21 – Kazakhstan May to June 2008

i HAVE to embed the Borat Kazakhstan National Anthem at the start of this part of the site, as if setting the scene for the country I am about to enter! Click the sound icon at the top left hand corner of the slideshow if you don’t want the music. Sorry for crap sound recording – all the decent videos have been taken off youtube. But this much better copy can be copied and pasted into a browser and it’s got the lyrics too – http://www.truveo.com/National-Anthem-of-Kazakhstan-Borat-Movie-Films/id/2603586457

I learned very quickly that people in Kaz fell into 3 categories as far as the Borat film was concerned – those who hadn’t seen it and hated it, those who had seen it and hated it and finally those who had seen it and loved it as they realised it was actually directed against Americans.

I never intended to spend as long as a month in Kazakhstan, intending merely to cross it on the way to and from Uzbekistan and maybe elsewhere. That I did was purely thanks to visa issues, although it was probably an unrealistic idea to allow such a short time for seeing this part of the world in any case.

The outdated, factually incorrect but highly entertaining travel book Asia Overland describes Kazakhstan thus:
“Looking like a two-day old beard of grass and scrub on the face of the earth, the vast ragged steppe-landscape that dominates Kazakhstan cannot be described as exciting. It’s amazing how this country, the ninth largest in the world, can have so much land, but so little of traveler interest. Swallowed up in this monotonous environment lies the exhausted Aral Sea, the Semiplatinsk nuclear testing area, Russia’s main space centre and a sprinkling of unappealing industrial towns.”

Although it was a close-run thing I did eventually make it into Kazakhstan before midnight on 23 May. Kazakh immigration were OK too – interested in my trip…..1 customs officer asked how I had managed with no girlfriend since January!

When I crossed to Kazahkstan, it was just a day or 2 after the Chelsea-Manchester match in Moscow. Very funny how, before I reached the border, the Russians were all supporting Chelsea because of the Russian ownership of Chelsea Football Club, but then once I crossed the border the Kazakhs all abruptly started supporting Manchester, as any team that played against the Russians – ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’! Officials on the Russian side, knowing I was from the UK, would say “Aaah – London – Chelsea – Abramovitch.” But as soon as I crossed the border to Kaz it abruptly changed. Something along the lines of “Aaah – Anglia – Manchester!”

If I had really thought it through, it would have made more sense, given how the Russian visa ran out on 23 April, to have the Kazakh visa start on the 24th rather than the 23rd – by the time I had been processed by Kazakh immigration it was well after midnight, so I slept at the border crossing anyway.

24th of May

Uneventful drive south to Pavlodar, the first town of any size south of Omsk. Couple of stops en route – one to look at my first Kazakh graveyard. Look at the grave of the mother, father and child, all with the same date of death. Sad, isn’t it – I’d say they died together in a road accident, wouldn’t you? And another when I saw this marmot (?) by the roadside.

First introduction to the Kazakh currency at the ATM – the Tenge. About a year after coming back from traveling, by complete chance, I happened across a copy of a book called In Search of Kazakhstan, by a Christopher Robbins. I was flying blind traveling around Kazakhstan because of the guide book issue, so a book like this would have been really useful to read to understand Kazakhstan better before I went there.

Anyway, one of the stories in this book was the introduction of the Tenge. The story goes that after the USSR collapsed, Kazakhstan had continued using the rouble. It was more integrated into the rouble economy than any other of the former USSR republics. Most of its enterprises and almost all of its industry were controlled by Moscow. All of its existing gas and oil pipelines ran north into Russia, where all of its crude oil was refined. Because of this, Kazakhstan had constant fuel shortages despite its vast oil reserves. But during the early days of independence, if the alternative was economic collapse then Kaz had no choice but to stay within the rouble zone to survive even though it was clear that this meant Russian control of its budget and money supply.

The Kaz president had been given assurances in early 1993 that Kaz would be included in the new Russian currency being introduced that year which replaced the old ‘CCCP’ banknotes bearing Lenin’s portrait. But a lifetime of dealing with the Kremlin had made the Kaz president wary and so he issued a secret decree to create a new Kaz currency as a contingency against economic betrayal. Financial experts met every month and discussions were held with the IMF to plan this massive undertaking – all in secret. Thomas De La Rue in the UK was hired to design and print the new currency.

Russia introduced its new rouble notes in July 1993 and a declaration was signed the following month confirming that Kaz would be included in the rouble zone. But a week later, the new banknotes had not arrived. This period of uncertainty, allegedly deliberately planned by Moscow, was a disaster for Kaz. Once the new Rouble had been announced, millions of old, invalid Soviet roubles were dumped in Kaz, helped on their way by Russian gangsters. The value of the old rouble collapsed and inflation hit 3000%.

This Moscow-induced ruin of Kazakhstan’s economy meant it would have to accept any conditions to stay afloat – unification of its budget, tax, customs and banking policies with those of Moscow and the handover of its money supply to the Russian Central Bank. This would have made a mockery of Kazakhstan’s new-found independence and stripped its sovereignty.

But fear not – Kaz had planned for such an event. In total secrecy, 4 Ilyushin cargo planes were sent to London and returned with millions of freshly-printed Tenge banknotes of all denominations. They were then distributed throughout Kaz by the security services, even to the most remote aul, and all in 1 week. That Friday, President Nazarbaev announced to a stunned population that the Tenge would be introduced the following Monday morning. Despite a rocky beginning, with an overly high exchange rate and instant devaluation, the gamble paid off. Kazakhstan had retained its sovereignty.

But all this was unknown to me that sunny afternoon in Pavlodar in 2008, and I well remember having to look on the internet to find out the exchange rate to get any idea of the value of this unfamiliar new money.

This also reminds me of Jeff (a friend/colleague from Ealing Council)’s story of the Kazakh Tax Inspectors, which I suspect isn’t unconnected to the introduction of the Tenge. Jeff’s wife Sue works for the Inland Revenue. In the early 1990s, a delegation of Kazakh tax inspectors arrived at her workplace on a fact finding mission, wanting to learn how tax was collected in other countries to help set up their own structure. Day 1 saw a presentation by the British hosts, followed by a Q&A session. 1st question by the Kazakhs – “what type of guns do tax inspectors carry in the UK?” 2nd – “what are the penalties for killing a tax inspector in the UK?”

A hapless colleague of Sue’s was deputed to look after them for the 2 weeks or so they were in the UK, who could be seen visibly sinking lower in his seat by the day after the nightly vodka-drinking sessions. They also sparked a security alert at Heathrow when they went to fly home, for they had bought a Lada car in the UK and stripped it of parts to take them home to Kazakhstan, which of course set off the metal detectors when their luggage got checked.

