Category: Kazakhstan

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The way back

Hah! We bet you didn’t expect a blog post anymore!

Tom’s finally gotten around to writing the last one, so congrats for still checking on us! Or more likely, for receiving an update email…

While we took notes of what we encountered on our way back to Europe, most of the time was spent driving. So this post might get a bit boring. It’ll be more of a log really, a diary for us to remember the long road home.

Let’s see, where did we leave you last time? We were still in Mongolia (which seems like eons ago now…), getting ready to start the long ride home…

Friday, the 27th of July: UB

We spent the day in UB, mostly shopping for souvenirs. There was also a new dinosaur museum, which Tom thoroughly enjoyed. Along the way we also visited the national Mongolian museum, which shed some more light on the fascinating history of this country.


(Wafa’s best impression of a dinosaur.)

(Now we know where Star Wars found their inspiration.)

 

Saturday, the 28th of July: UB – Sukhbaatar (350km)

After saying goodbye to the nice people in the hostel (most importantly Rocky, our guide for our Mongolian trip, and Jamie, friendly Dutch fellow-traveler), we got on the road. Drove all the way to the Mongolian-Russian border, to a town called Sukhbaatar. On the way we visited a traditional bow ‘factory’, which consisted of a guy and his workshop. Very artisanal indeed.

Sukhbaatar itself is hardly worth mentioning. Bland little town, with a hotel that manages to be relatively new and rundown at the same time. Quite the feat.

 

Sunday, the 29th of July: Sukhbaatar – Lake Baikal (500km)

Our second Russian transit visa started on Sunday, so we headed to the border and got in line. While we crossed the Mongolian part relatively easy, the Russians were a lot more thorough. Had to unpack most of our stuff.

We passed the last ‘Asian’ town on our way to Lake Baikal, Ulan-Ude. In hindsight, it was really strange to notice the division between ‘Asian’ and ‘European’ people: Mongolia fully Asian, as soon as you cross the border there’s a mix, and by the time you get to Lake Baikal, it’s like you’re in Europe: only ethnic Russians to be found. If you look at the map, that’s way to the east of where we expected Caucasian people to be the standard! As we would learn on the way, Russian explorers colonized this stretch of Siberia already in the 17th and 18th century, so it’s thoroughly Russian. Unlike Kazakhstan for example, which was only added to the Russian imperial empire in the early 19th century.

While driving on the shores of Lake Baikal, we also tried the local delicacy of Omul. This is a smoked fish, a cousin of our salmon, which is deliciously tender and juicy… Tom’s salivating again just by writing this down 🙂

Our hotel was nice, but the price started feeling European again, which was less nice. Built like a giant log cabin, we had some nice borscht and beers. Omnomnom.

 

Monday, the 30th of July: Lake Baikal – Irkutsk (200km)

Driving on windy roads bordering the lake, it took us 3 hours to arrive in Irkutsk. We quickly found the local Suzuki dealer, which changed our shock absorbers for a measly 70€. At this point, Suzy had to have been in better shape than when we had left Belgium. Or so we thought…


(The new absorbers were made in Belgium! Kinda funny, exported to Russia, we imported them back to Belgium…)

By the time the Suzuki guys got finished, it was late afternoon, and we checked into our hostel in the centre of the city. Irkutsk is a pleasant place for an evening stroll, eating some good omul and buying Siberian honey.

 

Tuesday, the 31st of July: Irkutsk – Tayshet (650km)

Nothing to report. Lots of driving. We checked into a roadside motel and had an instant noodle dinner. The Siberian landscapes were somewhat hypnotizing though: endless shrubbery, pine forests and good roads (thankfully). More villages along the way than we had expected, too.


(Tom’s optimistic attempts at driveby photography mostly resulted in pictures of Siberian gates.)

 

Wednesday, the 1st of August: Tayshet – Mariinsk (770km)

Again, nothing to report. Even more driving. Checked into a nice little hotel in a small city. Had takeaway dinner.

 

Thursday, the 2nd of August: Mariinsk – Novosibirsk (430km)

While Novosibirsk is the 3rd city of Russia, we mostly found it very bland. We do remember having some very good food in the Beerman restaurant though (located in the local Hilton ^^). Tom enjoyed a half liter Affligem beer as well. Finally back to civilization, indeed!

