Highlights
- Total distance: 765 km
- Calendar time: 6 days
- Riding time: ~42 hours
- Calories lost: 25 000 kcal
- Weight lost: 5 kg
- Bears mentioned by locals: yes
- Border guards surprised: 0
Preparation
My third real trip. And it’s already Moscow → Minsk. At least I bought a good bicycle for that and didn’t use my old mountain bike. I really didn’t want to wait, did I? This trip was half a year ago, so I am writing from what I can remember. I hope not much details will be lost and you will get the vibes.
So, how will you ride such a distance? It’s 750 km. That’s an interesting question. For the first time of our trips we decided to do some planning. We bought energy gels and bars, estimated how much water should we drink per hour and then after everything was bought we headed from Moscow. Big thanks to nikesha (my wife) for actually planning our food with Matthew and Chat GPT.
One special thing about such trips is that you can’t really plan your stops. It is cool if you can plan with precision up to a city, but in our case even our up-to-city plans were busted. Our first problem and enemy was rain. We only had 5 days, but some of them should be raining. So we decided to leave the day before our plan, in the evening after work.
Pic: Preparation (foods, energy bars, etc.)
Day 1. Moscow > Mozhaisk (115 km)
5pm. We are at Moscow. Ready to start. Kinda late, we wanted to start at 15:00. But the good news are that we only needed to ride 115 km. Bad news is that we also needed to get from Moscow. Anyone who ride long distances on bicycle knows: after you leave Moscow, you are 2-3 times faster. Same here.
115 kilometers is not that much, but we only arrived to the destination point at 23:59. Having that we wanted to keep our average speed at 20-25 kilometers and now we travelled at the average of 15 km/h. It was disappointing. The reason was not our slowness though. We left Moscow (MKAD) pretty easily, but then… problems arised.
7pm. Since we left Moscow 2 hours after planned, it became dark very fast. We needed to ride with cars when they couldn’t see us. At least we had a reflective vest. Except… we didn’t. So stupid after such a thorough preparation, but to be real we didn’t think we will ride in the dark. It’s not a good idea even with the vest, so we planned to only go when it’s not dark.
Anyways, at first this was not actually a problem. Since right to the road where cars were going 110 km/h there was another road that was completed but not opened yet. Perfect asphalt, almost like its built for bicycles. For a few kilometers… Then the completed part of the road ended and we got to a construction site where workers were doing their stuff. We asked for the west since they worked at night but none of them had it. We were ready to buy it, but no success. They didn’t have the vest.
9pm. We thought we are cooked. But another gift from universe! Traffic jam. It’s a big intercity road and yeah in Russia you have traffic jams everywhere. We consider that as a gift since it’s the only way we can safely ride on bicycle without anything reflective. All cars are at stop and we are just passing them one-by-one. That way we travelled another few hours until the jam ended.
Not to mention, while passing gas stations we always went in and asked if any of the drivers have the vest. They had to have it by the law but none of them had. Or none of them wanted to give it to us even though we explained situation and were ready to pay. Anyways, after traffic jam ended we had made a choice that we are riding until the next gas station and sleeping there. Riding in the dark was very unsafe.
We are at the target gas station, asking people around about that reflective vest. And one guy actually has it! He gives us his vest for free. And thank you that kind stranger that will never read this. We finished our Moscow → Minsk ride never abandoning this vest on the way.
11:59pm. After a few more hours of riding with a lot of lights and a vest now (anyways its still very dangerous), we arrived at our destination point at Mozhaisk. These 35km were very intense. In normal circumstances this should’ve took us less than 3 hours. Since we needed to leave Moscow first which is a long task on its own. But it took us 6 entire hours. Let’s hope that it will get better!
Pic: My friend in the gifted west on a gas station. No good photos were made so its a screenshot of a message
Day 2. Mozhaisk > Mozhaisk (-10 km)
I told you it would get easier? It didn’t. We stayed at hotel previous day and in the morning it was drizzling. Not a big deal, we thought. So the decision was made to depart and go to the next stop at Vyazma. We got wet very fast. And it started to feel very cold.
Pic: Me and Matthew in the middle of nowhere on the highway. Why is there even a bus stop? There is literally nothing around. It saved us though.
Matthew:
– I’m freezing, blyat…
– Sorry for the swearing, I don’t usually swear…
– But there’s no other words to describe it. It’s really cold, really wet. My boots are soaked through, as everything else is.
