Sunday July 29, 2012 – 55.08132° N, 124.43856° E
Amour! Toujours l
Tynda, Amur Oblast, Russian Federation coat of arms.
The Big Dummy with a working centerstand!
Camping Out of Sight – Out of Mind..
Posing…
Boats zooming by!
Sean Hardley on
Evenki picking blueberries.
Nature Morte.
Coal Trains coming down from Neryungri.
Southern Yakut landscape.
Approaching Amur Oblast!.
Tynda locals washing carpets by the river.
Broken center stand which hopefully can be welded back.
Soviet proud Tynda.
Tynda, Amur Oblast, Russian Federation
55° 08′ 132″ N, 124° 43′ 856″ E
219 kms completed since I left Neryungri in Yakutia on Wednesday July 25th.
Pedaled through hard rain, hot sunny afternoons, a few mountain passes,the Evenki village of Iyengra where I was offered fresh blueberries.
Enjoyed three lovely nights in my tent listening for any potential approaching bears/creatures, met quite a few new intriguing characters on the road, trainspotted countless coal trains, watched large boats zooming by on trailers, passed beautiful landscapes and was photographed in company of more wedding parties. I was also passed by my first cyclist, Sean Hardley, on his long course.
Finally, after having crossed Chukotka, Kamchatka, Magadanskaya, Sakha Republic/Yakutia, I am pleased to say that I have arrived in my 5th Russian province/state: “L’oblast d’Amour” – Amur Oblast.
On my 4th day, I arrived in Tynda, the BAM (Baikal-Amur Mainline) Headquarters.
Flanked by low-lying, pine covered hills, Tynda definitely shows off its Soviet roots! It was indeed a shack village before BAM centralised its efforts in this location in 1974.
In Tynda, I took a day off to:
– enjoy a great riverside shashlik diner with my darojnik friends where I learned about the “art of making proper painted road white lines.”
– walk and walk around the town, trekking along the river side, the hills and the market where I noticed a large amount of Chinese immigrants coming to sell their entire country in doses of minuscule and larger manufactured goods.
– enjoy the local banya!
I am now planning to depart Tynda as soon as I would have found a way to properly weld back my bike centerstand which fell through in this last section…
Finally, I want to thank my darojnik/road worker friends Igor and Tamara Kovalev who took the time to welcome me so kindly and let me stay in their road-workers base/HQ for the entire weekend!
Poka and yes, let me go through more Amur!