 

Friday, the 3rd of August: Novosibirsk – Omsk (650km)

We enjoyed Omsk more than we had Novosibirsk. Pleasant city, dating back to the early 18th century, with some sort of festival going on. Good beer, good noodles and a brand new hostel.

 

Saturday, the 4th of August: Omsk – Lake Burabay (450km)

This was the last day of our second Russian transit visa, so we crossed into Kazakhstan again, through what had to have been one of the easiest crossings of the whole trip. Russia and Kazakhstan have some sort of customs union thing going on, so crossing over we were almost waved through. On the Kazakh side of the border, Maps.me gave us the option of a shortcut again, which we happily followed. After all, we were in the civilized world again, how bad could it be?

… Pretty bad, as it turned out. As we passed endless stretches of farmland, the road started degrading until it turned into little more than a cart track. Thankfully, not too many potholes (we’d had enough of those for a lifetime). We arrived at our destination, lake Burabay, around 6 in the evening. Big surprise though: this turned out to be one of the major tourist destinations in all of the glorious nation of Kazakhstan. On a Saturday evening in summer. So finding a place to sleep turned out to be very difficult indeed. After a very, very frustrating evening (during which we asked for room prices in a 5 star hotel casino (“400€ for one night? Such a shame, just above our budget…”) and considered camping next to the lake, surrounded by Siberian killer mosquitoes and drunk Russians) we finally found a place to sleep at 9.30PM. A crappy room and wedding party music blaring from upstairs. We’d had better nights… :p

 

Sunday, the 5th of August: Lake Burabay – Astana (250km)

After a week of almost nonstop driving, we wanted to stretch our legs a bit, so we decided to climb one of the hills next to the lake. The hill turned out to be rather steep and slippery though, so we turned back after half an hour. We were still a bunch of lazy tourists, after all!

After a refreshing swim in the lake, we headed to Astana. The road turned out to be some of the nicest highway since… Iran, probably? Without Iranian madmen driving on it, too!

Arriving in Astana in later afternoon, we hit up the local ATM and found ourselves a delicious Uzbek restaurant. Giant dishes of horsemeat plov and chicken lachman… Mmmm…


(Also: interesting interior design.)

 

Monday, the 6th of August: Astana

On our first day off since UB, we rented some bikes and did a little tour of the city. We went to the local mall (shaped like a giant yurt) and drove over the central Astana boulevard. While the architecture in this city was certainly… interesting, it all felt very artificial. Until 1997, Astana was a provincial backwater, with not even 100 000 residents. That year, however, the president of Kazakhstan decided to make Astana his new capital (mostly in a bid to keep the ethnic Russians in Kazakhstan from seceding, apparently). Combined with the oil dollars that started flowing in, Astana now resembles some sort of Dubai in the middle of the steppe. Or so we think, having never actually been to Dubai…
 

 

Tuesday, the 7th of August: Astana

We slept late and went for lunch in a nearby Asian fusion restaurant. Very nice indeed. Afterwards, we went to the Russian embassy to arrange our third (and final) Russian transit visa. The embassy lady was not very friendly, however. We had asked for 9 days to do our last transit, as we hoped to see a bit of Moscow and St-Petersburg along the way. She was adamant that we could only get 6 days, however, considering the distance we would travel. Citing car problems (which would turn out to be all too real), we tried to persuade her to give us a bit more. She got a bit annoyed with us though, saying ‘If I want visa in Europe, also problem!’. Whatever, we’d just asked nicely for it, no need to get all offensive.

We had dinner in the same Asian fusion restaurant, which also served some nice (and cheap) cocktails!

 

Wednesday, the 8th of August: Astana – Oktyabrskoe (500km)

We were told we could pick up our Russian visa at noon, at which point we were pleasantly surprised we could stay in Russian 9 days anyway. Thank you, strangely passive aggressive embassy lady!

We still had about 2000km to travel in Kazakhstan, so we got on the road quickly. Making good time (no more shortcuts from here on out…), we arrived at a roadside motel in the evening.