Kazakh diesel is cheaper than Russian, but I found out it can be difficult to get hold of. I got turned away from 4 filling stations in succession, apparently due to the absence of some sort of ration card, and it began to dawn on me that maybe I was in an Iran-type situation.

I finally flagged down a German-registered VW van and spoke to the ethnic German driver, born in Kazakhstan but living in Germany with a German passport. He didn’t speak a lot of English, but enough to get the gist and took me to a place where I could get diesel, but at the black market price ie 3 times the proper price and more than UK prices. I’d have smelt a rat but, having called Chris to get him to interpret, it seemed that there is some sort of crisis in Kazakhstan and this problem happens every time non-Kazakh people try to buy diesel.

This promptly put the plan to travel to Semipalatinsk (or anywhere else in Kaz) on hold for, if I was looking down the barrel of having to pay higher than UK diesel prices to get around a country the size of Kaz, it was time to rethink. This fuel issue needed to be resolved first before going any further – was having visions of having to park the car in Pavlodar for a month and travel around by rail or something. By now it was 9PM and the only hotel I knew of in Pavlodar was the one I passed when taking a wrong turn. When I arrived it was shut – but a very maternal-looking woman opened the front door and pointed me towards a place next door but one. This was not a hotel, as 3 men there indicated with the aid of the Russia Lonely Planet. They kept gesturing at the place I had just come from, but of course there wasn’t a phrase in the book to say “yes I know it’s a hotel, but I’ve just been turned away from there.” As I was walking back towards the original place to get the car, the 3 men pulled up again – this time they asked me if I was a tourist – I answered yes and gestured at the car – I’m 99 percent sure they then said, “Ah, rich tourist,” in Russian! I then gestured at the roof tent and – made a motion as if to say I was sleeping – they made a shivering gesture but I pointed out the sleeping bag. This opened up a new and interesting avenue, for then they and the woman directed me around the side to a car park. I would have been happy sleeping in the roof tent and using the hotel shower, but the men and women gestured inside the hotel building. Then I met Talgat, the hotel caretaker. Talgat showed me where to park, then took me into his living quarters. He shared it with his wife and daughter and we had a great vodka-fueled evening even though neither of us could speak more than five words of the other’s language!

25th of May

Woke up not feeling 100 percent after the rambunctiousness of the previous night. Still having kittens about the Kazakh diesel situation, but there didn’t seem to be anything on the internet about it. However, I did get an email from Chris confirming, via some Kazakh friends of friends, that the diesel situation in Kazakhstan really was like Iran – and I would have to bribe people in filling stations every time I wanted to get fuel. Also tried calling the UK embassy to see if they knew anything, but no answer.

Talgat and his family wanted me to burn the pictures of the night before onto a CD, so took me to his sister’s place to do this. Fortuitously, they had internet and with the aid of Babelfish, I was able to explain the diesel problem. Talgat was definitely aware of the diesel problem, but interestingly was able to lead me straight to a filling station that sold diesel for the regular price without the need for a coupon. But they also wrote for me in Russian a request that went something like ‘I am a foreign traveller who cannot speak Russian. Please direct me to the nearest place where I can buy diesel’.

At the house of Talgat’s sister, I had also used Babelfish to try and see if there was any way of me getting into the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Museum or the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Talgat’s family knew nothing about the Cosmodrome, but Nurlan, his cousin, did seem to indicate he had a cousin who worked as a technician at the Semipalatinsk nuclear place. Nurlan tried to contact him, but no answer. However, he gave me the cousin’s name and number and indicated via Babelfish that when I got to Semipalatinsk, I should find somebody who could speak Russian to call this man, explain who I was and who had given me his number and then get him to help me getting into the nuclear museum.

The terrain also began to change further south. Now more like the steppe I expected – big skies and flat grassland extending into the distance. Can’t even say ‘rolling’ into the distance because it’s too flat to roll – the terrain between Omsk and Pavlodar was more like that. Also a diminishing tree cover, which maybe contributes to the opening out of the countryside. Called the British Embassy again re the diesel situation and spoke to various trade and cultural representatives but no actual consular staff as they were all away.

Spent the night camped just outside Semey (Semipalatinsk). Road not good – wish I had stopped at a nice-looking café about 150 kilometers south of Pavlodar when it was still light, but I thought I’d try and find a place a bit nearer; there wasn’t, until just outside Semey. Result? Ended up navigating potholed roads in the dark; great fun when simultaneously getting dazzled by oncoming traffic. Like India MK2.

I’d entered Semey on a mission to see the Polygon (ex-Soviet nuclear bomb-testing site) and the Nuclear Museum at Kurchatov – the town for all the technicians when the Polygon was active. Here’s what they used to do here (this video not made by me).

On the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree forum, I’d found a very, very detailed entry about visiting Semey, Kurchatov and the Polygon. In retrospect, I should have sent a private message to the poster, but what he wrote was so detailed I didn’t think it was necessary. But crucially, although he talked about the government office that coordinates the relief effort, he didn’t name it. Result? I had to get Denis involved and I got him to speak to the akimat (town hall) staff to direct me to the right place. The best that they could manage was the UNDP office and it began to dawn on me that it might not be the right place. Shynar, the secretary, was very keen to help, but seemingly their hands were tied. Shynar sent a fax to the director of some sort of institute in Kurchatov to ask for permission but clearly I needed to be a journalist or VIP or have a letter of recommendation from my embassy! But although they couldn’t actually arrange any permission to visit the Polygon Test Site, Shynar and her UNDP colleagues were helpful in helping me find a cheap guest house and the visa registration office – I did not want to repeat Vladivostok’s mistake.

Whilst registering at the visa office (relatively painless), met for the first time one of the legions of Asian medical students studying at Semey, as Thorn Tree mentioned. Faheem was 25 and from Lahore, in his fifth year – it was incongruous to see somebody Indian-looking speaking in Russian! Later to find out about the Kurchatov visit I arranged to call Faheem later to meet up. After getting the semi-expected ‘nyet’ from Kurchatov, I called Faheem and met up for the afternoon. We had a nice walk around town and looked at various buildings etc plus the ‘Stronger Than Life’ nuclear memorial.

Another call from Svetlana at the Almaty U.K. Embassy – she promised to look into my queries about the fuel situation and call back. I also discovered the dangers of over reliance on technology – as I didn’t have a Lonely Planet Guide to Kazakhstan, I had been using GPS to find my way around therefore my brain had switched off. When the batteries failed on the GPS, I was hopelessly lost and horrendously late for meeting poor Faheem that evening and couldn’t even call him to let him know I was running late.

