Russian roulette…

Today in two months and nine days the KLR will roll out onto the German Autobahn, ready for the next adventure and months on the road.

Is it possible to measure the extent of excitement when you load your bike with the tools, spares, the few pieces of clothes, laptop, and most important, the Kindle E-book reader, the small tent, mattress and sleeping bag, and you realize that those few pieces of “luxury” are enough to be your life and home for the next few months?

The KLR is still going to do one more long ride before I take it to Ray Muller at Cytech in Johannesburg for the final service and inspection. End of April the KLR owners have the first ever national bash at Gariep Dam.

The only cloud covering the sun of excitement has a Russian lining, unfortunately. The Russian visa …

On Monday faithful Thuli, who organized all my other visa for the previous trips, submitted my visa application and the relevant documents to the Russian embassy.

They refused to accept it. As easy as that. Reason: They did not accept the officially recognized (by the Russian government!) travel and medical insurance, which one needs for Russia. In my fury I even emailed them the screen print where it was stated that that was the only insurance recognized for visa purposes.

So yesterday, Tuesday, my visa application was back at the Russian embassy, supplemented by my additional travel insurance that I bought for my whole trip. This time they accepted the application.

Now the games start. Wait. Wait. See what they are going to do.

That is part of any long trip crossing many borders. And as always, the more problems one experiences before the trip the better the trip will be.

Last Friday after the afternoon shower of rain I went riding to enjoy the fresh clean air, so typical of the bushveld after rain. Next to the road I saw two different herds of giraffe! The old bull on the photograph was impressive.

An interesting bit of statistics: On 15 February 2012 there were the most visitors to the blog on any given day: 701 in total. A new feature is that one now can see from which countries the visitors are.

Have a good and relaxed holiday day if you are fortunate enough to live in South Africa!

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