Driving through this part of the world was a challenge in itself: we’d driven through deserts before, but these were limited in scope, you might say. A few hundred kilometers and you’re through them. The next couple of days were something else though: landscapes that were completely empty, but for the steppe and the skies, thousands of kms on end.

 

Thursday, the 9th of August: Oktyabrskoe – Qarabutaq (760km)

Drive, drive, drive. From 9AM to 6PM. Roadside motel.

 

Friday, the 10th of August: Qarabutaq – Aktobe (225km)

Short drive. Spent the rest of the day resting. Nothing much to do in Aktobe.

 

Saturday, the 11th of August: Aktobe – Uralsk (475km)

Very boring drive. We stayed in a local DAF truck center, which had a hotel attached to it (?).

 

Sunday, the 12th of August: Uralsk

We had the day off in Uralsk, as our Russian visa only started on the 13th. We slept late and wanted to go to the lake, but when we got to the car, we noticed oil leaking from underneath it… Turned out to be a good choice to have a safety margin for our Russian visa. We found a local car shop (open on Sundays!) and they inspected the car. While they found out there was a problem between the engine block and the crank shaft, causing oil to spill, they probably also fucked up the water pump, somehow. As coolant started leaking on the floor while Suzy was hanging in the air. Lucky for us, they had all the necessary parts… We could hardly make a scene, as we still needed them to fix Suzy up, but it felt rather bitter having to pay for something they probably caused.

 

Monday, the 13th of August: Uralsk

We had hoped to cross the border, but as noon turned into dusk, we were still waiting for Suzy to be fixed. Replacing the rubber ring in the crankshaft necessitated taking off the whole thing, which made for some pretty cool pictures though:

Finally, at 6.30PM, we got Suzy back. As it was too late to cross over now, we found another place to stay. Cheap, but rather smelly apartment…

 

Tuesday, the 14th of August: Uralsk – Penza (700km)

We crossed the border early in the morning, so we could make up for lost time the day before. While waiting at the border, Tom noticed some oil was still leaking. It seemed to be less than before, so we drove on to Samara, where we had a local Suzuki dealer have a look. He told us the Uralsk guys appeared to have done a pretty bad job replacing the rubber band… Fuck it! They couldn’t replace it though, as they would have to order the parts we needed. Told us to check the oil level regularly while driving.

We made it all the way to Penza, which meant that we crossed two time zones in one day, by car!

 

Wednesday, the 15th of August: Penza – Moscow (650km)

While leaving Penza, we noticed there was now also an engine belt squeaking its head off. What the flying f*ck. Shit just kept piling up :’). At this point, we would have been happy if we’d just made it back to Europe. Our travel insurance covered car breakdowns all over Europe, which was now just over 1000 km away…

We later learned that squeaky belts are no problem onto themselves, though. Being the mechanical novices we are, we didn’t know this, so it did no one’s nerves any good.

When we arrived in Moscow, it had started raining. And by raining, I mean flooded-streets-and-hardly-see-anything raining. By the time we got to the city center (quite some traffic jams) and checked into our hostel, the evening dinner we had been looking forward to, almost turned into a midnight snack.  But we had made it! Moscow! Europe! Civilization! Transportation in case of car breakdowns!


(Crazy light at dusk.)

 

Thursday, the 16th of August: Moscow

We got feedback from the Uralsk car shop, and they told us it was quite normal there was still some oil leaking. It should eventually stop. A quick check underneath Suzy seemed to confirm this. The squeaky belt had turned into full-on cat strangling at this point though :’).

Taking another day of from driving, we visited the highlights of the city. The Red Square, St  Basil Cathedral, a walk around the Gum shopping mall, a tour of the nicest subway stations… After a couple of weeks cooped up in the car, our legs started seriously hurting by the end of the day.


(Russians have a thing for naked saints, apparently.)
  
(The GUM shopping mall used to be a Soviet department store, but is now occupied by all sorts of luxury brands.)
(Nice touch: the marble on the walls matches the meat in the store!)
 

