England to Magadan (far East Russia)

England to Magadan (far East Russia)An Email from Eka Willert , our intrepid explorer!

Hi Again Jude
Here are some photo,s of our journey and can send you more later Our journey went from starting out on june the 12th 2009 down to Harwich,-Esbjerg Denmark ,Hamburg. Berlin.....

In Voss strasse. then on to Zagan in western poland -original great escape camp- then on to my old polish friend jureks house- Jurek actualy has Cardinal Karol Wojtela,s-Pope john pauls motorcycle at his place. then the second new rear barum enduro tyres off jurek so we were carrying 2 rear a 1 front spare tyres Estimated luggage and spares weight clothing etc was an incredible 185lbs Which i know is ridiculus. then onto Gierloz-Rastenberg in Polish Mazury old Ost-preussen to Hiltler's eastern command head quarters (the Wolf's Lair).
Then onto Bytom in Silesia to a friends house and then onto the Polish Ukrainian border. Then the whole of the Ukraine from West to East to Rostov on the Don Russia (home of the Don Cossacks who were the reason of the Russian slow but sure victory in (Stalingrad) now called Volgagrad of where we were heading- then Volgagrad- Kazakshstan only around 80 miles away from Volvagrad Via Astrakhan . Then the whole of kazakhstan (which is the roughest terrain in the world ) we did around 5 to 6 thousand miles in kazakhstan (and it very nearly broke us) Kazakhstan Barnaul to the Trans-Siberian highway -Novasibirsk- Krasnoyarsk- Lake Baikal which is over 1 mile deep and they have still not found the bottom of it because its a rift lake. It has enough fresh drinking water to supply the whole population of the world for the next 35 years.  Lake Baikal to - Ulan Ude, legendary birth place of Ghengis Khan's mother  then to the border with Mongolia and Ulaan Bataar the capital. We then doubled back to Ulan Ude and the Trans-Siberian highway to Chita-Skovoridino-Yakutsk- the Road of Bones and finally Magadan.

Incidently at the begining of the third week of August 2009 it was -18 below in Susuman around 400 miles from Magadan.

Now for the important bit. As we obviously risked our lives doing this journey which was done on a shoe-string I estimate (including being very generous with tips in restaurants etc it cost us around £4000, a remarkably small sum when you compare this to the McGreggor-Borman journey (people are saying it cost over £1 Million plus?)

BECAUSE OF THE ENORMOUS WEIGHT WE WERE CARRYING MY CONSTANT THOUGHTS WERE WITH THE O RING DRIVE CHAIN AND SPROCKETS GETTING ENOUGH OIL AND IF IT WAS NOT FOR THIS CLEVER COMPACT LITTLE CHAIN OILER IM SURE ID NEVER HAVE MADE IT TO OUR ULTIMATE GOAL MAGADAN AND THE PACIFIC OCEAN.

regards yours sincerely

Eka Willert

PHOTO's