We – or rather I – had a few drinks and we even met some final year students from Srinagar! He was telling me about the regular fights he would have with drunken locals – we were sitting in the town square talking, and locals kept trying to engage us in conversation. Faheem very wisely pretended he couldn’t speak Russian. Apparently it upset the locals that local women would shag male Asian medical students but the females wouldn’t do the same with local men! Faheem also confirmed a rumour that I’d been hearing – his father had applied in Pakistan for a US visa and the embassy had told him to first get a Schengen Visa, travel to Europe and back again and then the Americans would give him a visa when he reapplied. Presumably this was something to do with demonstrating he’d complied with the terms of the Schengen visa. Anyway, the Americans kept their word.

We were unfortunate to happen across some karaoke. Can you imagine what Simon Cowell would say to this?

Faheem thought this frog croaking was normal, but it was unlike any I’d heard before.

While parking the car, as if proving the worth of the line of flag stickers, a group of Kazakhs asked Faheem “why doesn’t he have a sticker for Kazakhstan?” They were much amused when I said “OK”, then duly whipped one out and stuck it to the side of the car there and then!

27th of May

Met Faheem and a friend from Baramulla for breakfast, then set of for Kurchatov. I was aware it might be a wasted journey, but I was going to aim for the Polygon Site alone if I couldn’t get into the museum. Much fun finding my way to the Kurchatov road – a taxi driver who was supposedly a friend of Baramulla man wanted payment for directions! Even more fun after getting out of the town – the road was absolutely terrible on the way there. The Kurchatov police stopped me on the outskirts. Crucially, they pointed south when I mentioned the Polygon and then they pointed due north for the town. Being a foreigner, my visit to Kurchatov sparked a lot of 2-way radio traffic by the police but luckily, Faheem was on the other end of the phone to translate – thank God for mobiles! The police directed me to the museum. Again Faheem spoke to the guards and this time I was directed to the akimat to ask for permission to visit – even getting Nurlan on the line could not alter this. Kurchatov looks indeed as it was described – a ghost town. Decaying, boarded-up buildings everywhere, weed sprouting up between the slabs on the pavement at the monument in front of the akimat. It was incongruous to see all the stuff reappearing seemingly from nowhere after lunch finished at 2:00 PM. I was ushered in to speak to the head man and this time my hopes were raised then dashed, for Faheem told me over the phone that they were going to get an English speaking guide to help me.

Galina duly turned up, along with half of the rest of the staff and sweetly explained that I needed an authorisation letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Semey Akimat. Here the paths diverged, for they talked about the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which you have to access through the left hand door of Semey Akimat, while the people I spoke to were in the right hand door. This is also interesting because when I was at the Akimat the day before, there was some confusion about which door I was supposed to go to and I remember losing about half an hour waiting in the lobby for Shynar and saying to her on the mobile phone, “I’m waiting for you,” and her saying, “Well, I’m here too. I can’t see you”, before it suddenly dawned on us that she was waiting in one of the lobbies and I was waiting in the other.

Every suggestion I made for getting around the problem did prompt attempts by them to try and sort something out – they made various phone calls and their whole attitude was one of wanting to assist. In retrospect, I should have read the situation a little bit better and said something along the lines of “I can tell you all want to help – I can see it in your faces, you are standing there wanting to do something and you’ve made various phone calls to try and sort the problem out. I did try and sort this out the proper way in Semey, but I got sent to the wrong office. I have driven a long way – what about you let me see the museum just for a few minutes and not take any pictures? That way I haven’t had a wasted journey and no one ever need know I came”.

After 15 to 20 minutes of standoff, Galina said they had to return to work – this did not upset me, as I could see they had tried to help. I am pleased to say I remembered my manners very well this time – I shook hands with all of them and said through Galina I knew they wanted to help. One of them laughed when I shook hands – I could have sworn he was saying ‘why’s the guy saying thanks when we’ve turned him away?’ But this had been a different sort of rebuff, so that was OK. I also felt a little bit better when Galina said I wasn’t the first tourist who had turned up in this way and hadn’t managed to get in.

All the time this was going on, a Soviet-looking woman from the Immigration Department was demanding to see a copy of my passport. Through Galina, they asked me what my plans were after leaving Kurchatov. Not being totally asleep, I reasoned that if I said I wanted to go and see the Polygon, they would stop me. So I said, ‘oh, I’ll just return to Semey’. I fished a little bit, asking whether it was true that farmers graze their cattle in there. Galina said yes, then I asked about the radioactivity. She said the milk had been tested and it was safe to drink. Then the crucial bit…me – “if it’s a closed site, how can the farmers and their cattle get in?” Galina told me what I wanted to know – “well, there are no fences”.

I knew that the Polygon was the size of Wales, but the only GPS waypoint I could find on the internet was not very detailed. I was also aware that the people who could give me detailed directions were the very ones who would take steps to stop me going there if I let on that that was what I wanted to do. So I drove south past the police at the checkpoint outside Kurchatov who didn’t try and stop me. My belief was reinforced a few kilometers later when I saw some work men and asked, “Polygon?” And they pointed in the direction I was driving in.

On I went for about 70 or 80 kilometers south of Kurchatov. The GPS waypoint crept closer and closer on the screen and it turned out to be the town of Balapan. Right in the middle of nowhere, Balapan appeared to be the company town of a quarry a few kms away. I was reminded of what one of the Antons had told me regarding the stone-building material from the Polygon being used in Omsk. Some workmen were putting up power lines nearby – they were tensioning them up and a cable broke as I approached. The foreman didn’t seem to understand what I was on about (even when I got Faheem to speak to him) and when I sketched a picture in the dust, another man indicated there wasn’t much to see at the underground explosion sites. So I went to the security gate and again, I called poor old Faheem and asked him to speak to a security guard. An English speaker duly arrived – an engineer graduate foreman with a pleasant demeanor and big mournful eyes behind his sunglasses. I explained what I wanted and he drew me a detailed diagram of how to reach Atomic Lake and also drew a map of the rest of the Polygon. In retrospect, what he said tied in with what I’ve read on the internet. The road from Semey to Kurchatov goes from southeast to northwest. I had read that the above-ground tests were done 60 kilometers due west of Semey. The man drew a map that showed the above-ground tests in an area measuring 150 to 300 kilometers northwest of Balapan, which tallied. He also indicated that the underground tests had happened north of Atomic Lake – again, this tallied. While we were standing there, a funny rumbling noise appeared in the distance. I looked up to see where it was coming from and it got louder and louder and louder until I saw 2 Russian TU-95 bombers flying over. It was uncanny how the thrumming noise from their propellers disappeared even more abruptly than it appeared – the mentions on the internet about these planes being noisy are absolutely true!
Here’s what it sounds like (x 10 for an idea of what it sounded like on the ground that day)

Interesting to note that they were exactly the same aircraft type used to drop atomic bombs on the Polygon site a few decades before, flying exactly the same route that they would have been flying if they were doing it again.

