives me the colly wobbles just looking at it…”
My comment will be simple. While being early in this summer, he was really lucky. Weather was awesome. Sunny and no rains. But… the end of his biking happened to be not so much exciting.
Further, please, find what happened and get the information on the current condition of the Road of Bones (the Khandyga – Kyubyume part).
WHAT EXTREME HE HAD
In the last leg of the journey, 525 km from Magadan, his motorcycle got broken. The front shock blew and he had a number of flats. He was forced to think about a ride to Magadan by lorry. Nevertheless, he managed to fix the bike and back to the road.
ROAD CONDITION NOTES
Oisin wrote:
“..Sergei [a hostel owner in Khandyga] had talked to the local truck drivers and the feedback was that for the first 100km or so the going would be, after that while the roads started to go over the mountains things could get very bad depending on the weather, but they reckoned I’d be ok…”
“..As promised the early going was straight gravel roads with very few problems and even after a hundred miles I’d scarcely had a wobble. The going was too easy if anything… I’d my first “hard stop” when I came to a river whose bridge was under construction. The construction teams had laid a trail of gravel over the water and a route to follow out onto the main road. While I was coming across the water and out onto the other side I said I’d take a short cut up the side of the bank when the bike got stuck in the stones. I did my best to get it out and failed miserably so I stayed there until a guy in a truck came along and along with some of the construction crew pushed me back up onto the road… I was lucky, someone came along in ten minutes, but I was having stretches where I didn’t see any traffic for whole hours, I gave myself a mental kick in the bollix for not being more careful and resolved to keep the whole “drive to arrive” mentality for the rest of the day…”
“..I passed a café doling out what would charitably be described as gruel… The roads started to wind upwards and around various mountains and for at least a hundred km I followed a black dusty gravel road with a leafy green border under a blue sky with mountains popping in and out of the field of view. It was a beautiful day. The only thing that takes away from your appreciation of your surroundings is that you’re so focused on the road ahead to make sure you don’t come off… As the first set of mountains faded behind me I started to hit some lots of water crossings as streams flowed down from the mountain. At each crossing I got off the bike and walked across to make sure I could get through and there wasn’t any hidden sinkholes and then walked back, got on the bike and drove through it. God bless my seal skin socks! The deepest was up to my knees and lasted for only 15 feet or so, the widest was maybe 40 feet but was much shallower…”
Follow Oisin’s around-the-world travel on his blog BackToBroke. Enjoy reading his Kolyma stories. Looking forward to learn more details of his riding the last leg of the Kolyma Highway from Ust Nera to Magadan via Susuman.
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- How to drive Kolyma Highway (the Road of Bones) in winter?
- Travel condition reports on the Road of Bones?
- Video: Long Way Round – Road of Bones Episode
