Beware of the bears and the bandits

Before we left Ulan-Ude, Gordon had a narrow escape in an encounter with a Russian bear. He nearly lost his right buttock in the incident (the part that houses his brain) and had to employ tactics normally used by a skunk. Coincidently, Tom had a camera in his hand and managed to snap the beast in action after encouraging the attack .

The road out of Ulan-Ude is very scenic, almost resembling the landscape seen in Wild West movies. The ground is very sandy and the hills have been shaped by running water cutting through them. This main route eastwards is, once again the M55 (but not as we know it in the UK). One noticeable difference on the 380 mile journey to Chita is the lack of Police checkpoints. The diminished security has not gone unnoticed by the criminal fraternity either. We encountered two incidents on this road which could have been potentially dangerous. In the first instance, we had to come to a complete halt at a level crossing. Beyond the crossing we saw a man standing on the road using a mobile phone. As we started to ride towards him, he waved us down, as if in need of assistance. At the side of the road was another man, also in his 20s, sitting, looking downwards with his hat tipped forward over his face. The implication was that there was something wrong with the man sitting down and he needed to get assistance. He moved out towards the centre of the road to stop us but we smelled a rat and opened up the throttles - he soon moved aside!!!

About 50 miles along the road, a similar thing happened. This time, an old guy, well dressed, came out onto the road, waving frantically for us to stop. There were two cars at his side, one of which had someone inside. On the opposite side of the road was another car containing a bunch of heavies. The location was withing a gully and had woods on both sides of the road. There was no obvious damage to any of the cars and no one seemed to be in any trouble. We gestured to the elderly guy that we were going to pull in, causing him to step back. As he did so, the we sped past and the view of the gangsters rapidly shrunk in the mirrors. These are the kind of ruses that the FCO warns British tourists travelling abroad to watch out for.