At that point we didn’t know if we could complete the trip to Minsk. It was our second day. And the weather was harsh. Forecast showed even worse weather on the upcoming days. So we decided to move on to the next gas station (thank god it was only 2 km away). And then warm there and decide whether we are going to continue. It’s not the last time when we didn’t know whether to continue though.
We spent 2 hours on the nearest gas station. And… surprise! We had a new companion in our journey:
Pic: Denis who decided to join us later
Denis wasn’t a trained cyclist (like everyone in our trio). But this new meet definitely helped and boosted our morale. Denis didn’t have this pessimistic thoughts we had on the way to this gas station. And he didn’t have to encounter those night problems we had. He couldn’t start with us from Moscow, so he used train to get to Borodino (one of 50+ villages with that name in Russia) where the gas station located.
We found another place to stay right away. It was 10 kilometers back from our first-day progress. That’s why the title of current day suggests -10 km progress. Getting to that place was another adventure. It was 45 min ride away (rain, cold and stuff you already know). Besides that, maps provider that we used (Yandex Maps) showed us route that was several kilometers less.
I told the guys. Don’t believe Yandex Maps. It’s better to ride a little more but with guarantee of a good road. Anyways, we decided to give it a shot. And instead of 45 min we travelled for 2 hours. Somewhere the road was very bad. Somewhere there just was no road. Just look at the photo of Denis after we did it to the destination:
In fact, there was so much dirt, my brakes stopped working. I cleaned them but it didn’t help. As a result, I made the remaining ride to Minsk with brakes at 10%… I couldn’t use them for emergency brakes and at some downhills they didn’t work at all. In retrospective, I shouldn’t do that.
The day ends on a high note. We hit the Russian banya, order 6 pizzas and other tasty stuff, and just party without a care for tomorrow. It’s either going to be extremely hard, or we’ll head home. Who knows. By the way, this was one of the least productive days, but one of the most fun days in my opinion.
| Pic: Green oasis on the way through dirt | Pic: Arriving to the place |
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| Pic: View of the house we rented | Pic: View outside of the window |
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Day 3. Mozhaisk > Vyazma (130 km)
The day started cold but with good news for us. We didn’t fear cold since we were moving, we feared rain and forecast updated saying that there will be no rain all day, so we had to use this opportunity and ride as max as it is possible for us. Though our depart delayed because we repaired bicycle for Denis. Something broke because of the dirt.
Pic: I got ahead of guys and recorded them and the bus behind. Still its from Telegram messages, soon I am going to attach some real photos
Energy Gels are very cool. We don’t need to eat, we waste so much calories but immediately get them back with the gels. And there is no feeling of exhaustion (probably thanks to our other trips too). Occasionaly we did some stops to eat normal food too. Our schedule was something like this: 4 hours of riding, then 30 min to eat normal food (usually fast-food to get as much carbs).
3 days in and we finally leave Moscow Oblast and enter Smolensk oblast. 200 km / 750 km done. Approximately at 2pm we got blessed by the sun. Clear and warm weather. If only it can be like this all the way to Minsk.
| Pic: Me and Matthew somewhere on the highway | Pic: Smolensk oblast monument |
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After 12 hours of riding we rent another place near Vyazma. Denis decided to leave us after 2 days of the journey. Thank you Denis for these photos and for the morale boost. He mostly left because of the bicycle condition and that he was not comfortable with riding near the cars (which is totally understandable). Our talk with Matthew right after Denis left:
– Me: Denis left us, now it’s just the two of us
– Matthew: I’m next to drop out
– Me: We’re both dropping out, at the same time
– Matthew: What do you mean “at the same time”? I’m going first! (smiles and jokes)
We were joking… Only half-joking, maybe. I remember that we still didn’t think we could complete the full run. It wasn’t even a physical challenge at that time, just mental stuff. Anyways, this day in total we did 250 km / 750 km. It’s a proud third of the path. The sleeping place was not remarkable this time, so I don’t even have a photo of it. Let’s see what’s the next day is gonna be about.
Day 4. Vyazma > Smolensk (170 km)
6am. In the fourth day we decided to be very disciplined. We went to bed at 9pm yesterday, and easily wake up at 6am. At 6:20am we already riding our bicycles. 20 mins today vs 4 hours yesterday is a huge boost. That means we can ride more. The problem is that forecast was not in our favour. They told there will be a lot of rains. But right now everything is fine, so we departed.