So off I went to find the nearby Atomic Lake. I followed the directions to the letter, at least so I thought. Frustratingly, subsequently putting the GPS track on Google Earth showed I had got close to Atomic Lake, but didn’t actually reach it.

In my mind, it was still successful. I had done all I could do to make it happen, battling against incomplete information and bureaucratic obstructions with an overarching language barrier exacerbating the whole thing – if it didn’t, that was not my fault.
I thought seriously about staying the night and heading to the place the next day where the above ground tests were done – 60 kilometers due west of Kurchatov, but I figured it might cause trouble with the police and after the problems of today I was not optimistic about finding the bloody place! I was also refused diesel in Kurchatov, even while a truck filled up right in front of me.

Very slow journey on the way back to Semey on a really, really terrible road that was even worse in the dark. On the way to Kurchatov, there were lots of places where I’d had to swerve off the road on to a kind of side road that people had forged through the desert alongside the main road because it was so bad. This was easy enough to navigate by day but absolutely impossible in the dark. I didn’t make it back in time to see Faheem, so I stopped at a parking place just outside Semey for the night.

Pics of Pavlodar (first city after the Kaz/Rus border) to Semipalatinsk and Polygon nuclear bomb test site

Kazakhstan – Pavlodar to Polygon

28 May

Goodbye to Faheem over breakfast, then got about 100 kilometers south of Semey and decided to re-pack the car, change the oil, the shock absorbers and grease. Lots of passing vehicles slowed down to look at me – but only one actually stopped and offered help. Via Faheem acting as translator, it turned out he had seen me earlier in the day and then noticed me still there on the way past – I do wish he’d stopped earlier when I was trying to get the bloody oil filter off!

Interesting to see so many old and new Lada cars still in use in Kazakhstan, plus lots of European cars. Very few Japanese ones, for Kaz unlike neighbouring Russia prohibits the import of RHD ones.

I was in a very laidback mood that day – no particular impulse to do very much or to go very far. I was conscious I needed to be in Almaty for Monday, with not much to do in the meantime apart from see Lake Alakol. There were places to see in east Kazakhstan, but all were too far east for me to reach them practically. Some of them also needed a ferry to get to them and I knew there was no way to find out where/when, etc. God I hate traveling without a guidebook – it’s like flying blind. Having a guidebook may be touristy, but if not having one is the alternative………

29 May

Another lazy day. Not confident at all about the Toyota genuine replacement shock absorbers – I assumed they would control the body as well as the Dobinson ones, but just last for a shorter time. They have a shorter travel and are noticeably lighter and smaller in diameter.

Got refused diesel again in Georgievkaya but got served normally 10 kms later and all the way to Almaty.

End May – early June

Around Lake Alakol and south to Almaty. One night, somewhere north of Lake Alakol, I stopped at a roadside cafe for the night. Never short of company, I met these Kyrgyz people, who decided to have a quick dance before they got into their minibus and headed off.

Drove around Lake Alakol – finally. At 1 point I stopped to look at the map, thinking I was going wrong – I was. Luckily, I’d stopped next to a field with some horses and the horseman ambled over to say hello – and pointed out I was going the wrong way on the map. He had a lovely laid back and pleasant air about him.

This wasn’t very clever of me, was it? Somewhere north of Alakol Lake, I thought it would be fun to drive across what looked like a salt flat – just like Chott El-Jerid in Tunisia. I discovered the hard way it was soft under the surface. Luckily my knight in shining armour (actually a Russian-made Kamaz truck with a cow in the back) came along and fished me out.

Got a bit lost driving around Lake Alakol……

Looks like I was about to get trampled by this stampeding herd of sheep, coming at me in a huge cloud of dust like a slow-motion ovine tsunami

Got lost a second time going around Lake Alakol but that wasn’t my fault because the map did show there was a road, but it deteriorated into a track and finally petered out. Just where it did this, there was a farmhouse and the Russian farmers gave me tea and confirmed the map was wrong. They sent me back in the right direction and said some Germans in a Unimog had made the same mistake 4 years before, so that was OK. The scenery around Lake Alakol was absolutely stunning, with vivid colours of carpeted plants and the drive took me very, very close to the mountainous border with China.

Another night, stopped at a little roadside place and got fed irimshik a kind of hard, sour cottage cheese made from horse’s milk. I think I’ll stick with Wensleydale……. This was also the place with the Rat Calendar. I don’t know who this company was using for their advertising, but think the idea of using a picture of a rat surrounded by fruit needed a bit of thinking about!

Pics of Semipalatinsk to Alakol and around

Kazakhstan – Polygon to Alakol

When I arrived in Almaty, I was expecting to have to bite the bullet and stay in an expensive hotel, but at the same time I had to go to there to see about getting my visa for Kaz converted to double entry and about getting a visa for onward travel from Kazakhstan into one of the other ‘stans eg Kyrgyzstan or Uzbekistan. I’d applied for a double-entry visa to Kazakhstan from the Omsk consulate but for reasons that weren’t clear either to me or to the consular officer I only got a single-entry. I remember looking on the internet about this and there was mention that Kazakhstan had removed the letter of invitation requirement for citizens of the UK and other 1st world countries and there was an oblique reference to this being only for single-entry tourist visas, so in retrospect this must have meant that I had to follow some other sort of procedure to get a double-entry one. But who was there to tell me this? Thus I had a choice – try and get the single entry visa converted to a double-entry one and then go to Uzbekistan or Kyrgystan and have a guaranteed re-entry to Kazakhstan to get across to Russia, or if I couldn’t do this then go to Uzbekistan or Kyrgystan and apply from there for another Kazakh visa (with attendant uncertainty about getting back in) or forget about the other Stans and stay in Kazakhstan till the start of my Russian visa on 22 June.

Option 1 vanished into thin air on my first morning in Almaty…..in the most unpleasant display of bad attitude I encountered in any of the former Soviet Union the immigration people spat ‘nyet’ at me. Love to know how he’d have fared in a housing benefit office in London with a way of dealing with people like that…..

