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.