 

Friday, the 17th of August: Moscow  – Ushaki (650km)

Before noon, we took our time to visit the Kremlin proper. The cathedrals, the Diamond Fund (some of the largest diamonds of the Imperial collection!)… All very impressive. All in all, we were rather pleasantly surprised by Moscow (and Russia in general, to be honest): especially Tom expected a more depressing, unfriendly city and country. But it turned out that, at least in summer, Russia and Moscow are really beautiful and, at times, interesting places to visit.

We left the city around 1PM and drove all the way to St-Petersburg, sleeping in a little town with a quaint blue church some 50kms outside of the city.

 

Saturday, the 18th of August: Ushaki – St Petersburg (50km)

We were immediately struck by the difference between Moscow and St-Petersburg: while Moscow has its historic core, the rest of the town center is mostly new to brand new buildings. St-Petersburg on the other hand, has retained more of its original character. We quickly planned out a walking tour. This took us from the Fabergé Museum (Fabergé eggs!), to the Kazan Cathedral (huge!), the Church on Spilled Blood (mosaics!), the Winter Palace (green!), the statue of Peter the Great (statuesque!) and St Isaac’s Cathedral (also huge!).

   
(At the end of the day, Tom’s shoes looked like this.)

After an exhausting day, we booked tickets for the Swan Lake ballet in the Mariinsky Theatre on Monday (because, when in St-Petersburg…) and went looking for dinner. We wound up in the Soviet Café, which aimed to recreate the Soviet era atmosphere. We sincerely doubt many people had such excellent food in those troubled times, though; delicious borscht, herring and beet salad, dumplings and many others found their way into our thankful bellies…

 

Sunday, the 19th of August: St Petersburg

We basically spent the whole day in the Hermitage. Probably second only to the British Museum and the Louvre in the breadth and depth of its collections, we saw many items we recognized from cultures encountered on our travels: Sassanid (Iranian) silverware, Soghdian wall paintings, Mongolian religious artefacts… Lovely!


(Creepy Siberian dead people…)
  
(This Qajar era painting of an Iranian woman is a bit less modest than what we saw in Iran…)

 

Monday, the 20th of August: St Petersburg

On our last day off without any driving, we slept late and afterwards headed out to see the Peter & Paul fortress, the traditional military bulwark of the city. While it certainly has its merits (the church contains the graves off all Russian tsars since Peter the Great, including the murdered family of Nicholas II), it lacked the kind of grandiose highlights or exhibits we’d come to expect of St-Petersburg.


(There was also a space museum, with a used Soyuz module! Almost as awesome as Tom’s icecream!)

In the evening we went to the Mariinsky Theatre to see the Swan Lake. While Wafa thoroughly enjoyed her night out, Tom quickly gave up on ever finding the appeal in a bunch of tight-clad men and women jumping around on a stage. Yes, there were some nice or even beautiful scenes. But all in all, 3 hours is way too long to be watching what is basically a silent puppet show.

 

Tuesday, the 21st of August: St-Petersburg – Tartu (350km)

On our final day in Russia, we wanted to visit Catherine the Great’s palace outside St-Petersburg. When we got there though, it was closed for the day :-/ Should’ve looked it up first, I guess. But really, who closes their museum on a Tuesday?

Lucky for us, there was also the Peterhof nearby, which is basically the palace of Peter the Great. Apparently you can’t visit it on the inside though, which (again) we didn’t know. As it was a very rainy day, we didn’t feel much like strolling around the gardens.

We left early for Estonia. Which was  a good call, as the lines to cross the border stretched way back. The crossing itself went fast (Estonians seemed quite surprised to see a Belgian passport though). And that was it! We were back in the EU! Last real border crossing of the whole trip!

 

Wednesday, the 22nd of August: Tartu – Riga (250km)

Most unnoticeable border crossing of the whole trip (in the middle of a village). Visit Riga. Nice old town. Just strolling around, drinking, eating…

 

Thursday, the 23rd of August: Riga – Bialystok (500km)

Drive from Riga to Kaunas (Lithuania). Spend a couple of hours. Drive on to Bialystok (Poland). Last time changing money (bloody Poles and their Zlotys…).

 

Friday, the 24th of August: Bialystok – Warsaw (300km)

Go to Bialowieza forest. National park closed without guide :(. Stroll through not national park. See bison in reserve.