Smarting with disappointment, I then stopped at a Toyota spares place to get some new exhaust brackets and while there saw a Swiss camper van pull up outside – at least, I saw the top of it through the window, with Swiss stickers. Thinking they were other overlanders, I went out to say hello and just as I did that saw the Kazakh numberplate. But by then the introduction had been made, and I had met Igor and his girlfriend Christina. Igor had been living and working in Hamburg for 10 years, hence he had the German equivalent of ILR in his Kazakh passport – and hence too the Kazakh numberplate on the formerly Swiss campervan. They lived above a café / restaurant, owned by Igor’s mother and put me up while I was in Almaty.

I was interested to see the Soviet-era microwave still going strong in Igor’s flat; the story went that some time in the 1980s, Gosplan had finally pulled its finger out and the USSR had started to make microwaves. In Almaty and other big cities they were like hens’ teeth, but Igor’s father had heard a rumour that there were some to be had in some little remote village 8 hours drive away from Almaty – or Alma-Ata as it was called then. So off they went early in the morning and sure enough, gathering dust on the shelves of the state-run shop in this little place, were nearly a dozen brand-new microwaves. Gosplan had decreed that this little village should receive its consignment of microwaves, but hadn’t bargained on the fact that nobody there wanted to buy them because they didn’t know what they were!

On the visa issue, Kyrgyzstan was never my no 1 choice after Kazakhstan – it’s mainly mountainous natural scenery. No disrespect to that, but I had already seen plenty of it in the Himalayas. I started to apply for a visa to there and it wouldn’t have been a problem, but then I found out I couldn’t get one for Uzbekistan, which definitely WAS my no 1, as Uzbekistan had kept the Russian ‘letter of invitation’ method for getting a visa. Unlike Russia itself, Uzbekistan had not moved to the system of computer-generated letters issued over the internet. A LOI for Uzbekistan has to be the real thing and takes 10-14 working days to come through – in the same way as if you are applying for a business visa for Russia. So that was Uzbekistan out of the question and the logistics militated against going to Kyrgyzstan just for a week – I’d have spent it driving solidly, with the nagging worry about getting a visa back into Kazakhstan. Or maybe, in the light of Rose and Dave’s experiences below, not doing any driving at all, apart from to the Kazakh Embassy in Bishkek, camping outside it for a week to get a visa back into Kazakhstan, then back to the Kaz/Kyrgyz border!

Had a chat with the British Embassy people about this too, who remarked that this was a part of the world where traveling wasn’t really comprehended, thus not catered for. They said that they had problems getting their own visas – sometimes they’d get single entry, sometimes double, 1 month this time they applied, 6 months the next time – all with seemingly no consistency. Oh well – not just me then. So I will just have to enjoy myself as best I can in Kazakhstan until my Russian visa starts on 21 July. Misguided of me to ever think 1 month was enough to do the ‘stans. After Kaz, back to Western Russia and see as much as I can of there before crossing Europe to the UK for about 22/23/24 July.

While in Almaty, I was also in correspondence with Rose and Dave of Nessies Adventures. They were in Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan and were trying to get a visa into Kazakhstan to cross to Russia. Like so much else in the former Soviet Union, everything is done as it used to be in the days of the USSR; Russian embassies abroad operate to their own sets of rules and Kazakh ones obviously also did so. The Kaz consulate in Omsk didn’t say/ask anything about me having an onward ticket, yet Rose and Dave got told in Bishkek they needed to show flight tickets as proof of onward travel! They had a week of bureaucratic hell before the imbroglio was sorted out and they finally got their Kazakh visa. It gave me no satisfaction at all to hear that I made the right decision not to run the risk of leaving Kazakhstan in case I had problems getting back in.

At one point in Almaty, I was in a photography-themed bar, with loads and loads of old Soviet cameras hanging from the walls. I couldn’t believe how many of them were straight ripoffs of Leica etc models – I thought industrial espionage was a Chinese thing! There must have been a sideline in Soviet diplomats buying them and sending them back home for engineers to make copies of them. I remember reading how in the 1980s Soviet diplomats were buying up every ZX81 computer in London cos the integrated circuits were being taken out and used in their ICBMS! To say nothing of the Concorde/Concordski story.

One night in this bar, I showed my Russia Lonely Planet to some Kazakh-Russian locals. This is what they thought of the Russian translation in the back……

Also found out the story on the diesel issue. Apparently in the few months before I reached Kaz there had been a spike in demand plus a drop in supply which, I am told, had caused diesel to be rationed at quite a few places around Kazakhstan. It was in the process of resolving itself, but obviously I had unwittingly caught the tail end of it when I entered northern Kaz.

1 night in Almaty, I happened across this comemoration of Astana – Kazakhstan’s new capital as it forges a new national identity following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

I’d bought the glass for the back window on the car in Vladivostok, but hadn’t got around to fitting it until Almaty. Igor took me to a nearby place run by Alex, a chap with a brother in the UK – Tilbury?

Also visited Big Almaty Lake and went there a second time to hike up to Vorota Yuyukso with a friend of Igor called Slava. Slava had a very sweet, intense, studious kind of air about him and had a business restoring guitars – I quite warmed to Slava.

It was a very, very steep hill coming back down from Big Almaty Lake. Using engine braking rather than the brake pedal, by putting the car in a low gear, is quite natural to me, but obviously alien to a lot of people, for Slava asked me to stop at the bottom and got out to check the brakes. He was surprised when he touched the wheels and found that they were completely cold because I hadn’t been using the foot brakes!

Pics, from Alakol as far as Almaty

Kazakhstan – Alakol to Almaty

9 – 10 June

Left Almaty and headed west. All day driving – no real memories. Didn’t seem to get very far, considering the roads and the time I spent driving – I don’t know why. I reached a nameless place which I christened ‘не останьтесь здесь’ – which translates as ‘don’t stay here’. The limited research I had been able to do on the internet had at least thrown up that Aksu Zhabagly National Park was a place worth going to in Kazakhstan and I chose to stay close to there the night before – this place was 30 kms west of Aksu Zhabagly.

I stopped to ask some police if they knew of anywhere to stay in this place, and Igor spoke to them on the phone to translate. They told Igor they’d find me a place – for US$100 a night! I also made the mistake of parking inside a compound without first checking on the price, which led to a slightly tense situation the next morning and poor Igor had to speak on the phone and negotiate a price for me to pay to basically get out of there. It wasn’t much in the overall scheme of things, but left unspoken was the air of menace and the wonderment of what might have happened if I hadn’t. Do not make that mistake again. After extricating my self from there, on to to Aksu Zhabagly.

