The last 500km. Start as usual early morning. Roads are almost good. Mathis' shock absorber has a little problem, since his mechanic assembled it the wrong way. But with combined efforts this can be fixed in a reasonable time and the journey towards Ulan Ude continues. In the afternoon we meet a team with a completely unusual problem: Normally people have to rush to get out of countries when the visum is about to expire. These guys have to wait until midnight because their Russian visum only valid from the next day on. The border is something like a big waiting area. It takes several hour until we can continue. In the meantime it is dark and raining, so we try to find a place to spend the night and continue the last kilometers the other day. The 3rd finish line party was anyway already 3 day ago. Main roads in Russia are OK, side roads are almost unpassable in the rain, so it takes quite a while to find a place.

Russia is cold and rainy and full of mosquitoes.