MIRNY, Russia

Welcome to Mirny!!  Large diamond mining town of 40,000..  AND, we made it to the motor-cross event!

Big Igor, as we call him is racing today in the Monster Energy suit.. I am behind him, Ilya directly behind him, and the Igor we stay with is next to me, as well as lots of their female friends.

They use the dug out areas around the mine for a track.. but it didn't look near as difficult as the Viluisky Trakt  ;-) ha!  I should've taken them on!!

Walter and Igor

After the event, the boys want to show us the “hole” 

This diamond mine went down and down for years until they couldn’t go any further.. What a sight!

Walter suggests a Google Earth search to give you more perspective..

Me and Igor! Always looking after us..

There goes Big Igor and the Motor-cross boys.. the race is over, but they are still chasing each other around Mirny.

We then take off to lunch.. again treated by Igor!!  I was ready for some green stuff.  I order a salad, and Igor waves me off and says I don’t want that.. Walter listens to him, they go back and forth a few times in Russian (I was starting to worry!) But Walter knows I like my salads, and fights for my right to eat something healthy.. He wins!  I had an excellent salad..

While at lunch, he gets a call that another KTM has pulled into town.. He knew it must be his friend from Austria who he’d been talking to on the internet..

He go to investigate and it is who he thought. Joe and Renate Pichler.  From what I have now learned, Joe is a very well known motorcycle adventurer from Austria.  He does a lot of marketing for KTM and is sponsored from KTM to do a Transasia journey.

He’s on a KTM 990 Adventure.. I was going to get that bike!!  Ha!  No way, far too big and heavy for me.

Igor invites him to park his bike at the office with ours.. better to have it behind secure gates while in town..

There’s my bike having a good chat with his big brother... I'm sure they have a lot of interesting stories to share about their owners. ;-)

Joe and Renate are going the opposite direction as us..  so only a quick visit as they have to get through the next 3 weeks across to Magadan before the weather changes.

Walter invites Joe and Renate to come with us on a little river trip to a village the next day.. they could spare one day so we set to meet the next morning.

I offered to stay behind so these two very experienced riders could have a day of it.. but they were okay with me being slow.  I must admit I am embarrassed, but they are very kind to me.  Walter and I enjoyed joking about what this photo looks like being that my experience levels are so far behind.. “What’s this thing Joe?”  “Well, that’s what we call a Throttle Sherri Jo!”  J ;-)

In all seriousness, Joe is obviously a very accomplished rider.  I look forward to learning more about him once I get internet connection and access to his website, but I learned a lot from what Walter told me.

We have a short 80 km ride on the dirt to the river, where we will park the bikes and be taken up river to the village.

We get to ride in a Wazik to the boat dock, how exciting!

We get to the river and it turns out we go in separate boats.

We finally arrived this gorgeous river village and are taken to a lady who will show us around.

Looks like a very cozy village.. this is the village where Tatiana from Yakutsk comes from, she is the lady earlier in the blog who married Walter's french friend Arnaud, and gave me the necklace of Yakutia.

The local Post Office and a handy Wazik for delivery

Joe and Renate spotted this 3 wheel “motorcycle” and could hardly contain themselves!  These are the tires I have needed on these crazy roads of Russia!  Why didn’t I see these ones in the catalogue?

Like a kid in a toy store… ;-)

Below is the owner of the “vehicle”  He tells us it’s for hunting.  (Bears, Reindeer, you know.. the usual..)

Over to the school, they have prepared a little ceremony for us, and inside the school is a small museum.

They are the Yvenki people, native Yakutians who were apparently here hundreds of years before the Yakut people arrived.

They remind me of American Indian culture, and we find out from the lady inside what they believe to be the path their people took to migrate across to North America.

Into the museum we learn about their culture and custom, mainly based around the Reindeer.  The snow shoes used to be Reindeer skin, but now they use horse.

Thank you to all of these wonderful people who took the time out of their day to show us around and experience their culture.. I love it!

Absolutely fascinating, I really enjoyed their museum!  I didn't expect to see such close similarities to Native American Indian culture.

We continue to walk around the village having a look..

Not much traffic today?

Always a satellite dish on every home, even in a remote village…

I enjoyed walking rather than riding through a village.  I have passed many good looking villages along the Viluisky Trakt and many times wanted to stop and have a look around..  But as Captain Magadan was always ahead of me and waiting somewhere down the road, I never allowed myself to stop and make him wait longer.

Anyway, we must get back in the boat to head back to our bikes and ride into Mirny before it gets too late.

This lovely guy I met in the village desides to escort us!  I have nicknamed him Polar Dog.  He so much wanted to play!!

Can I come??

Oh, sorry not this time, Polar Dog…!

I just love this guy, makes me miss my Lukey Duke back in Adelaide…

Once we got back to Igors, we thought to line the bikes up for a photo..

And young Igor with his VERY expensive Moto Morrini…  where does he ride such an expensive bike?  There are like a total of 6 paved roads in Mirny and just out of town they are all dirt!

I think he is really impressed with Joe’s 990… sounds like that one will be on order shortly.. might as well, he can actually then go somewhere!

Back to the house and wonderful Joe and Renate give me some tips on adjustments to make while using poor fuel once I get to Mongolia.  Lucky I had my owners manual handy..  Walter says I am getting advice from the Master.. I could use all I can get..!  After this long, still so much to learn.

The next day was fairly uneventful.. more motorcycle repairs.. this time my heated handgrips which had died a few days back.. can’t go on into fall and winter without them, and Walter knew a great guy he used last year for his electrical problems.

He worked it out.. he says that the “Chinese technology is now fixed with Russian Technology”..  ha!

Seriously, if anyone out there is traveling with Oxford heated hand grips, they are brilliant!  One of my favorite investments!  However, both Walter's and my grips failed because there are several holes for water to get into; both the unit under the bike as well as the control unit on top.

And then to a quick interview on Mirny Radio 102.4 with Alexander and his interpreter, Eugene.  They asked a lot of great questions!  That was fun, thanks guys!