The scenery and colours were absolutely stunning, even without a proper map of the place and in actual fact I don’t suppose I got that far into it. The only waypoint I’d been able to find for the place was in the far south of the Park and as I drove along, the road appeared to peter out. In the end, I got out and walked. I well remember climbing up to what looked like the crest of a gentle hill but nothing could have prepared me for the massive gash in the ground that suddenly opened up as I crested the hill, a sort of gargantuan haha. My heart skipped a beat to think what it might have been like if I had been driving the car and suddenly seeing the ground disappearing in front of me when I crested the hill like that! It wouldn’t have gone over the edge, but it would have been a sweaty palms and nightmares for the next week kind of moment.

I startled this flock of Aksu-Zhabagly birds.

General scenes of driving through Aksu-Zhabagly

After Aksu Zhabagly, gave the car a wash by stopping at a local stream and driving the car to and fro a few times. This annoyed the people in the car on the left, BTW – got a good ticking-off in Kazakh!

After Aksu Zhabagly, I drove to Tshimkent. I was merely going to stop and buy a little bottle of vodka and then pass straight through. Looking in my rear view mirror, I saw a red Toyota convertible. This was unique in Kazakhstan and when I stopped at a shop on the outskirts, it stopped behind me and I could see the people looking as I got out. As I climbed the steps to the shop, suddenly to my left I heard a loud crash. A blue Kazakh Moskvitch had rolled forward in the car park and landed with its front wheels in the gutter. Immediately, I whipped out the camera and started filming. At this, the couple in the convertible started laughing and the woman called out in English “it’s normal for Kazakhstan!”

This broke the ice between me and the Kazakh Russian couple in the car. They turned out to be called Peter and Christina. Peter is in his mid-30s with an American passport and a business importing secondhand cars from America into Kazakhstan. Christina is his wife in her early 20s. Ironically, her English was better than his even though she’d never left Kazakhstan except to go to Russia. Ended up staying the night in Tshimkent with P and C, having delicious shashlik for dinner. The people on one of the other tables had a sweek-natured kitten and dear little kitty shashlik spent quite a bit of time on my shoulder. Peter had blue strobe lights on the top of his car, which he put on when he was behind people to make them pull over and get out of his way thinking he was the police.

12 June

After breakfast, a second car crash. Was riding along in the back of the convertible and we stopped suddenly at traffic light, while a Subaru behind us suddenly decided to change lanes and ended up wing to wing with the Toyota and it was me who’d spotted it by leaning over the side of the car. Later the Zoo, where for for the first time in my life I saw porcupines in the flesh.

That evening – a free meal as compensation for the car crash because the Subaru guy owned a restaurant (!)

13 June

Drove to Turkestan and found an outdoor restaurant. They let me play my Beatles and Rolling Stones CDs. Passers-by must have been quite amused by the sound of this music in a foreign language with a crazy white guy sitting in the open air restaurant getting drunk – but I enjoyed it!

14 June

Was shown around Turkestan by a man I had met called Nurik – he had met me in less than fortunate circumstances because I had had a problem in the internet café. I had spent about an hour typing an email and then suddenly, the power went. All the other computers in the post office had an uninterruptible power supply so they’d started beeping and gave whoever was using them ample opportunity to stop what they were doing and save whatever they had been writing, whereas the internet computer I was using simply cut out. I was angry about this and refused to pay for the time I had wasted typing the long email. Have a horrible feeling Nurik ended up paying the money that I refused to pay – with the language barrier, I did try to tell him not to do this but he paid anyway. Oh well, I’m sorry about that. He also managed to find me a place to stay – initially, I wanted to stay at a hotel but then the hotel had the cheek to try and charge me for parking on top, so I ended up parking the car in the backyard of his workplace – which worked very well. Nurik worked for some sort of agricultural research place and was also an Islamic medium.

The main site in Turkestan is the mausoleum of Sheikh Akhmed Yassawi, a 12th century mystic and poet, and founder of a powerful Sufi order. Made splendid by Tamerlane in the 14th century, it lies on the edge of the Kyzylkum Desert and is Islam’s second holiest place of pilgrimage after Mecca. It was closed by the communists and left to fall into disrepair but is now being restored to its former glory. Today, the tomb ranks as one of Islam’s architectural wonders. The entrance is monumental, flanked by tall, round towers while behind it is the Moslem’s great aquamarine dome. Behind this there is a second smaller ribbed dome covering the tomb chamber itself, exquisitely tiled in shades of blue and white. Inside the mausoleum, in the centre of the main chamber, is a massive cauldron weighing 2000 kilograms, hammered out of bronze, gold and zinc by Persian craftsmen, which once held holy water. It was stolen by the Soviets in 1955 and stayed at The Hermitage before being returned in 1989 during the Gorbachev years. One of Yassawi’s verses is inscribed on the wall of his tomb:-

‘The prophet has this wish
When one day you meet a stranger,
Do not do him wrong.
God does not love people with cruel hearts.’

Nurik also showed me a number of other little mausoleums, but to be honest they were not that wonderful after the Yassawi.

Pics of Almaty to Turkestan via Aksu-Zhabagly National Park and Tshimkent

Kazakhstan – Almaty to Turkestan via Aksu-Zhabagly and Tshimkent

15 June

Saw the Yassawi Mausoleum again, plus an underground place nearby. Nurik wanted to come with me to Kyzl-Orda, but I did not want to feel obligated because I knew if he did come, he would only have to find some way of getting back to Turkestan. As luck would have it, he got a call summoning him to the hospital anyway. 450kms of boring, boring, boring countryside to Kyzl-Orda and then Baikonur. There was no internet in Kyzl-Orda despite me asking a number of people, so I could not check out any accommodation in Baikonur. Had difficulty in getting diesel in Kyzl-Orda, but this appeared to be a genuine shortage rather than the need for the dreaded ration voucher. Eventually ended up getting it but it took about 6 attempts.

