While his fellow Kiwis were enjoying one of the hottest summer months on record this past February, Auckland-based 4x4 tour operator Greg Paul was in Siberia completed a winter traverse of the little-known BAM (Baikal Amur Mainline) route.
Story and photos by Greg Paul
Overland Journeys has earned a reputation for having developed some diverse and interesting self-drive tour routes across the Russian continent and as time and circumstance allows we venture into the wilderness in this interesting part of the world in search of new and exciting experiences for their clients.
In fact the little-known region of Eastern Russia has not only provided our team with the ultimate road trip but revealed a region with lots of interesting culture and history specific to the area.
We named our latest expedition the ‘BAM’ after the 4000km railway line through the area built during and after the Soviet era.
As I’m sure you can imagine building the line involved a lot of human hardship and is an amazing story of cultural and religious integration, in a not so long ago era.
The big bonus for us was that when the BAM railroad was built they also had to have road access. The road may have once been good but has faced the challenges of the adverse climate, permafrost, snow and devastating floods that have all but destroyed the many road bridges that have never been repaired or replaced.
Therefore, even major settlements along the way are isolated by road connection and rely totally on the rail system for communication with the outside world.
That said, the harsh winter climate provides and links a lot of Russia with ice roads that offer an interesting and viable option for overland travel.
The BAM is one of the lesser known but is a critically important winter road linking the town of Tayshet in the west to Tynda in the east. Our story began on Thursday February 22 in Tayshet where a major oil and gas pumping plant is located, pumping this vital commodity to the east and as far as China.
Actually our journey started 1200km prior to Tayshet in the Siberian capital, Novosibirsk, where our two Overland Journeys’ Russian-registered 100 series Land Cruisers are based under the watchful eye of local agents, Altair Tours and Olga Antonova.
Olga has done all the organisation for the trip and also helped with the kitting out of extreme clothing for myself and our second Land Cruiser driver Simon Arms, from Australia.
Final destination
Blagoveshchensk was our final destination and a big city close to the Chinese border. This was just the latest of many visits now that Overland Journeys has made to this multicultural city which is just a stone’s throw away from China and separated by the Amur river and as such is more Chinese than Russian.
At this time of the year the Amur is covered in ice and at several points security posts stop either nationalities crossing the border illegally. A new bridge between Russia and China is being built 20km upstream from this vibrant city but in winter authorised road traffic is permitted to cross the river’s ice road with temporary border posts at either end.
It was at Blagoveshchensk that we said farewell to our NZ clients at the end of a 15-day adventure which amazed us all with the scenery, the cultural experiences, the characters that we met and the weather extremes which combined to make the winter traverse of the BAM road such an adventure.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Olga of Altair Tours who organised the expedition, Simon who used all of his driving skills to keep one of the Cruisers on the road and to Mark and Robin our fearless passengers who cooperated with anything exciting that we decided to do along the way. It was truly an experience to remember and one that Overland Journeys would like to offer again next year to anyone willing to take on the adventure of their life.
To read the full story in the July 2018 issue of NZ4WD go to Zinio.com (June 15) or purchase your own hard copy at the Adrenalin store.
