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koekhakken

Good Afternoon,
At the moment I am working and living in Aktau, Kazakhstan. In 2004 I drove here with my little truck (Ural 4320) and also made a little trip to the East of Kazakhstan, through Kirgizia and uzbekistan back to Aktau.

At the moment I am planning a new trip:
Aktau-Atyubinsk-Kokshetau, into Russia, Omsk, Novosibirsk, into Mongolia, Ulan Bator, back into Russia, Irkutsk, Chita, Yakutsk and then to Magadan. Try to get to Khabarovsk and Vladivostok. Put the truck on a train to Moscow. From Moscow drive back to Europe.

Right. It is ambitious and escpecially in the Russian far east there are going to be encountered a lot of problems that i did not think of.

Timing is at the moment to drive-off here in KZ in the beginning of April 2006. Naturally I have lots of questions and I hope you guys can give me some advice.

Especially the trails to and from Magadan will be very difficult but is it possible? And getting the truck on the train, can I travel with the same train? Any do's and don'ts? I suspect the availability of diesel will not be a real problem, is this true? I also suspect that spare parts will only be a minor problem (a lot of russian airports ahve one or two of them and almost everybody knows them from serving in the military) or is this a bad assumption? Then on crossing rivers etc. When will most rivers crossings become uncrossable? Most bridges in russia have been laid-out for 20t minimum is this also the case in the far-east? Well, I could go on and on. In short any advice is welcome.

Hope you can give me a little support. Many thanks in advance.
Regards,
Niels

PS:
Ofcourse I dreamt of going to Kamchatka as well but since this seems to be out of the question, I now plan to park the truck in Magadan fly to Petropavlovsk, spend some time on Kamchatka with hired vehicles, fly back and continue my trip.

DITTRICH · Posted: Wed Dec 21, 2005 11:56 am Post subject:

Shipping a truck on the railway.
My advice would be to take something that can fit inside a 20' container as maybe you will drive the truck onto the platforma at the start and see the chassis minus wheels, engine etc at the other end. In a 20' container, I think they put them back to back on a 40' platoforma so the doors face each other and can't open. It's 8 years since I was in this business in Vostochny so better to check these details.
If you are interested, I can supply contacts for freight forwarding in Vladivostock or Vostochny. They will deal primarily in container traffic on the Trans Siberian route.

The road between Skovorodino and Magadan.
Apart from the Russian road atlas which is very small, I have not seen any convincing maps of the road between the above two points. Magadan to Vladivostock is only possible via skovorodino on a road. You need to check out the journey done by Charlie Boorman and Ewan Macgregor who rode this route on Bikes. You are right to consider using a truck as there are river crossings and this route should only really be attempted in late late summer when the river levels have fallen.

Must dash. Will think a bit more and add later.

Rgds

Les

CB + EW journey is on the internet somewhere. Google it.
Website www.horizonsunlimited.com - North Asia Forum - very good.
Vostochny - www.vics.ru (IIRC) has a small company VIFS forwarders.
Vladivostock - Silver Wind (IIRC)
www.amur-trassa.ru information about trans-siberian highway.
The above sufficient for any moderately computer literate russian speaking individual.

koekhakken · Posted: Sat Dec 24, 2005 12:55 pm Post subject:

Les,
Many thanks for the information and the links given.

Looked thru all of them (takes a lot of time with the connection we have here in Kz Smile

) and learned a lot.
The road-atlas I have at the moment is of 2004 and i am not sure whether it covers all the way up the east. I'll check. Otherwise I'll order some bits from Moscow.

Sent an email to the Vostochniy Freight forwarders with the train-truck question. Since I have built a complete 'domnik' on the back of my truck it might be a solution for security to travel in the truck while on the train.

You suggest that the best period of travel is end of summer because of the low river levels then. But how the road situation, I always figured that because of the melting top soil layer above the permafrost it s one big swamp then. Therefore i planned my trip in spring. What do you suggest?
When river crossings are not deeper than 1 to 1.5m I can handle it.

And what about bridges and ferries? Suitable for 10tons?

Coming month I'll get my maps in order and plan in somewhat more detail.

Many thanks and regards,
Niels

DITTRICH · Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2006 3:12 pm Post subject:

Your point about mud is valid, but if the river isn't low enough you're not going to get far. As I said, my knowledge is limited for this route and the only reason I replied to your post ws BECAUSE you said you were going in a truck - which showed you had sense compared to some of the other people posting on this site.

I think you'd best tackle this part of your trip by teaming up with a local going in the same direction with a larger truck (and a big rope!). Ewan and Charlie had to put their cars on the back of one such truck to get across some of the rivers. I suggest you buy the DVD of their trip - although only 1 episode deals with this route, it is very informative.

There are several map "factories" in russia - one, IIRC the khabarovsk aerogeodesic company, may have better maps ie <1:500,000 .

Rgds

Les

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