Moscow Time

Cassie:
Crossed the border this morning from Kazakhstan to Russia. It was thankfully an uneventful, boring as usual border crossing but nowhere near as tedious as the Mongolian borders were. Again, there was no customs clearance required for the car so it was just a matter of lining up at each side to get our passports stamped. Love those kind of crossings. It's getting the car across the borders that causes all the delays. We started heading towards the border by maybe 8am and got there by 8.30 or somewhere around then. At the Kazakhstan side Graeme was asked to go wait in the car while I was told to walk into the "Frontier Zone" (that's seriously what the sign said at the gate). Yikes, we've never been separated like that at a border before. It was a bit weird and I kept looking back at Graeme and the car as I'm walking across this massive open concrete zone towards a building in the near distance. Turns out the drivers are processed separately from passengers for some weirdo reaso
n. I emerged at the other side of the building looking around for Graeme. All the other passengers I was lined up with kept walking out towards Russia! Stuff that I thought, there's no way I'm walking through those gates until I know Graeme's cool to come through too. Thankfully he was waiting in sight for me so I went and lined up with him while he waited for his passport to be stamped. Then on to the Russian border we went.

Thankfully there was no barge to cross to the Russian side of the river. It's since been replaced with a very handy bridge. Russia seems to like having a half-way point between their borders where the guard checks your visa/passport and gives you a slip of paper to fill out for your arrival. So after lining up for ages there on the bridge while the border guard kept giving the papers to the locals and leaving us waiting like doofus' which is often the case at borders - we often get left to last, obviously put in the "too hard basket" - we were then allowed to go and line up a few kilometres down the road at the actual Russian border crossing point. All up it took maybe 1.5 - 2hrs. We're really not sure because we weren't keeping an eye on the time. Still pretty quick though! And on top of that, we're now on Moscow time so we're six hours behind home now and gained another hour in our day. I thought it would be easier to adjust to the timezone changes than what it has been. I'
m finding I want lunch by 11am, now tomorrow that's probably going to come back an hour to 10am! I'm all out of sync.

Even still, we've stopped at 4pm local time because it feels like 5pm to us. We're not far from our next destination, Volgograd. We stopped at the city of Astrakhan today for a bit of a break after the border. After having a fairly ordinary lunch at a mall of all places, we drove down the street and I yelled "McDonalds"!!!!! Yep, seriously, there was our first Maccas since Australia. Golden arches peaking through the trees and powerlines lining the road. We were interested to know where we would see it again. I was betting on Almaty - KFC was there but no McDonalds. Yes, yes, we had to stop and check it out. As we'd already eaten lunch we thought, let's just try and order a thickshake. Trying my luck I said to the girl at the counter, "Shokolad Shake"? which was met with a positive response. Score! She then grabbed a special menu for us that had many different languages on it with pictures and we pointed to the chocolate and vanilla thickshakes to confirm what we were after.
A thickshake has never tasted so good.

Since then we've been driving on great roads. Such an easy day. Dare I say it....is the most difficult part of our journey over? It's no longer going to take a week or more of bone shattering roads to reach a destination. We seriously could've arrived in Volgograd today without any trouble but we simply chose not to because we have a plan. Our plan has often been to camp within 100km or so from a destination, get up and have some breakkie, drive to the city of destination, search for a hotel and be checked-in by lunch time. Then we're free to go out and get some lunch, chill out for the afternoon and explore all the next day. It makes us feel more rested because we've got a whole heap of extra time out of our stay there. It also means we have more time to explore, especially considering for the first time staying in a major centre we don't need to get anything done with the car. We can actually do the touristy thing unencumbered by chores.

Graeme:

I found credit in the 'split processing' at the KZ border. It enables truck drivers to slip through quickly while busloads of people are processed in another building. I like it.The McDonalds was cool. Cassie is very relieved to have all the hard work behind us, but I'm a little bit lost now, to not have a definite purpose. Our days will now be lazy and unproductive. We could no doubt be in London in a few days if we wanted, so taking our time will be weird.

