Day 25, 2016.08.02 Kyakhta

Asmir waited near the border in Kyakhta at this time I still wanted to see Ulan-Ude. The meal yesterday wasn’t good for me. The day started with a long session on the toilet easy decision to have breakfast somewhere else. On the bike again I thought 400km to Ulan-Ude stop for lunch and drive down to Asmir later. 40km later I started to rethink that plan when my rearwheel tried to overhaul the front wheel on a straight road. The tire was completely flat. I made thousands of km without that problem so it was time to have it myself. I demounted the tyre, mounted the tyre with the spare tube again with the help of an enthusiastic Mongolian. He and the Russian weren’t a big help but pumping the tyre up with a compressor is much more comfortable. I thanked them and left optimistic even if I couldn’t see a problem with tyre or tube. 60km later the same again I pushed the bike to a nearby truckstop and started the game again.

I could find the problem with the tube repaired it, checked the tyre, cleaned out the dirt carefully and mounted it all together again. This time I could count on the truck drivers help with filling up the tube. They invited me to a cup of coffee after I finished we shared some pictures and had a nice time. Of course they needed to take photographes of the tourist they helped like the others before. After a short rain I was on the road again. 160km later nothing around me no traffic this time, I’ll be on my own. You couldn’t see a problem from the outside of the tyre but I was shure there is a problem with it. The damage always on the same position but you couldn’t feel anything when you touched the tyres inside. I repaired the tube mounted everything again filled it via handpump with 1 bar to limp to the next tyre repair shop. By the way temperatures between 33 and 38°C and 3 times the same work in the sun. At least the cars that ignored me drove so fast that I had some cooling wind. I limped to the tyre shop and tried to explain the Russian mechanic the problem. It ended up with a repaired heavy duty tube inside of my rear wheel, but they haven’t checked the inside of the tyre what I wanted from them. I left with the hope that the heavy duty tube will make it to Ulaanbaatar. The plan of visiting Ulan-Ude was cancelled long before after I bought the Vodka Baikal in a small shop. The young pretty salesgirl had problems to understand what I wanted so I just bought some water and food. While I was eating outside she came and presented me a bottle with the Name Vodka Baikal. Of course so I bought the two that I needed as present for friends at home. I was on my way again directly to Asmir and reached relieved. After that hard day I wanted to stay for another one to recover. I send an email to our travel agency to move our flight which seemed to be not possible. With the bad feeling of staying 2 weeks longer then we wanted we went to bed.