Baikonur is of course the world’s oldest space rocket launch facility and is where Sputnik, Gagarin and all the other Soviet space stuff went up from. Here’s what they (still) do at Baikonur (this video not made by me)

And here’s a bit of history about the place (this video not made by me)

I stopped on the outskirts of Baikonur to save the GPS coordinates of the launch pads into my compass and suddenly, a passing Lada Samara stopped. They motioned to me that there was some problem with their car. It was not immediately clear what it was (although I should have twigged, as 1 of the words was ‘mazla’ which means oil) until they showed me the car running with the red low oil light on. I was aghast and immediately turned the engine off – you NEVER EVER run an engine with the low oil light showing like that. If I had thought about it, and if I had known what was coming next, I would have made more of an attempt to strike up some sort of friendship with those people, because they probably worked or lived in Baikonur itself and could possibly have been useful for helping me get in there to see the place. It also struck me that there they were driving around in the worst of Russian technology and yet they were working and living at a place renowned for the best of Russian technology – its space programme. I did in fact stay the night at Baikonur, at a roadside cafe on the main road. This main road runs east to west, and passes south of the Cosmodrome but north of Baikonur town. The cafe is at N45.67345 E063.29187, and is run by a very pleasant Kazakh family who even have a dog called Laika – how perfect is that?! The ground this cafe stands on is a little elevated above the cosmodrome, which is on very flat ground. None of the launch pads are more than 30 KM north of this cafe.

For those of you who happen to be passing through Baikonur when a rocket launch is happening but don’t want to shell out x-thousand dollars to go in to see it, I am 99% sure that any rocket launch taking place at the cosmodrome could be seen from this cafe, at least once the rocket got a few metres into the air. There are websites about this eg http://spaceflightnow.com/tracking/

16 June

Bloody Soviets. I tried to visit the Space museum which I am told lives inside the Cosmodrome but typical f*cking Soviet mentality – build a museum inside a prohibited area, then forbid anyone from visiting it. Igor translated over the phone and they were very pleasant, but they wouldn’t let me in or even take a picture of the Gagarin symbol on the gate (I did anyway, through the gap between the steering wheel and the top of the dash!) Baikonur town and the cosmodrome are leased to the Russians (for US$150M per year) and these bits are all but impossible for foreigners to get into – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8067625.stm

Highly irritating how all the articles on the internet about visiting the place rave about how interesting it is, but neglect to point out that you can’t actually get permission to visit unless you’ve got a spare 2000 USD and have applied 3 months in advance.

However – here’s a vicarious visit by the BBC – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7964196.stm and you can also see a little video of the museum itself. And a few days later, here’s the aforementioned rocket launch http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7965601.stm

The Kazakh part was an absolute toilet, but it was incongruous to see a Russian town behind the police checkpoint, complete with traffic lights and smooth roads. With the numberplate of the car being so similar to the Kazakh format, I thought I’d try getting in and I nearly did…..but I could see the policeman doing a double-take at the car and the game was up.

50 or 60 KMs after Baikonur was a curious site by the side of the road called the Korkut Ata Monument (which I found out some time after leaving Kaz, thanks to the lack of a guidebook). I stopped to have a look and heard a curious whistling noise. A bone white sculpture designed to catch the wind stood in the arid steppe. Beside it was a small white pyramid, and beyond that a collection of low buildings. This turned out to be an ancient holy site pre-dating Islam, the place where legend has it that the Shaman Korkut died. Korkut roamed the world in search of the secret of immortality. Failing in his quest, he returned to the steppe and the banks of the Syr Darya River. Determined to cheat death, he moved everyday to a new resting place. According to the story, Korkut fashioned the world’s first stringed instrument – the Kobyz, a kind of primitive violin. The instrument and the bow was strung with camel hair and the sounds – part human song, part swan’s cry was as wonderful as life itself. One day, wearied from playing, he fell asleep on the site that is now by the side of the road, and death disguised as a snake found him. The Kobyz is an extremely important musical instrument in Kazakhstan, and improvised folk music among the Kazakhs was such a feature of life that the steppe was described as a sea of music. It was the sound of the Kobyz that the wind in the sculpture was supposed to emulate. Despite pre-dating Islam, the monument of Korkut in his desolate spot is a Moslem holy place.

Pics of Turkestan to Baikonur.

Kazakhstan – Turkestan to Baikonur

On to Aralsk – the Baikonur to Aralsk 2 and 3 pictures BTW are the ruins of an ancient Silk Road caravanserai.

Aralsk a peculiar place, as thoroughly out of its natural element as a beached whale. Everything felt wrong. It has the architecture of a port, with docks, concrete quays, numerous sheds and cranes – but no sea. The water was last here in 1973 when the town processed 20,000 tons of fish a year to be sent all over the Soviet Union. Now the fisheries are closed, the canning and freezing plants abandoned, and the reduced population tries to make a living from agriculture. This provides slim pickings because of the quantity of salt in the soil. The one business that does thrive is the salt factory – Aralsk could probably provide the world with salt.

One million tons of salt are blown away by the wind every year from the Aralsk area. It gets as far as the mountaintops of Europe, getting into glaciers and making them melt more quickly. It even reaches the Arctic Circle.

Aralsk happened because firstly the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union decided to use a lake with a trillion cubic metres of water for power and crops. With a wave of the central planning wand, a great expanse of desert around the Aral Sea was turned into an area dedicated to hydropower and the intensive cultivation of rice and cotton. Both crops require massive amounts of water, a resource that the Aral Sea seemed able to provide without limit. Monster bulldozers in their thousands were imported from all over the Soviet Union to gouge out a great network of irrigation canals.

At first, everything went according to plan. Cotton production boomed, particularly to the south in Uzbekistan, which has half the Aral Sea within its borders. Encouraged its the early success, Moscow demanded greater and greater production. People’s fields, orchards and gardens were requisitioned for the cultivation of cotton, and the entire workforce – including children and the old – was involved in planting and picking. ‘If you do not collect cotton, they will collect you. If you do not plant cotton, they will plant you in prison’, the locals joked grimly. Driven by fear, cotton pickers worked in temperatures of 40 degrees centigrade, bending their backs 10,000 times a day to fill their quota and they were paid a pittance. Conditions were little better than those of black slaves in the American South a century earlier.

In time, enough cotton was being produced to supply the whole of the communist world – Eastern Europe, Cuba, North Korea and all of the Soviet Union. Thanks to the Aral Sea, the Soviet Union became the world’s second largest cotton exporter after China. The harvests were always good, not least because the statistics were always inflated, while a corrupt cotton mafia of local communist bosses siphoned off money.

As production continued to grow, propelled by Moscow’s insatiable demand, people living close to the Aral Sea began to notice a drop in the water level. It was slow at first, but as the network of irrigation canals expanded and cotton production climbed, the lake shrank at an ever-accelerating rate. Over the next 20 years, the flow of one of the rivers that feeds the Aral Sea was reduced by 90% and the level of the lake dropped an incredible 16 metres. The surface area of the Aral Sea shrank by almost half and the volume of water fell by 3/4. The landlocked sea divided into two in the late 1980s as the water drained away and the lake began to die. The concentration of salt killed the fish, and an industry that once supported 60,000 people was destroyed. Processing plants were only kept going by the lunatic device of importing fish from Russia’s sea coast thousands of kms to the east. By the 1990s, the Aral Sea had retreated in some places by as much as 150 kms from its original shoreline, stranding oceangoing trawlers among sand dunes and revealing sunken hulks. Camels now roam and Landcruisers now drive where ships once sailed.