While I was putting some video together tonight, I remembered an observation. On our way into Almatay, we noticed random sections of stones on the highway, with scratches, like a car had rolled. Weird, but nothing alarming. It wasn't until maybe the 5th occourance of this that it seemed odd. Up the road, sure enough, there was a grader, shaving the high points of the tar off the road. Oh my. Never have I seen that before. A grader, grading a tar road!
Heading towards Astrakhan, we crossed a river on a semi-permanent floating pontoon bridge. Never seen one before in my life!
Today has been crazy windy again. We're stopped in somewhat of a valley which has halved the wind, but gusts are still enough to rock us from side to side.
I've spent my afternoon filing down a reversible screw driver about 5mm so it fits between the car and the cabinate. All done. 35 rubles well spent.
How random are my posts? They are just a loosely strung together single conscious thought.

Last day in KZ

Cassie:
Tomorrow morning we'll be crossing the border back into Russia spelling the end of our two week trek through Kazakhstan. I have to be honest and say I'm not going to miss Kazakhstan but if we look at this logically, all up Graeme and I are travelling through something like 10 countries, so there's bound to be one or two that we're not really fussed on. In that same light there'll be some that blow us away with their awesomeness. Mongolia is a great example of that.

Today has been fairly cruisy. We were on the road by maybe 9am for what has turned out to be an uneventful day of driving. We were keen to use up all the currency before crossing the border because the Kazakh Tenge can't be exchanged outside of Kazakhstan. With that in mind we bought lunch, then filled the car to the brim with the cheapest fuel we're every likely to get in our lifetime. The coolest thing was I actually managed to use every last cent because after filling up with fuel there were a few coins and a small note left. I bought two bottles of drink and two chocolates and ta-daaa, used the remaining note and ALL of the loose change to the very last 5 tenge coin. Got back to the car feeling quite chuffed with myself only to realise, bugger, I meant to save that note as a momento. Oh well, the chocolate was worth it!

The wind has whipped up so much sand around the place today. When we walked from the cafe back to the car after lunch we immediately had to shield our faces from the sand blasting and we literally ate some sand. Went down well after the borsh and rice dishes we had for lunch.

We stopped really early today because it was a smidge too late to go to the border for our liking. Even if we did get through today there's still a barge to catch on the other side then the hassle of having to find a camp near the bustling town of Astrakhan. It would've made for a very long day. So we decided to stop at about 1.30pm at approximately 20km short of the border in some paddocks, shielded from view of the road by a bit of a sand dune. There are other buildings around in the distance so it's not as lovely as some of our more remote camps, but it's pretty darn good considering how close we are to the border. So through the border we go tomorrow and onward for our final leg through Russia. Europe here we come!

Graeme:
Didn't do a post last night because of the working bee that was our camp. We had to reattach the kitchen unit again. Poor design on my part, but would not be nearly as annoying if I'd have just brought a stubby phillips head screwdriver. The problem is, the screws that fix the unit to the car rattle out on these roads, but because I only have long screw drivers, I need to remove the unit to get enough space to re-tighten them. It's a big job as it entails a heap of screws and bolts through the floor. Oh well.

Yesterday we stopped to retrieve the hi-lift jack base. It had rattled it's split pin out, and hit the roof as it fell off. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad it did as we would have not noticed it missing until we needed it. When walking back through the bulldust we realised something in one of the roof boxes was leaking. Oh 'joy' I thought. I'd gone to the effort of taping all the lids on. Well this time it was the coolant concentrate. Entirely unopened, brand new from Toyota. It's ironic how we've not needed any of the fluids we brought with us, but in some kind of escapist mentality, they have all come free of their plastic containers. In a fit of rage and sick of throwing out good brand new stock, I tipped the entire bottle of 50/50 concentrate into the radiator reservoir, yep, it's way over full, but I figured it's better in there with at least a chance of getting used as opposed to it leaking onto the roof! We've not littered anything except toilet paper this whole trip, but
I wasn't going to put that bottle back in the car. Sorry earth.