Drive on towards Warsaw. Find nice motel just past the city. Last dinner is pizza and grilled pork neck… mmm…

 

Saturday, the 25th of August: Warsaw – Home (1250km)

Idea is to drive 700 km to Magdenburg, Germany. Once we pass Berlin (around 2 PM), we decide fuck it, drive on to Belgium. After a whole day of driving (9AM-10.30PM) and 1250 km, we arrive in Belgium!

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Kazakhstan – Round 2

New friends, heroic actions and a big scare from Suzy

Saturday, the 23rd of June

After the uneventful crossing into Kazakhstan, we stepped on the gas to get to Almaty in time… for the world cup game of Belgium vs Tunisia! After a 200 km drive through the empty steppe, we got to Almaty proper. While filling up Suzy up with diesel, Tom noticed the left front tire was looking deflated. We just thought to fill it up again, but the tire repair guy next door advised us to let him have a look. Result: second flat tire of the trip!

Almaty traffic didn’t seem to be any better than in Bishkek, so it took us the better part of an hour to cross the city to our hostel. They pointed us towards a very nice Uzbek restaurant, which served delicious horsemeat plov! Every booth had its own TV, so Tom was very happy to watch the game 🙂 .

Sunday to Saturday, the 24th – 30th of June

We spent the rest of the week in Almaty. Sunday was again a day for practical stuff; writing, planning and preparing for our Russian transit visa. We talked to two Afghan students at breakfast, who are studying at the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek (and thus know Chris, small world indeed!) on a scholarship. These girls really changed the way we look at Afghanistan a bit: they were modern, liberal, and set to return to Afghanistan once they finished their studies. Not at all what we expected from young Afghans! And as with so many people in this region, they had family studying and working all over the world (North America, Europe, Asia…).

On Monday we changed hostels, partly because our old one was fully booked, partly because Wafa found a real ‘backpacker’s’ hostel on iOverlander. The new one was also fully booked, but we could set up our tent in the garden, almost for free. We would end up spending the rest of the week here.

Our plan so far had been to get a double entry transit visa for Russia: this would mean going from Kazakhstan through Russia to Mongolia, and then after three weeks in Western Mongolia, doing the same route in reverse. However, we found out it is impossible to get a double entry visa in Kazakhstan as a tourist (need to be a resident). Poop!
So we changed our plan: with a single entry visa we can get to Mongolia. Then we need to go all the way to Ulaanbaatar for a new visa (possibly a tourist visa? If not, a new transit visa.) Then we can go through Russia again to Kazakhstan. This will add another 3000 km to our trip, over crappy Mongolian roads. So we’re also considering taking a flight from Western Mongolia to Ulaanbaatar and back, just for the visa… We’ll see what we’ll do when we get there, I guess?

So Monday was again spent planning and getting our paperwork done to apply for the Russian visa the next morning. We also saw Jonas and Michael, our little German brothers, again. They didn’t get a spot at the hostel, but we could say goodbye one last time. For real this time, as they were flying to Iran later that week. I guess we’ve met them about 15 times (if not more) on the road, travelling together part of the way. They almost feel like family now 🙂 .


(We also had some pictures taken for the visa application. Left: old pictures from Belgium. Right: new photoshopped pictures from Iran and/or Kazakhstan. Which are the best ones?)

Tuesday morning we went to the Russian embassy early, together with 2 French bikers we’d met earlier at the Mongolian embassy in Bishkek, and who were also staying in our Almaty hostel. Martin and Thibault turned out to be some of the nicest and funniest guys we met on the whole trip, we’d have loads more fun with them during the rest of the week. After a surprisingly quick embassy visit, we went to the Tamgaly petroglyphs, some 150 kms outside of Almaty. We were astonished by the sheer amount of drawings we found. Some rather abstract ones as well, such as the sunhead-dudes:


(On the road we were again stopped by police, but they quickly let us pass once we made clear we didn’t speak any Russian…)

In the evening we went to the local Shakespeare Pub to watch the France-Denmark game. Boring as fuck, but nice talking to all the people from our hostel.

