"The most problematic stretch of the highway lies between Chita and Khabarovsk. The first section of this route, linking Belogorsk to Blagoveshchensk (124 km in length), was constructed by gulag inmates as early as 1949. Extended and updated between 1998 and 2001, this road forms part of the Asian route AH31 connecting Belogorsk to Dalian in China.
"The Chita-Khabarovsk road remained largely unfinished up until early 2004, when Russian President Vladimir Putin symbolically opened the Amur Highway, with great swaths of forest separating major portions from one another. Jim Oliver and Dennis ONeil rode motorcycles across Russia, along the Trans-Siberian Highway, during the last week of May and the first three weeks of June in 2004. As described in Jim Oliver's book, Lucille and The XXX Road, the section between Chita and Khabarovsk was an extremely challenging undertaking. Jim writes about the massive marsh, gravel, rock, mud, sand, washboard, pot-holes, stream fording, and detours of the elusive highway with a noticeable absence of pavement. Many motorcyclists have been injured or killed trying to "master" the Amur Highway. Even today, in some places, it is a modern paved highway with painted reflective lane-lines and in others, a single meandering, pockmarked, loose-gravel trail following the route of the early 20th-century Amur Cart Road. Completion of a 7-metre-wide highway between Chita and Khabarovsk is slated for 2010."
Abe talked to several men from this area earlier this summer, and they reported that this highway has been paved, which of course will make it MUCH easier. The total mileage on this trip is 1,700. Abe is hoping that with the completion of this road they are also "many" truck stops where he can get some hot food--and maybe even a hot shower!
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