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.