Wednesday we got a late start (after sleeping late), but in the afternoon we went hiking in the hills/mountains around Almaty. It was a very nice walk to a local waterfall. Very refreshing shower as well. The group from the hostel made it great fun. In the evening we went to the pub again to watch the Germany-Korea game. Great atmosphere, not least because we could have a laugh with the Germans! (Which our German hostel comrades didn’t like very much…)

After sleeping late again on Thursday, we went to an Almaty park in the afternoon, hoping to find a pool to go swimming. It’s been steadily getting warmer since we left the high mountains, with temperatures now going to 30°C and above, so we needed to cool down. After learning the pool would cost us 25€ (!), we decided to just hang out in the park instead, playing card games and Frisbee. Relaxing. Later we watched Belgium win their game against England (bloody Januzaj…).

On Friday we got our Russian transit visa from the embassy. We thought we’d leave later during the day, but ended up staying to plan Mongolia, do some shopping and just hanging about in the hostel. At night we went out to a local club, which made for some great fun!

We didn’t leave on Saturday either, having slept only a few hours and half hung over (Tom). The day was mostly spent doing nothing. In the evening the hostel had organized a BBQ to celebrate the birthday of on the other guests, which was great fun: good food, great people, making music… The France – Argentina game was also really entertaining to watch!

Sunday, the 1st of July

We really had to get started today, or we’d never leave this place 🙂 . However, first some Israeli guys made everyone breakfast, a delicious shakshuka. This consists of a spicy tomato sauce with eggs poached in it. So nice! After that, Thibault gave Tom a haircut (which turned out OK, even though he had never cut someone’s hair before…). And then it was noon already, so lunch time!

After finally leaving for real (with many heartfelt goodbyes), we got on the road to northeast Kazakhstan. We drove another 400 kms, before turning off the main road to find a good camping spot. Wafa also got pulled over by police for the first time (speeding!), but again Tom managed to play the idiot convincingly enough that they let us go. He’s got a real talent for it…
While checking the camp spot, we ran into Aldo, another of our hostel buddies, who had left the day before. So another camping night with company!

 

Monday, the 2nd of July

Tom woke up early to another herd of goats surrounding our tent. When they started moving along though, a pitiful bleating sound could be heard from a nearby canal. Disaster! One of the little goats had fallen in and was being swept away!


(Not pictured: goat.)

Tom, being the hero he is, didn’t hesitate and tried to get the little fellow back on shore. The first 500 meters of the canal were too high, so rescue attempts were unsuccessful. After that, the canal bank started getting lower, so he could grab the goat from the water. Only just in time, because little Rudi (as the goat was called by that time), had just given up swimming and was drowning.

Once Rudi was on shore, things didn’t look good: he was barely breathing and had a dazed look in his eyes. So Tom tried CPR on the little guy’s chest (because that’s what they do in the movies to make them cough up the water, right?). No success. Next he dangled Rudi upside down by his hind legs, vigorously shaking the little bastard to get the water out. Again no success, but by now Rudi started bleating a little bit again, so maybe there was still hope?

After a few more minutes, Rudi stood up again! Brought back from the dead, hurrah! In obvious shock, Rudi was unable to move more than a few paces at a time though. Looking confused and shivering violently, he tried to hide in some nearby bushes. But just as Tom decided to let the little guy be, the herd of goats returned to the scene. With some ushering, Rudi was finally returned to the fold. A very emotional moment, both for Rudi and Tom:


(Meanwhile, Wafa had slept through all the commotion.)

After breakfast, we bade Aldo goodbye and got on our way again. We wanted to drive a large part of the way to Russia, so apart from a small lunch break, we drove on until 8 PM. Still mostly empty Kazakh steppe along the way. We also passed some lakes which had seagulls, literally 1000’s of kms away from any ocean. We had thought to camp again, but got in a really big storm along the way. So we didn’t take any risk (because Tom’s 9-year old 50€ festival tent is probably not waterproof anymore) and checked into a roadside hotel, just 200 km from the Russian border. In the evening, we saw the Brazil – Mexico game, but turned in early, and missed the epic Belgium – Japan match 🙁 .