The death of the Aral Sea was only part of the problem, for the cultivation of cotton had created another ecological disaster. 260 kgs of fertilizers, pesticides and other chemicals were required for each hectare cultivated. This did not just pollute the two great rivers feeding the lake but it also leached into the underground water table and contaminated the region’s drinking water. The entire area is saturated with poison. Thus, the health of those living in the area of the Aral Sea has deteriorated dramatically. Infant mortality and cancer rates have soared, while life expectancy has plunged. For every thousand children born, a hundred immediately died. Half the population contracted jaundice at one time or another, and even now it is estimated that as many as 80 percent of women and children in the region suffer from anaemia.

In Aralsk, there are 30 percent fewer men than women. According to Kazakh tradition, a girl cannot leave her parents if there is no one else to look after them, so she stays and does not marry. When 18-year-olds are enrolled into the Kazakh army, a disproportionate % of boys from the Aralsk region do not pass the physical, not because they are sick but because they are weak and have the weight of a child. For some inexplicable reason, this environmental disaster has had a greater effect on males than on females and it is still not known why.

Met Mary, a German cyclist traveling by bike and train, in an internet café. Saw this in Aralsk railway station. Not sure why they don’t still do this on British trains, but it’s a common sight in many countries before a train sets off.

Camped next to the town cemetery (!) because could not find any decent hotels.

17 June

Abortive search for ship cemetery. Mary’s German-printed map was flat wrong (!), and so was the woman in the NGO place. Found the right place in the end. Was a little disappointed to find that, far from the serried ranks of ships to be seen in the Uzbek part of the Aral Sea,

http://www.global-greenhouse-warming.com/images/AralSeaDriedup.jpg

here there were just a couple. But I got my answer to the reason for this, as there were some guys ripping a nearby one apart for scrap. After this, seemed to have a lapse of judgement. You’d think that after the experience of the salt lake earlier in Kaz, I’d have been a bit more canny. Of course not all the Aral Sea is dry, and I saw some flamingoes on an expanse of water in the distance, so tried to get nearer them to get a picture. I hadn’t bargained on the ground getting more and more muddy as I got closer to the sea, and the really annoying thing is that all this happened gradually. I even put the Landy into low range when the going started to get sticky but at this point, it still carried on going forward. Rather than getting out and checking the ground, instead I blindly carried on and SPLAT – the Landy was stuck. Not much else I could do apart from flag down a passing UAZ jeep with some Kazakhs and get a lift back to Aralsk. It can be imagined just how worrying this was. But once back in Aralsk, the jeep people introduced me to Genghis, an early-20 something student who could speak pretty reasonable English. Genghis lived with his parents in quite a large bungalow-type place and had a brother working on an oilfield in Ayrau in the west of Kaz, who seemed to speak even better English judging by the brief chat we had on Skype.

18 June

The original idea was to get a big Russian Ural truck and pull the car out, but Genghis’ dad made the point that the truck might also get stuck – and at 15 tons, that wouldn’t be fun. So instead, Genghis’ dad and a couple of mates loaded up a UAZ van with blocks of wood and jacks and off we went. Luckily I’d saved the location of the Landy in the GPS. They jacked the car up corner by corner, using some of the blocks to stop the jack from sinking, then we dug out the mud from under each wheel and put the blocks under it, then laid a line of blocks behind the wheels providing a makeshift track which then let me reverse out. Good technique.

Music festival that evening in Aralsk – good fun with Genghis and his friends.

19 June

Supposed to leave, but there wasn’t much else to do between Aralsk and Russia so stayed on an extra day. Poor Genghis was in the town centre in his car (a VW Vento) when a taxi driver reversed into his door, so he called his dad down to the scene to deal with the taxi driver who didn’t think he was in the wrong. I couldn’t understand how such a small dent seemed to have distorted the entire door, for it rubbed against the frame. A little insight into how things were done in this part of the world – the traffic police came along and drew a plan of the ‘accident scene’. They agreed that Genghis was in the right, and then sat down for a chat with the miserable taxi driver. Rather than threaten to bust him, they simply talked to him and gently persuaded him to pay up. Sweet.

20 June. Left Aralsk. This is the most unbelievably shite piece of road I have yet had the misfortune to encounter anywhere in the former Soviet Union, between Aralsk and Aktobe.

On the road, met a German couple that Rose and Dave had told me about some weeks before. They had a Nissan with engine electronics and of course they’d found out what happens when this goes wrong in places where there isn’t the equipment to fix it. The Germans were a bit disconcerted when I stopped and said “have you been having engine trouble with this car” until I explained about Rose and Dave!

21st of June

On to the Russian border.

Had more difficulty in getting diesel in Chomatau (near Aktobe) but again it was a genuine shortage and I eventually succeeded.

The 200 kms of diabolical roads I had endured the previous day abruptly improved after the night stop, abruptly becoming the most pool table-smooth surface I had encountered since that section of highway on the Khabarovsk-Chita road. But it wasn’t to last. I stopped at a filling station for directions, for the map was saying there was a way directly north without a dogleg to Aktobe – but I was assured that to do so would mean using really, really bad roads – and after the last two days, I wasn’t going to argue! So I duly did the dogleg, only to find out the road was rubbish all the way anyway from Aktobe (an absolutely horrible town) to the border – a matter of national shame for Kazakhstan, just like the KKH for Pakistan.

Very pleasant border crossing on both sides, just like coming in – officers on both sides of the border seemed really taken by my overland trip.

The customs man on the Russian side had my passport with a 1 month visa right in front of him but still asked if I wanted one, two or three months customs clearance (!) I opted for two just in case I got into an accident or got ill. I didn’t intend to do 750 kms that day from the morning in Kaz to late evening just south of Magnitogorsk, but that is what it became even when I asked directions to Magnitogorsk at every opportunity – they all tallied. Strange how the book shows a different route but my map [bought the next day] does seem to show I took the best route – a more direct route seems to go to a certain point then stop. So I just kept driving, then admitted defeat by stopping next to a truck at a traffic police stop – the safest place to camp – only to see them start up and go in the middle of the night.

Pics from Baikonur to Aralsk and then north to the Russian border at Orsk.

Kazakhstan – Baikonur to Russian border via Aralsk