Yeah Cassie's said it. I also am not particularly wrapped in Kazakhstan. Last night we watched some of our early videos we took and the consensus was that Russia and Mongolia have been beyond words beautiful, despite the hardships. Kazakhstan has been equally difficult, with so little of the beauty to make it worth while. Naturally I'll be disagreed with by the world, but this was my take on it. I said in an earlier post that in one year the roads will be fixed, but in retrospect it's going to take much longer. Most new roads have been made dual carriageway, but at different times. So the one road is worn out by the time the other side is opened, and so the continuous road works cycle will continue. Yesterday's roads were a joke. Not even worth discussing.
Looking back on this trip, I thought the driving would be the higlight. Road of bones, Mongolia etc. It's actually being the camps! I'd never really liked camping, but with our camper it's a dream. I know I'm really going to miss the isolated camps that I suspect will be a thing of the past as we head west. Part of me wants to go back. Maybe I should get a helicopter camper?

Pictures today are: Our lunch stop, with sand filling the window frames. Some thing with big ears? Fox?

As Cassie said, we've stopped real early. We've been stopped for maybe 3 hours by this stage and I've nearly finished my book, cleaned the fridge, tweaked the sink, cut toenails/fingernails and eaten twice. I'm entirely out of things to do and it's doing my head in. If I didn't have a job, I'd have to volunteer for something. This life with no sense of achievement is bokners. I wonder if this is the void that others fill with Facebook?!

Road explosion

Cassie:
Yep, the road we're travelling on at the moment looks like a bomb site. It's up there with the M56 on the way to Magadan as one of the worst roads we've driven to date. But, weirdly it's not bothering us. There's a stretch of maybe 160km or so that's particularly bad which is what we were on this afternoon and will continue to be on for tomorrow morning. We were totally expecting it to be pretty rough and it's just confirmed our now educated suspicions. It's almost like no road can throw us now. Bring it on!

Aktobe was a good rest stop. We did absolutely nothing and didn't set foot outside of the hotel grounds other than to go to the supermarket while we were there, and that doesn't worry me one iota. We were just too tired to go walkies around the place and figured a good rest was in order. It proved to be a good plan of attack because, despite a crappy sleep last night thanks to a tiny, uncomfortable bed, we still feel on top of the world and have loads of energy.

On our way out of Aktobe today we ended up smack in the middle of a market place. Oops, took a wrong turn somewhere along the line. We got out of that shamozzle but got an interesting look at the backstage of the markets as we had to sit and wait for trucks to reverse into the tiniest of spaces so their goods could be unloaded. Mad, organised chaos.

Graeme is our cook tonight which is wonderful. He's whipping up sausages, eggs and tomato with some bread to mop up the runny egg yolks. Tasty stuff.

Photos & 360’s

Photos: https://picasaweb.google.com/twomagadan/AlmatayToAktobe?authkey=Gv1sRgCIjNn9ez7Y6OXg#

360’ Panoramas are available on the left hand side of the page in the Useful Links section.

I’ll probably put together a video a bit later. We’ve had a good rest and we’re going to fuel up and hit the road. Volgograd one week we think!? Exciting times!

Couldn't sea it?!

200KM south of Aktobe which is exciting. We did 500KM today which is amazing, on brilliant roads.

We went to Aral to see the Aral sea. We'll, we couldn't see it. Like the pun? We'd heard that they were allowing it to refill, but it hasn't filled enough yet to be visible from the town.
After lunch, quite dispondant at how rough, slow and unreliable the roads have being, I crawled into the back. I was thinking OMG it's rough, imagine being in one of these fitted out as an ambulance with a broken leg. It would be relentless agony. Then, like a slap in the face I realised that this once WAS a NSW ambulance, and no doubt people had been in here with broken limbs in agony, bouncing along being shot with painkillers. Weird eh! Then I got to the realisation that it's entirely possible that someone could have died in this car. wo000ah, not everyone can say that about their car! Clearly that sort of thing doesn't worry me as I proceeded to fall asleep for maybe half an hour. I woke in a different place both mentally and physically as Cassie was humming along at 100kph on a brilliant, signposted, well funded road. Then I remembered on the map, we were due to cross into a different administrative division, like a state.

