On day 9 I had a few problems to fix. Firstly I had the leaking fork seals. I took a ziptie, sticked it into the dust caps at an angle and pushed all the way around so that any dirt got pushed up and out of the seal, sadly the forks of the KLR are constructed in a way that makes taking the dust caps off impossible with the forks installed (without damaging the dust caps…) so I had little hope of fixing my problem.
However I decided, that a little leakage would not be too big of a problem as Long as I wiped the forks down every two days so no oil gets to the brakes.
The second problem was that my oil was used up.
The early Model years of the KLR have the problem, that the cylinder becomes slightly oval with time, which leads to a little oil consumption, especially at high revs. I accounted for this (since I dont have enough money to buy a new cylinder right now) and brought a 1 liter oil bottle with me on my journey.
Now that bottle was close to being empty, but I decided to Just stop at a gas station somewhere on the way.
The third problem was, that I noticed that my tyres had about 3mm on the front and 2 mm on the rear of tread left, which meant that I propably would have to get at least a new rear tyre before I was at my destination.
Luckily my dad is very supportive and he said he would find someone in Greece to supply me with a new tyre so I coud swap them.
Also I noticed, that when riding offroad my front brakes never had the same braking Point and I even sometimes had to pump once to get a braking point..
This was a bit concerning, but since it only happens offroad, its not too bad. I think that Happens, because the brake caliper rattles and that pushes the Brake Pads away from the disk…
So with a small todo list I got on my way.
First it was mostly paved roads or relatively flat dirt roads.
As I stopped somewhere on a dirt road, i took off my riding gear, ate a bit and layed in the sun for about 3/4 of an hour.
I had not done this on my trip before and it was very enjoyable so I decided, I had to do that more often.
When I was in Ndreaj i noticed there was a wall of very dark clouds north of me. Also the track took a turn to north at that point. So i figured it was time to find out, if the part around the Iron Mine was doable for me in rain.
I Put on my rain gear and headed north.
When i was in Kurbnesh, it started raining. The Road was a mixture of red packed dirt and stones. I was a bit scared of the rain becoming very bad, because some of my luggage turned out not to be waterproof (specifically the bag with my camera Equipment and Powerbanks etc.). So i stopped, got some trashbags and wrapped all the bags in plastic before continuing.
When I rode through Krej-Lurë, the road turned towards the mountain. I was now heading south again and hoped, the rain would stop soon.
The path, that I now followed up the mountain, was the absolutely best part of the TET so far!
It was a steep road, sometimes with small rivers crossing the road or even following it for a while!
There were sections with big stoney steps in them that made riding an exciting challenge!
When i was on top of the mountain, the rain finally stopped. I went on on the now much easier dirt path. Then i met two riders one on a KTM Adventure and one on a Africa Twin. We talked for a bit and they were very nice.
I did not have a lot of time though (i wanted to camp in Peshkopia since I had read about a nice campsite there) so I continued.
A little while before I was at the Iron Mine, I got into a riverbed. I missed the main track and quickly I found myself rockcrawling through the entire bed. I was very Happy about my homemade engine guard extension that shielded my drain plug, my frame and my rear suspension linkage, since there were multiple times, where I sat or slid on big Rocks.
When I got out of the riverbed, I continued through a forest road. It was steep and rocky, still very interesting and exciting to ride!
I got out of the forest and met some Farmers, that offered me a coffee and told me, where I had to go to get to my destination.
Of course I knew how to get there because of my navigation device, but they were very nice and did not understand any English so I accepted their advice and continued on my way.
The road was now going downhill, so I thought I was going to get to a paved road soon.
If I had taken a look at my navigation device, I would have noticed that I was at about 1400 Meters above sealevel. But not knowing how much dirt road was still ahead of me I continued my descend.
A little bit above the Iron Mine I met another very nice guy. He only spoke Albanian and Italian, but he managed to tell me, that the road to the Iron Mine was closed.
I had already read about the way around the road blockage on Facebook however, so I simply followed the ‘new’ path and soon I was back on track.
At this point the sun had already gone down and daylight was getting less and less by the minute, so I hurried (as quickly as you can go on loose gravel/dirt roads).
The trail lead further downhill and I thought I was very close to the paved road.
Distracted by this (and exhausted by the riding I had already done), I payed too little attention to the road.
When I looked ahead again, I saw a very deep waterhole, that I was approaching at high speeds. I pushed the brakes a little too hard and my front wheel slipped into a land groove. I hit the ground very hard mere centimeters in front of the water hole. The First crash of my adventure…
I got up, picked up my bike and checked, if I was hurt.
I did not check very much on the bike (my forks were twisted but apart from that i did not notice anything), since I thought, I was going to be on paved road in less than 10 minutes.
As it turned out however, where I was, there was no paved road. I got down to the “Main Road” and when I typed the name of the place I wanted to stay at into my navigation, it replied “1 hour and 30 minutes left”.
“This must be a joke” . I checked the path it had chosen and it surely looked like it was the shortest way to my destination. So I got on my way. Being sad about my situation was not going to change it.
Shortly after 22 o clock I arrived at the campsite. It was completely empty. I checked the toilets and showers and I instantly knew this was not the place I wanted to spend the night at!
So I turned around and got out of there as quickly as possible. I was cold, my legs had been wet for 4 or more hours due to the rain and some miserable campsite was the absolute last place I wanted to stay at.
I looked for a different Campsite (with my downloaded map, since I did not have any mobile data outside of the EU…)
There was one in Maquellara. This was another 30 minutes to go but once again I had no other option.
When i arrived there it was empty, too. There were no toilets or showers and the owners told me to “Just look for a place, they will find me in the morning” so I went around the place and noticed there was no adequate trees to hang my hammock onto.
I decided I had had enough of creepy, empty and suspicious campsites for the day so I looked up the nearest hotel and went there.
This turned out to actually be a very enjoyable stay, but the fact that I arrived there at 23:30 kind of spoiled the whole experience.
Sadly I have no pictures of riding that day because my phone is not waterproof and to get to my Action Cam I would have had to undo my homemade weather protection.