I’ve spent a week travelling north from Kabarovsk in Far East Russia supporting and filming Sarah Outen on her bike as he heads to Lasarev, the closest point to Sakhalin island. We had planned to kayak 7km across to Sakhalin across the Tartar Strait where the tides reach 5 knots on spring tides. BUT then Sarah’s bike Hercules ground to a halt today -100km from Lasarev. which is a day’s cycle on these rough stony roads. His bearings had disintegrated 3km from the nearest town and our first glimpse of the sea – Dekastry (which is probably not spelt anything like that). Sarah walked 3km into town and we decided to kayak from here tomorrow – heading north towards Lasarev, but probably not kayaking all the way up to Lasarev before crossing to Sakhalin. We are quite late in the season for paddling here as it gets stormier and colder so we need to kayak to Alexandrov on Sakhalin as quickly as we safely can.

It’s now 10.30pm and we are mostly packed for kayaking tomorrow. We have food for 6 days (actually probably more than that as Sarah keeps sneaking more food into the drybags…. just in case!). Karel from kayakweather.com will be sending us forecasts every day which is great – thanks Karel. The biggest remaining question is what the coast looks like from here to the north. It’s Sunday in a small town so we haven’t been able to buy a map yet to see what we will expect, but we know the coast is fairly cliffy and we aren’t certain how many places we will be able to land. We will have a better idea in the morning before we head off.

we are in a hotel tonight, after camping by the road almost every night on the way up here. Batteries are on charge and someone has lent us his computer so we can get on the internet. No photos as it’s not my computer. The scenery up here is very pretty – a dirt road snakes up and down and around through quite thick forest, every now and again joining the wide Amur river as it forges north. It’s wet off the road, with many streams and boggy areas. we’ve met some really friendly russian people and were invited to stay at one family’s house on our first night. they cooked us an amazing feast of salmon, fish eggs, a raw fish dish, salads, and soup, and all washed down by numerous shots of home-made vodka (they said it was whisky, but it looked and tasted like vodka so i’m not sure if they were joking?). they also lit the ‘banya’ or russian sauna for us which was fantastic.

Time for bed…. up early tomorrow to go paddling.