We washed hair in a river this afternoon which was a welcome treat. That, combined with having done 500KM today has lifted my spirits considerably. We might end up spending a night in Aktobe just to have a wash and stock up again.
Tonight's dinner is spaghetti with finely chopped bacon and pasta sauce.

Yep, I agree this post is a bit boring, but it was also to capture our location as I still suspect the Spot isn't working.

Position: 12-08-25 18:36:41 +0600 +0000
http://maps.google.com/maps?&ll=50.05531,59.68636&q=50.05531,59.68636&z=16
#END

Golden dunes

Cassie:
As usual, an update on today's road conditions. As I had feared, the roads seem to be getting worse and worse the further west we head. There's less of the lovely tar roads now but the dirt roads are due to us being diverted off the tar roads as they work on them. At one point we hit a bump in the road so hard that the car got knocked out of gear! We're back to that hey Kazakhstan? I was hoping we'd left all those sorts of roads back in Siberia and Mongolia. Oh well, so far it's all easy going in comparison to the roads we've travelled on during this trip. Just a matter of rolling with it and taking the bumps in our stride, we'll get there.

Tomorrow we'll be going through Aral and will stop to find the "port" of the Aral Sea. Hopefully when we find that we'll be able to see all those fishing boats that were stranded and left to rust in the sand. It'll be cool to walk around and have a look at them, get some photos.

We met and chatted with some Czech Republic guys at a petrol station today. There were four of them in two Land Rovers who'd come through Ukraine, Russia and into Kazakhstan the same way we'll be going. They were on their way to Almaty and asked us if there was anything worth seeing in this country from the way we'd come. Hmmm, interesting. Perhaps we aren't the only tourists here that are feeling a little bit underwhelmed? I gave them a couple of ideas that we didn't do because of sickness and not being bothered taking 2-3 days out of our way to see. They were the Singing Dunes and Charyn Canyon. I also told them about the mausoleum we saw in Turkestan. It's worth seeing, even though it is devoid of any interesting cultural items and full of scaffolding inside and out due to the construction. They seemed thankful that there was something to see and told us that the road from Aktobe to Atyrau is awful. Hopefully it's no worse than anything else we've experienced on this trip.

Today we've seen beautiful golden sand dunes. Our camp happens to be amongst these golden beauties but we've had to pick an area that has some vegetation growing on the dunes as it's quite windy. Once that wind picks up in the more sandy areas it's like getting sandblasted! Today we've been through a few small whiteouts which was pretty cool. At one point we had to stop the car briefly (only very briefly just in case someone was coming up behind us!) because we couldn't see an inch in front of the windscreen. It's awesome to watch the sand drift across the road at points. Thankfully today hasn't been as hot. We were concerned how we were going to cool the car down enough for us to sleep without being able to open the windows because of the sand in the air. That hasn't been any problem thanks to our choice of camp. The sand in the atmosphere does make for a spectacular sunset. The sky is starting to glow bright orange as I'm typing this.

Again, the Spot message doesn't seem to have gotten out so we've put our location in this blog post instead.


Position: 12-08-24 20:37:27 +0600 +0000
http://maps.google.com/maps?&ll=46.38806,61.90323&q=46.38806,61.90323&z=16

Don't tap on the glass

Our Spot location message does not seem to have come through, so the position info is below. I can't remember which country, but Kazakhstan may have been the one country where coverage by Globalstar was a bit limited. Roads for the most part today have been brilliant.

That bright dot in our photo of our camp tonight is actually the sun. We are fortunate to have a cloudy afternoon. We've stopped early to take full advantage of this rare opportunity.