Pic: We crossed 300 km mark!
9am. First 50km of the day are done. We monitored forecast precisely. Rain started a bit earlier than they said, but we were fine and soon arrived to the gas station where we planned to wait until it is clear again to ride. In ideal world we should be at Smolensk tomorrow. It’s a 120 km and approximately 6 hours of ride which we should have if the weather will be nice. If we could achieve Smolensk, we will complere more than a half of the route which kind of increases our chances of success.
Fun thing: only at that moment we decided to check whether it is allowed to ride bicycle on roads in Belarus. The answer was technically “yes” but with a lot of nuances. And we got really worried about this. For example, it was forbidden to ride bicycle in the city. Only outside of one. But how are we going to cross the city if that is disallowed? It’s a thing for future us to learn.
11:30am. No rain anymore, it’s time to go. Nothing really special happened on that part of the road except there were so much uphills. I hated them. Like yeah, you almost always got the downhills after them but it just doesn’t worth it. You got so tired for 20 mins and then you loose all that elevation you gained in a few minutes. I don’t like it.
Pic: Looking back on uphills
4:30pm. We are in Yartsevo. A small city near the Smolensk. Just 65 km to go. We are sure at that point that we are going to reach Smolensk this day. The weather is beautiful. Warm and clear. A lot of rains that forecast told us about were false alarms. That city has an underground legend, prophet Sunboy. A small fact about him, if you are not familiar with the guy:
In 1989 he made it into the Guinness Book of Records for riding a bicycle from Moscow to Sergiyev Posad (~75 km) while never touching the handlebars and simultaneously playing the guitar. The whole ride was filmed by a TV crew.
He is a musician that later got mentally destroyed by a USSR system and now he is ill in that regard. He still drops some albums and does strange stuff. Yet he is a legend in hearts of many.
| Pic: Turn to Smolensk from the main road | Pic: Smolensk monument |
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| Pic: “Eiffel Tower” in Smolensk |
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10pm. Anyways, we arrived to Smolensk at that point of time. Rented apartaments. The cheapest thing we could find. I already mentioned that it is impossible to plan this kind of trip in advance and the reason is that you never know anything about weather and how fast you will get exhausted.
We skipped the second day entirely. If we rented in advance, everything should’ve been cancelled at that point of time and rescheduled. So yeah, we rent stuff at kind of higher prices but we don’t have to pay pennies if something went wrong.
Now we got a huge morale boost. Tomorrow we are going to cross the border of Russia and Belarus! We wanted to see the reaction of border patrol very much. We still weren’t sure whether we will go all the way to Minsk or we will cross the border and go back.
Day 5. Smolensk > Belarus (130 km)
12pm. We left apartments. Coudn’t left earlier because of rain. After 12 pm I made no reports for a while, so the only thing I can assume is that we just ride bicycles without stops. The reason is probably an extremely good weather comparing with what forecasts promised.
6pm. After 6 hours of riding we hit another rain. Not a problem, we found some café (not a gas station, wow) and waiting until the rain stops. We talk with Matthew about different stuff and after watching a forecast we see a problem. The next day it’s going to rain. All day. But there are also some good news. No rain at night at all. So we decide to ride at night. That was a bad idea, we didn’t know about bears nearby.
We found an hotel right after the border. I don’t know how it works in your country, dear reader, but in my country hotels have this shitty system where you can check in at specific time (usually 2pm-5pm) and then you must leave before the specific time (usually before 12pm). I was very surprised that in Belarus they have check-ins 24-hours and if you checked in at 1am then you don’t need to leave until 1am of the next day. If I am not mistaken it’s some kind of a law there.
| Pic: Raining | Pic: After Rain |
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9pm. While we were in Smolensk we bought different stuff to be able to ride at night. That includes different flashlights everywhere for me and Matthew. So even though it was dark, we were very visible and it felt safe. Moreover, we went on a road where there was almost no cars. I love such road and the vibes they give. Fresh air, no one around, just some strange guys riding on bicycles at night.
There was no light on that road. Very dark. We turned off our flashlight for a moment and it was pure dark. I am from a big city of Moscow and I have never seen such darkness outside. Moscow is known for their light pollution visible from space. And stars… They are so beautiful and bright when nothing is blocking them.
10pm.
