We were warned by Lonely Planet that “Novosibirsk Hotels, already overpriced, have a weird rule preventing most from accepting foreigners unless prebooked through a tour agency” and similar disclaimers. I tried to prebook an apartment from Omsk but this didn’t quite come together. So the plan for today was to get close enough to the city that we might depart if we couldn’t find accommodation.

We left our nice campsite in the forest and returned to busy roads. Fortunately, they became wider as we neared the city. Some bumps and cracks but overall better than expected. I stopped briefly at a cafe at 25km. Not long thereafter, the road split with one stream prohibiting trucks. We followed this road and by 36km it had curbs and gutters and was a very busy urban highway. It was nice to finally cross the Ob river at 44km. In comparison with Omsk, I found this river to seem a bit more urban.

Without much difficulty, we found our way to the first hotel. “We’re full” was about as helpful as the desk staff became. So, we started walking and found a hotel not in the guide books. Mickey went upstairs. While this hotel was also full, they were helpful enough to call many others (all full) and finally an office that rented apartments. The price was a bit much, but it would enable us to take a rest day. We started walking/cycling to the office. Across from the station was another large hotel. Not sure if they had been called or not but we tried it. Mickey went in and came back with a very reasonable price – so we thought we might have a place for three nights even! After this, the difficulties began. Once they discovered our bicycles, there was a lot of back and forth when they first told us “no bicycles in the rooms, no luggage room or other place to put them”. We tried different possibilities and were clearly stuck. They went back and relented and “ok, you can put bicycles in the room”. Now as they knew it was two people and not one, the price was suddenly almost triple (for the same room with two beds). A bit worn down by the process, we decided to take our rest days here anyways.

I’ve done some walking around the city to find the basic layout including internet cafe and major places. It will be nice to take some rest time here. As near as I can tell, this is the big city nearest to our 50% mark. After this we also will not have cities as big, with none over a million people.

47km today, 6835km across Eurasia. [Photo: 843, 845, 847, 850, 851]

Posted by mev as Siberia at 6:39 PM EDT

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Today we arrived in Novosibirsk after seven days on the road from Omsk. It took some work to find a hotel and that was a little more expensive than we might like. However, still decided to take two rest days here. The past week riding across Siberia continued to be flat terrain. Roads were occasionally rough. We had both days with hot temperatures and also some rain. However, overall continues to be some good cycling across Siberia. When people ask if we’ve come from far and when we reply “Amsterdam”, they are starting to joke “and you must be going to Vladivostok”. Hence, the locals still think of this as a long ride, but Vladivostok is no longer off the imagination. From here ~750km to Krasnoyarsk and ~1850km to Irkutsk as the next likely big places. There are five cities of 1 million plus that we cross on our trip: St Petersburg, Kazan, Yekaterinburg, Omsk and Novosibirsk. Hence, this is the largest city from here to the Pacific and last over 1 million population.

We’re declaring this the halfway point, will have to see how the kilometers come out exactly. I haven’t yet figured out if I can upload my previous journals and photos but will try this over the next two rests days here.

By the way, for those of you interested in bike trip journals. Bill Weir has recently posted One Year in Asia. I met Bill and his bicycle (named “Bessie too” or perhaps I met “Bessie”) in South India in 2002. He has done some interesting bicycle touring since then including his latest travels that I mostly read when sent via email updates. I also notice that Andrew and Joanne recently completed their trek along the Ride from Prudhoe Bay to Fairbanks. It sounds like a tough adventure. I met Andrew and Joanne in Australia in 2001 interesting that we both planned our next big adventures in the same year. I expect they will be posting more as they come down the Alaska Highway.

Posted by mev as Siberia at 3:14 PM EDT

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