Today we went to a mosque at Turkestan which was alright. Can you hear the excitment in my voice?! lol nah it was actually pretty cool, but the mosque was under repair so the signature blue domes have scaffolding all over them and the rooms are very much empty. A family wanted very much to have our picture taken with them. Again weird to think that we're on someones phone somewhere. I'm pretty sure facebook would have enough biometric data from photos that I'm in, to match me to photos across the world? Isn't that how facebook works? After the nice encounter with the family, I waved to a little girl that looked back to us. She promptly stuck out her tongue and walked away. Oh well, you win some, you loose some.I also scored another Long Way Round photo.
We had lunch at a nearby cafe which served 'kazakh kebab' - too good to pass up we thought. They only had enough stock for one, so we just got one... thank goodness. It was a big piece of bread like a rodini, four lamb/goat cutlets/riblets, all smokey BBQ like they had been stewing in their own juices all day. Oh my they were good. plus a salad. The young girl had a hankering to practice her english on us which is lovley, but we want to practice Kazakh. In all honesty, we've been speaking Russian as everyone either assumes we're Russian, or that makes up the vast majority of spoken word.

The title of tonight's post is a reference from Seinfeld, nothing more. Tim Watley, recruits guests at his parties to perform jobs in order for the party to run smoothly. Examples include, DJ'ing, making sure people don't put drinks on the speakers, managing coats etc. This one party, Jerry was in charge of not letting people tap on the aquarium glass. Look it up on Youtube.

Position: 12-08-23 18:37:44 +0600 +0000
http://maps.google.com/maps?&ll=44.67855,65.96228&q=44.67855,65.96228&z=16
#END

Thank you's

Hey all - Thanks for all the kind comments. We treat this blog as much as a diary for us as we do as a bit of fun for you guys, so don't be alarmed when we post something less than positive.
Thanks so much to:
Kerry - those are all brilliant tips - Your generosity and wisdom are boundless, traits your son has inherited thanks to you. I think we are still enjoying the 'Gerchina' name. Would you believe I hadn't pictured it as a person, just as our big white whale of a car, but your description sits well.
Martin - Cheers, great to hear you're reading along. We often think of your adventures through this area and sometimes think how grateful we are to have shelter and resources at our finger tips in the form of the car. The flipside of this is that the car distances you from the people, whereas as a cyclist, you're right in it. In all seriousness, I think a considerable part of our 'frosty' experience comes no doubt from our limited exposure with these people compared to Russia/Mongolia. If we only have a few exposures, and they have mostly been bad, the 'bad exposure' average is higher than if we'd had many more experiences. In Russia/Mongolia we'd be meeting 10 people a day, here it's been lucky to be one.
Nora - Cheers, save us some cold air in a jar will you?
Mum D - Thank you and your lovely friends who are full of advice. Their kindness towards us is no doubt a result of genoristy returned to you. uTheir abundance alone is proof of your solid charachter.

Chris (from the other day) - Thanks brother. Nah certainly not sacrificing quorn to anything here. That lighting a fire idea kicks arse. If it wasn't so unbearably hot I would. I also have some plants that need identifying and I thought of you...

Warren - nope, time is money, gotta keep moving! Someone's gotta pay your wage! lol thank you however.

Just to clarify to those reading, we've been fine all day Wednesday, drinking and eating like horses again. All back to normal.

Another day in KZ

Graeme:
haha oh well some cool stuff to talk about today.
We got smart and started as late as possible today. Maybe 0830-0900. Just when it was too hot to lay in bed. Yesterday evening was wasted as we were stopped two hours too early in daylight and heat terms. Today we stopped just before sun down and although it's still hot, we didn't get sunburnt relaxing or cooking. The flies were atrocious too! We've really enjoyed today. Perhaps it's getting the distance behind us, but either way it's been good fun.

Some BRILLIANT roads today. They are laying huge dual carriageway concrete roads. They will be terrific in about a year. It was like this for the majority of today's drive but because it's still under construction, it means jumping on, then back off it continually where elements are incomplete, like new bridges etc. Woah, is that carriageway word really old!? like horse and carriage or are they just saying it will carry double? Another side effect of it being under construction, is all of it is 50kph speed limit. From here on, the names will be obscured to cover my ass:

We found the speed limit when we, in a long line of traffic were all pulled over by the Maurice. Of the five or so vehicles stopped, we were the last to be processed. Rather than processing us at the drivers door, I was indicated to follow the officer to the other side of the road to a waiting Maurice car. There was a young fellow in the back seat leaning over the parcel shelf doing speed checks. Ahh, maybe we were caught speeding? Sure enough, after a few clicks through on the camera the young police officer presented me with a view of the camera. Sure enough, a photo of our car visible maybe 5mm high on the 1" screen with a few tiny on-screen-displays that I didn't have time nor opportunity to read. The Maurice officer in the front pulled a laminated card out of the glove box and pointed to the infringement section that was the 40kph and over speeding bracket... the top one, with 32000Tenge ($214USD) plus some other stuff which I assumed were demerit points etc. I was a bit
perplexed because we hadn't seen a single speed sign other than at sections where there was active road works. Oh well I thought, stupid me. But again, when five people are pulled over in one go, that makes me think perhaps I was not the only one who got it wrong. He flipped behind the infringement notices to a blank page and wrote very slowly $100. OH AWESOME!!!! I was giddy with excitement at the prospect of my first 'Unnoficial fine'! Cocky as hell, I grabbed his pen and crossed straight through it, rewrote my counter offer of $50. In retrospect he had me, as he had my passport and more importantly all of the irreplaceable car documentation. He gave the subtlest of nods through his face concealing aviator sunglasses to indicate that was OK. Still thrilled with the experience we were buying I went back to the car to get our USD, none of which we had used this whole trip. As we counted out $50 I thought, gawdarnit, I should have offered him $20 at how quickly he accepted t
he $50. Oh well, I returned to their car and delicately placed the notes on the pad and he was careful not to touch them. They handed my documentation back and I evaporated to the other side of the road again as if I never was there.

I was cacking myself for about 5 minutes on how awesome that experience was we just bought. We'd done over 16,000KM and this was the first time! Cassie was not impressed as you can imagine. Only one or two posts back I said how suspicious the speed signage was in this country. Well, it meant we did 50kph all day which blew as the roads were stunning and it meant been overtaken continually as only two of the four lanes were open in most sections.

I'm going to stretch and say the locals driving here is worse that the worst Russian driving. I know you've probably heard it all before, but these mob are the pits. The lane splitting is atrocious, pushing you into an embankment or off the road as a result of deliberatly poor overtaking choices. The question stands, if we were not veering off the road the make space available, what would happen?!
It's difficult to split memories as they all seem to merge into one, but one near accident today was memorably pointless. A stream of traffic, all doing 20, bumper to bumper. About 3 cars ahead, one ass clown goes flying up the inside round a corner as fast as his heap of crap would go, and swerves as hard as possible to miss an oncoming car, with the flow on effect being pushing another two cars off the road. It's staggering how little we're alarmed by it now. At home, if someone is a bit premature in use of an overtaking lane, you get pissy. Here, the fact that a school bus overtaking a truck, over a hill doesn't even raise a sweat any more. We were thinking also, what do we do if someone does have an accident? That might actually be one of those 'leave it to the locals' scenarios if there are plenty around.

It's weird to talk about roads and driving, but then again, it's all we did again today. Cafe stop was good. Saw a new estate of houses... 500 of them, all mint green.
Roundabouts here, the person IN the roundabout gives way. erm. In positive Graeme fasion, I tried for hours to think of why that's better. As far as I can tell, it's not. The whole system grinds to a halt if the roundabout gets full.

As we're ending the end of our driving for today, we had to stop at a fork in the road to check our direction. It wasn't just your usual left/right fork because the sign included a roundabout and a lane coming towards us. We were honked by a truck in a 'stupid tourist', laughing kind of way and I thought, the jokes on you mate... you live here!

On the road again

Graeme:
Checking out of the hotel this morning, I asked the receptionist 'Can you drink the tap water? to which his reply was "nooo no no no you can't drink the tap water, you need to drink bottled water here". Oh cool - that information would have saved us a miserable and expensive experience. In Chita, there were signs at the taps saying don't drink the water, and provided four bottles of water for you.

