This is the first post in a series documenting a twenty-six day self-drive trip through Siberia — Magadan to Novosibirsk, via the Road of Bones. Two people, two Land Cruisers, and 7,123 kilometres. If you’re new here, this is the place to start.
We Needed an Expedition, Not a Holiday
Some people collect stamps. We collect roads.
A friend of ours had driven the Peking to Paris rally. Before that, the Inca rally. His stories made every trip we’d taken look distinctly ordinary. We wanted an expedition, not a holiday.
A colleague asked where I was going on holiday. Siberia, I said. She laughed, waited for the real answer, then had to be convinced I wasn’t joking.
Janine went looking. She searched and searched, the way she does when she’s decided something, and eventually found it — a self-drive trip from Magadan to Novosibirsk, following the Road of Bones. Neither of us had heard of half the places on the route. My own grasp of Siberian geography began and ended with a childhood spent playing Risk — Irkutsk and Yakutsk were territories to hold, not places anyone actually lived.
The trip was being run by Greg, a fellow New Zealander, which felt like a reasonable sign. We signed up before either of us had time to think better of it.
Twenty-six days. Two Toyota Land Cruisers, one of them already past 600,000 kilometres on the clock. Magadan to Novosibirsk, on a road that earned its name honestly.
This is book three. The trip, as it turned out, that set the bar for everything that came after.
The roads keep getting longer. We’re not complaining.
About us — if you’d like to know who’s driving.
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