Gwilym's Adventure Blog

After a pretty good (if a little weird) breakfast. Cucumber is not a breakfast item! I was on the road at 07:30 heading for the border. After negotiating a main road closure and thick fog, I arrived at the border post at 9:42am and a que was starting to form The Belarussian border is very smart with everyone in uniform and the very large Russian style military hat. However, they were very pleasant and the guy dealing with me said. "Do you have a gun"? I replied "No" Cocaine"? "No" He seemed happy enough with that though took a casual look in my panniers to be sure. I then moved onto the Ukrainian side. What a difference. Still in uniform but mainly camouflage t-shirts and baseball caps. Again very pleasant chap dealt with me, wishing me well on my journey but the system was shambolic. He went down a line of 10 vehicles collecting all the passports and documents. We then waited like lemons and a different guy came and gave them...

An early start this morning got me to the Latvia/Belarus border at 7.28am. It was nearly all going well as only one vehicle ahead of me in the queue and then when they checked my paperwork, they noticed I did not have an MOT certificate (I a impressed they even knew what one was as they said they had about 1 or 2 British people through a month) Anyway, I don't have a certificate because the bike is not old enough. The supervisor came over and disappeard with my documents. At 8.19am I was let out of Latvia. The MOT certificate issue seemed to have gone away. Then is was the Belarussian border. I had to temporarily import my bike (lots of paperwork), have it searched by 2 people, get my visa all stamped up and buy some insurance. Now, it was from a genuine lady, in a booth with the words "Insurance" in many languages above it. But at only 2 euro for 15 days cover I left wondering of what value it really was. At 9.23 I left the border and headed into Belarus...