As a result of the illness I'm feeling a bit fragile. Longing for the consistency and reliability of home. Reliable food, water, bathrooms and healthcare. Although we have not needed public healthcare, the thought of relying on it is something I sincerely hope to avoid. In a moment like this, it's easy to get down. It's still crazy hot which leaves us annoyed that we're too tired to drive, yet it's too hot to relax or sleep.

I can't help but wonder if we're a bit over the trip, or is this just typical of half way blues. Surely it's wrong to travel through a country simply for the purpose of 'getting it over with'? I just hope that our high spirits return and we don't waste the time we have left by feeling miserable.

I'll pull out the stops for once and say what I really think. The police here are pissy noncontributing zeros. On a lone stretch of road there will be a speed sign, way too low for the road conditions only to find a police man with a laser speed gun - nice! Every town has a checkpoint entirely devoid of process, but you do a courtesy stop to avoid trouble. If you do get stopped, there is no interest or excitement in where you are from or where you're going, they just ask for a piece of documentation that they can't read, purely to justify their miserable existence and then send you on your way without so much as a smile.

I'm going to even go as far to say the people as a whole are not very good. EVERY time I've tried to make eye contact with a smile, is instantly snubbed with a turn of cheek. The only people any good were the hotel staff, but then again they are paid to smile and nod. I'm first to admit, I might have it wrong. Their culture may deem it invalid to smile here, or nod, but I don't have to think 'oh goodie! Isn't it awesome how we got snobbed again! this culture is so amazing!' Other countries to your north and east are much nicer and not so inconsiderate. Perhaps we're seeing another reason why people don't come here? Initially I just thought it was the roads, but perhaps the people are a big factor in it. I don't think I'm just ranting because I'm hot and tired, I'm ranting because it's only now that my inhibitions are down.

I am genuinely excited at seeing if western KZ'ers are nicer than easterners.
Onwards!
We did 319KM today, 7KM over quota - NICE! And that was only half a day!

Cassie:
We've both been really sick these past couple of days, as Graeme mentioned, most likely from the water in Almaty. Either that or we just caught a bug. We're not quite 100% yet, but I'm sure the next 24-48hrs will see us back on track with our health.

It's so hot here. The past few days have been well over 30 degrees celsius and there's still no shade to speak of. Today we saw a temperature gauge that read 37 degrees. It's just like our trip through the outback of Australia almost a couple of years back now. It was terribly boring in parts and bloody hot because we had to do it during the Christmas holidays when we both had the opportunity for time off. We both said we would never do that trip in summer again. Unfortunately, I didn't count on the tail end of the Kazakhstan summer being just as hot. I asked the concierge at the hotel what the temperature range was during the year in Kazakhstan. He said 40+ in summer and down to well below -20 in winter with snow (in Almaty at least). Wow, I had no idea the temperature ranges were so drastic. If they get snow here, I'm very surprised at the extremely hot temperatures at this end of summer. It's autumn here in a couple of weeks and it's still nearly hitting 40 degrees. Finger
s crossed the temperature cools down enough for us to sleep tonight. We need a good night's rest! I'm envying all of you at home going through winter. And yes, I know Canberra's experienced the coldest winter in 50 years but to me that sounds like bliss! Call me crazy, but I love winter.

Unfortunately, because we were so sick we didn't really see any of Almaty other than what we managed to walk through on Sunday afternoon and what we drove through to get in there and out again. It seems nice enough. Seems to be lots of nice places to eat at and go shopping but we didn't get a chance to do either of those things.

We're on our way to Shymkent and may or may not get there tomorrow, depends on what the roads are like. We were fortunate to have maybe 250km of normal, smooth roads today. Then from there on to Turkestan where there's a temple we'd like to see. From then on it's just a matter of driving across the country to the border. The words we've both used to describe our feeling of this country is "distinctly underwhelmed". Russia and Kazakhstan represent the biggest chunk of our kilometres and time on this trip because they're just massive countries. It's unfortunate that they also have some of the worst roads.