Tuesday to Wednesday, the 3rd – 4th of July

After a 2 hour drive over a rotten road, we arrived in Öskemen, the last big stop before Russia. We were actually ahead of schedule, and had a day and a half of time to kill before we could enter Russia (visa starting date: 5/7). So Wafa had the luminous idea of going to a car repair shop for a quick check up before heading to Mongolia proper. The iOverlander recommended a place for 4×4’s, so after visiting the city (highlight: an ‘authentic’ Siberian village in the middle of the city park), we had these guys have a look.

It turned out Suzy hadn’t been coping with the shitty Central Asian roads that well, after all. According to the mechanics, there was a problem with our rear wheel bearings, the front ball joints should be replaced AND the engine mounts were ‘destroyed’ (imagine thick Russian accent for extra effect). As these guys came with a recommendation, and seemed honest enough, we trusted their judgment (they also saw that our oil filter hadn’t been fitted correctly during the oil change in Bishkek, for example). But fuck! Bad news indeed!

Kiril told us he would start looking for parts the next day, but wasn’t very hopeful that he could find anything in time for us to get on our way to Mongolia. Our Russian transit has a very narrow window (5-8 of July), so even 2 days of delay would mean we couldn’t make it to Mongolia.

We went to bed slightly apprehensive about the next day, as you can imagine…

So after sleeping late and some anxious waiting, we called Kiril again on Wednesday at noon, only to find out he hadn’t found any of the parts. After looking at our alternative travel options (plane: too expensive, train: takes too long, bus + taxi: too cumbersome), we headed into town ourselves to look for car parts. To be honest, Tom had all but given up at this point. Already apprehensive about the Mongolian roads and conditions, this was the final straw; it felt like we weren’t supposed to go to Mongolia after all.

But we got lucky! The first garage we stopped by (thank you Wafa!), pointed us towards a parts shop. While we didn’t find that shop, we stepped into another one that had our wheel bearings and ball joints. The guy working there even drove us to another shop to find some new engine mounts as well! Talk about good service!
We drove to the car shop with our shiny new parts for Suzy. The guys started working on her straight away. Apparently they go the extra mile for tourists, as they know these have serious time constraints. We were told they would probably work until 10 or 11 PM… Nice!
After all the excitement of the day, we decided to celebrate with some nice aperitifs and sushi!

Thursday, the 5th of July

As we’re writing this post, it is now the first day of our Russian transit visa, but we’re quite hopeful we can get under way sometime in the early evening. We found out our border crossing is apparently the only one between Kazakhstan and Russia that is open 24h a day. The idea is that we get the car back by 6 PM, and start driving towards Russia right away. Fingers crossed!

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Kazakhstan & Uzbekistan – First taste of the Stans

On new friends and border controls

Tuesday, the 8th of May (cont.)

After making it through Kazakh customs, we found ourselves a hotel in Aktau, freshened up and headed into town to eat something. On our way there we saw a carwash. The dirt of our trek through the Alamut Valley (Iran) was still on the car. Combined with the sea salt of the Caspian, we thought it wise to get Suzy all lathered up again:

While we were waiting, we started talking to some guys standing nearby. We asked them if they knew a nice Kazakh restaurant nearby, so we could try the local cuisine. One of them, who turned out to be the carwash owner, suggested he’d show us. We could follow him in our car.
What a nice chap, we thought. On arriving at the restaurant, however, he went in with us.
What an even nicer chap, we thought, keeping us company. Then he started ordering plate after plate of local fare. As we didn’t even know the price of what he was ordering, we gestured for him to stop, we weren’t that hungry anyway. He then told us it was all on him, a gesture of Kazakh hospitality. Like… what? We talked to you for five minutes and you’re buying us dinner?


(And quite the dinner it was.)

Either this was the nicest chap we’d run into so far, or something dodgy was going on. We talked some more over dinner and were put at ease by his easygoing manner. No stranger danger alarm going off. After learning his name was Askhatt, we chatted about a lot of stuff. We learned that the day after, the 9th of May, is Victory Day in all of the former Soviet Union. The celebration of the victory over Nazi Germany. Askhatt kindly invited us to join him and his family for the parade the following morning. Also, would we be interested in having a few drinks later on in the evening?

