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26 June 2004

The Kingsmill's Trans-Russia-Mongolian Overland Trip, Part 2: Ulan Ude

Geoff Kingsmill
2006-04-26 08:43:49

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After waiting four days for the ship to arrive and then another 5 business days we finally drove Troopy and Tom’s BMW motorbike out of the Vladivostok port on Thursday afternoon, the 17th June. With the help of the wonderful staff at Silver Wind Corporation (Vladimir Zhenikhaylov, Vladimir Myachin, Vladimir the Port Manager and Marina Averinov) the task of getting our vehicles through customs meant that there was little work for us to do other than signing documents and waiting. The customs process took all of Thursday beginning with a customs inspector accompanying us to the container to check Troopy’s engine number, chassis number and contents. It was very helpful to have a list of contents already translated into Russian. Thanks to Alex and Lilia for doing this for us. We are very thankful for Vladimir and Marina who took good care of us at the customs house by helping us fill in forms, ferrying us from one office to the next, and Marina did an excellent job translating our documents from English into Russian. We’ll add more practical details on shipping from Australia to Vladivostok when we get home.

Once we had our vehicle, it was a rather hectic evening packing everything in its place, bolting the rooftop tent to the roofrack, stocking up with supplies and filling the fuel and water tanks. We did not get to bed till after sunset (which is around 10:30pm) and got up before dawn (which is around 5:30am) to begin our journey across Russia and Mongolia. We had a terrific time in Vladivostok and met some wonderful people but it was great to be on the road again.

Getting out of Vladivostok was not too difficult once we found the entry road onto the main highway north to Kharbarovsk. The GPS came in very handy showing Troopy the way. We did buy a Russian Road Atlas here but unfortunately, it didn’t have a road map of Vladivostok. Geoff had acquired GPS city maps for most main Russian cities and this came in very handy indeed.

The ...