More shocks (or not as the case may be)

Day 17 in Zlatoust, Iain and Debz are still there instead of crossing the border into Mongolia. Well, it’s all gone a bit wrong! The shocks arrived in Moscow on the Saturday and Motorrad Moscow did the required on the Monday – brilliant service – and gave them back to the courier (Pony Express) on Monday afternoon. When by Thursday there was still no info on the tracking system we contacted Irina at Motorrad and asked her if she had any info. The news she came back with was not good – the courier had lost the shocks!! Our hearts sank, this was terrible. We phoned John again at Revs Racing to find out how quickly Wilburs Germany could make us a new set and the response was ‘the next day’. In the meantime I was chasing Pony Express ( thank you Google translate) and they then said they’d found them at the airport. To cut a long story short, the result was that the courier refused to put them on the plane back to us as they were a hazardous item (which I accept but they flew into Moscow without anyone caring!) and would have to be returned by road. Road........we were told to expect them at the end of the next week. So, as I type this, the shocks are in Chelyabinsk, approx 100km away and we will hopefully get them tomorrow.  If we get them early enough, we will be back on the road tomorrow afternoon, if not, the following day.

We would like to say that the service we’ve had from John at Revs Racing (the official UK importer for Wilburs), Wilburs Germany and Motorrad Moscow (the official Russian importer for Wilburs) has been absolutely first class.

In between all this kafuffle, we had our tea at Natasha’s (one of the hotel cleaners) house. She first gave us a tour of the city’s highlights and then laid on a lovely spread for us. Again, with very little understandable language between us, we had a lovely time.

We will be glad to now head for Mongolia. This will take approx 10 days with no other mishaps. It will be tight for us to make it before our Mongolian visa expires but hopefully we will.