– Local guy: Sinyaki village…and from Sinyaki, damn, I’m not sure, maybe 3–5 km, no, probably about 3 km off the asphalt, off the main road, down that dirt road from Sinyaki. And in Platonovo too – a bear shows up a few times a year.
– Me and Matthew: That’s fun…
We got to the gas station and talked with locals about stuff and they warned us that we should not continue our adventure in the way where we planned to. It was our special choice, we wanted to ride at night on that quiet road and now this bet didn’t play. We had to return. We had to return back on the highway where we can’t really move at night because we were scared of cars.
All our optimistic plans crushed. Now, not only we had to ride at night, but we wouldn’t make further progress comparing to just riding on the highway in day time. We had no choice, we didn’t want to be eaten by bear. And it also became very cold. Seems like we are not crossing the border today.
After thorough search it turned out that there were no hotels nearby and we had no choice but to cross the border today. So we just accepted that and turned back to the highway. Thanks to the flashlight from Denis. It was very bright and I believe it was brighter than a car headlights. A huge problem was that this flashlight was about to die… It showed red signal that previously was green meaning that it is about to die. We had power on us but when to stop? We can’t just stop in the middle of nowhere, turn off the lights and pray that no animals are going to see us.
Somehow we did it to the highway where we didn’t need this light anymore. The road had lights.
1:30am. We are at some random gas station, we want to sleep so much. I see a bus that I used before to get from Moscow to Minsk. This bus drives about 10 hours and makes a single stop on that exact gas station where we happened to be. It remembered me how easy it was for me to get to Minsk before…
2:20am. We crossed the border! I personally thought it might be a fun conversation with border patrol, but it wasn’t. Neither side (Russian or Belarusian) was impressed. They say it’s a common route for bicyclists. One of them joked that since we were crossing the border at night we might smuggling some drugs or stuff… Another told us that he met a guy that was going on foot from Nizhniy Novgoroz to Minsk. That’s 1200 km!!! On foot!!! He is the one smuggling drugs if anything…
Pic: We asked random dude Bohdan to make a photo of us. He asked us to follow his tiktok account for that
We did it. It was such a big milestone. We were so proud of ourselves. But we had 2 more days to ride. And it was dismoraling. Anyways, after we got to the hotel on the highway, we went back to sleep. We didn’t know anything about the forecast on the upcoming day but we wanted to sleep. 530 km / 750 km done.
P.s. our room was just above the casino. Casinos are prohibited in Russia but allowed in Belarus. We were not interested though.
Day 6. Belarusian Border > Orsha (30 km)
4pm. Seems like we have another problem now: wind. There is so much wind that at some points we have to walk instead of riding bicycle. I believe the reason is that on Russian side of the highway they put trees that prevent a lot of wind while on Belarusian side they don’t. The absurdly fun part was that even to go downhill we had to push pedals.
7pm. 3 hours after and just 30 km after we decided that it’s not worth it and stopped at yet another hotel. We are going to continue our journey tomorrow. And now? We are going to chill and sleep since we didn’t sleep well last night. Me and Matthew thinking that theoretically we might skip Barysaw and go all the way to Minsk. It’s just 220 km left!
Day 7. Orsha > Minsk (200 km)
6am. We wake up early since we went to bed at 8pm. And we are riding right away.
10am. 4 hours of cycling. I planned the worst-case scenario and we are going to be in Minsk at 11pm. It’s 12 more hours of cycling. Or maybe less if everything goes smoother. At that point we have to ride 140 km. It’s less than it took us from Moscow to Tver.
9pm. A lot of riding and no reports or occasions. We enter Minsk! 2 hours early.
| Pic: Matthew in front of Minsk monument | Pic: Me in front of Minsk monument |
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It turned out that the most productive day was the least interesting. Just cycling and nothing happened. I think it makes sense. Funny enough that during our previous trips either me or Matthew got flat tire. Our previous rides were just a single day. And this time we rode 7 days yet no problems at all.
Conclusion
It was one of the best moments in my life. If everything is gray and boring… Just go to a bicycle trip. I got lighter 5 kg for 5 days… Even though we ate very many junk food and energy gels. We did that without any prior professional experience and it was so fun. I am definitely going to repeat that (probably Moscow → St. Petersburg trip). As of now (winter 2025) I miss such bicycle experiences much. I started just 2 years ago and already have such cool trips. There are not many, but I am going to work on that. Stay tuned as more posts are going to be here.