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The Road of Bones
Submitted by Jim B.

Editor's Note: The R504 Kolyma Highway was constructed during the Stalinist era of the USSR by the Dalstroy construction directorate. The first stretch was built by the inmates of the Sevvostlag labour camp in 1932, and construction continued with the use of gulag labour until 1953.

The road is treated as a memorial, as the bones of the people who died while constructing it were laid beneath or around the road. As the road is built on permafrost, interment into the fabric of the road was deemed more practical than digging new holes to bury the bodies of the dead.

Locally, the road is known as Trassa (The Route) or Kolymskaya trassa (The Kolyma Route), since it is the only road in the area and therefore needs no special name to distinguish it from other roads.


Gents,

Spring of 2014, I ordered a Corbin Saddle for my 2012 BMW F800GS. Corbin shipped the saddle to my address in Naples Florida, and then my guy at DHL in Naples shipped the saddle to me in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

2013 were practice trips around Mongolia and the "long trip" for 2013 was from Ulaanbaatar, up to Ulan Ude, south along the bottom of Lake Baikal to Irkutsk and then around Lake Baikal and back to Ulaanbaatar ( UB).

2014 was the real trip, the serious trip and why I brought an F800GS to Mongolia. 2014 I would ride more than 10,000 Kilometers in one trip across Siberia. During July and August of last summer, I rode the F800GS from Ulaanbaatar to Magadan, via Yakutsk across the Road of Bones. After arriving in Magadan, due to torrential rains that washed out the roads and bridges between Magadan and Yakutsk, I couldn't complete a return ride via Yakutsk, so I flew the F800GS to Khabarovsk and then rode from Khabarovsk back to Ulaanbaatar.

From my 2013 trip, I learned that the BMW "Comfort Seat" was actually a torture device. No way can anyone be comfortable on the factory seat for long adventure rides. So, due to some experience I had with Corbin seats that were on a used BMW R1100RT that I owned years ago, I felt Corbin could be the only company that could construct a saddle that would stand up to hard riding, day after day, on very difficult roads, in very difficult environments.

I never had a single issue with my Corbin seat and even after a couple 18 hour back-2-back days, I got off the bike with no "saddle issues".

While many hard core adventure riders ride their stock seats, they would be so much more comfortable and feel much better at the end of each days riding if they invested in a top notch saddle from Corbin.

Thanks!

Jim B
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia







If you'd like to see some videos from Jim's adventures, check out his Youtube channel HERE.