We understood he would invite some of his friends, so Wafa, feeling tired already, left Tom to a boys’ night out. After dropping Wafa and the car off at the hotel, we set off in Askhatt’s Land Cruiser limo. After meeting up with some of his friends, we had a couple of beers on a nice terrace in the center of town. Really friendly guys. Something we’ve noticed in this part of the world, they’re not scared to ask you direct questions either: how much is your salary, why no babies…? It turned into a very pleasant evening. Tom also tried the Russian brewed Hoegaarden. Tasted like crap, of course 🙂

In short: Kazakh hospitality is some of the best we’ve encountered so far! We were almost ashamed of our earlier distrust. Travelling through this part of the world really makes us wonder what went wrong in Belgium, where this kind of evening between strangers would be exceptional (at least in our experience).

 

Wednesday, the 9th of May

After a rather short night, one of Askhatt’s buddies came to pick us up to go to the Victory parade. When we arrived, we were pleasantly surprised. We expected something militaristic, but it was really interesting to see how people here remembered their relatives that fought in the Second World War. Especially considering we were in a far-flung corner of the former Soviet Union. We didn’t get a sense of overly patriotic feelings either. You can judge for yourself:


(The guys that were Heroes of the Soviet Union (their highest decoration) got separate memorials. These had their family all over, of course.)

Askhatt also turned up with his family:

After treating our party to lunch, we said goodbye to everyone, with promises made to meet up again in Almaty, and headed off towards Beyneu, near the Uzbek border.

The next 500 km were mostly empty again, except for a few lost villages and lots of camels and horses on the steppe:

Once in Beyneu, we stocked up on diesel. During earlier research, we understood there’s hardly any diesel to be had in the western part of Uzbekistan, so we filled up the car’s gas tank, a 20L jerrycan, and 6 x 5L water bottles. About 110L of diesel in total, enough to get us about 1500 km far:


(Obviously Tom’s most photogenic side.)

Beyneu itself wasn’t much to look at (being a town in the middle of nowhere), so we went to bed early to rest up.

 

Thursday, the 10th of May

On our way to Beyneu, the road had been pretty great to drive on: all paved, no potholes… This changed as soon as we started driving towards the Uzbek border though. Although this was supposed to be the E40 highway (Yes, the same one as in Belgium! We’re going to the source of the E40!), it quickly degraded into a dusty track filled with holes the size of a decent camel. Camels being the only things around to compare things with:

After 80 km of this (or around 2 hours of driving), we arrived at the Kazakh-Uzbek border crossing.  This was a strange place. No photos of course (border crossings are sensitive), but you have to imagine a small facility in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a few shacks that serve food and drink. And otherwise: nothing.

The border crossing itself started of smoothly, after waiting in line for about half an hour to get our passports checked, we waited another hour to get the car searched on the Kazakh side. When we made it to the front of the line, they just let us pass through though. White tourist advantage, fuck yeah!

Then we got stuck waiting in no man’s land between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan for about 2 hours. No idea why, but they would only let in a couple of cars at a time to go through the customs procedure. When they finally let us through, the Uzbek cars around us started unloading all of their stuff from the cars. We really didn’t feel like doing this, so after getting our passports and car papers checked, we played the stupid tourists and asked one of the border guards what we had to do next. He simply waved us to the front of the line, did a quick check of our stuff in the car and waved us through. White tourist advantage, fuck yeah!

All in all, the crossing had taken us 4 hours though. So it was now 4 PM, and we still had 400 km to go to Nukus, where we wanted to stay the night.

The first 50 km after the border were absolute crap as well:


(This is the dirt track next to the E40. And it is a whole lot better than the highway itself.)

Afterwards, road conditions got considerably better; we managed to average 90km/h. Still, every 10-20km there would be a potholed stretch of road. So one moment you’re doing 90-100km/h, and then the car gets thrown around like it’s going to break an axle. Because you can’t break in time for the holes in the road. VERY uncomfortable.

By 8 PM we still had a 100 km to go to Nukus, so we decided to make a stop in Kongrad, one of the first villages after the border crossing (actually 300 km further down the road; this part of the world is really empty). After finding ourselves a basic local hotel, we prepared ourselves a tasty little tabouleh with canned Russian herring in tomato sauce, and called it a night.