There's four weeks left on our temporary importation for the car for Russia. We've estimated another two weeks from here to get across Kazakhstan which leaves us a comfortable gap of maybe a week to get across the other side of Russia in time before the temporary importation expires. This also has to include a hotel stay at some point in Russia because we have to register our passports at a hotel to ensure there's no problems when we exit. It's feeling a bit like work at the moment and I'm sure being unwell hasn't helped our attitude towards this part of the trip.

Let's hope we still have enough time and energy left after all of this to enjoy Europe.

Oh and another thing, we saw horse meat for sale in the supermarket. The weirdest part was, we think it was boy horse parts vacuum sealed in a packet. Ummm, ew.

Position: 12-08-21 18:47:46 +0600 +0000
http://maps.google.com/maps?&ll=43.45624,73.65993&q=43.45624,73.65993&z=16

Video

I forgot about the dash cam footage of the Altai region and KZ roads.
We’re just packing up ready to leave on our 3144KM trip across Kazakhstan. Here is a link if you’re interested: https://maps.google.com.au/maps?saddr=Almaty,+Almaty+Province,+Kazakhstan&daddr=Kotyayevka,+Atyrau+Province,+Kazakhstan&hl=en&ll=46.331758,66.291504&spn=8.60193,21.643066&sll=43.255058,76.912628&sspn=0.567097,1.352692&geocode=FRIFlAId9JeVBCmry8UWfW6DODF2bZitj2ZEPQ%3BFSYsxgIdbT3oAilNMMXOV5OoQTEVivzUBHoWbw&oq=kotyayev&t=h&mra=ls&z=6

We’re both feeling pretty good after breakfast, we’ll duck to a supermarket and hopefully a map store, then we’ll be on the road. We estimate it’ll take us two weeks to Volgograd – wish us luck.

Mobile post

Just a quick post to keep you all updated. We went out to dinner Sunday night. Afterwards Cassie felt full, but by half an hour of returning that full feeling became nauseous and she proceeded to vomit no less than 10 times before dawn. We were both so tired. I felt ok, but I had a meal with considerable quantities of chilli in it which resulted in less than perfect output. After breakfast where we both hardly ate a thing, we thought wise to replenish our fluids with some of those orange effervescent tablets. I drank mine in one go and chased it with another full glass of water, but Cassie feeling fragile, sipped hers very slowly, having only had 1/4 by midday. By mid day I was feeling very seedy but unable to vomit anything. I ventured to the car to get a known good bottle of water. By the evening I had a massive spew and felt immediately better, but still too tender to drink anything. I'm still really dehydrated and as a result really sore. I've drank maybe 500ml since my spew but it's only a drop in the ocean to how much I lost. Cassie is feeling much better but still tender, so we'll leave here today. After all that, we think it was a result of the hotel water. Cassie had some before we went out and It wasn't until I drank any that I became sick. It's felt an epic waste of time and money staying here, but no doubt this would be miserable beside a road somewhere...
Sorry for all the gross details, but without them, there is no story.

360’s and photos

Viewing on the PC means you miss out on seeing the texture of the earth, so viewing on a handheld device may be more immersive. You do have to wait a few moments for the pictures to become clearer.You may prefer to click ‘Flat view’ on the top right hand corner.

~20KM from Semey: http://360.io/mh8R5

~50KM from Semey at our ‘bomb site’ camp spot: http://360.io/sj7Kt2

-Mid way between Semey and Almatay: http://360.io/CunyXt and http://360.io/kV6AAW

-Kafe: http://360.io/KzabuN

~250KM from Almatay: http://360.io/EV6pBw

That ‘oughta do it, I told you I went overboard.

Photos: https://picasaweb.google.com/twomagadan/BarnaulToAlmatay?authkey=Gv1sRgCK_71ZH897HTdg

Reply to comment from Mike and Sue Broadbent:
You may find the post where we arrived in Magadan here: http://twomagadan.blogspot.com/2012/07/two-in-magadan.html You also may also find dates either side of this this by choosing the ‘July’ month on the left hand side.

Nat Geo? BBC?

Cassie:
A few times on this trip we've been asked if we're with National Geographic or the BBC which is hilarious. That would be awesome, but alas no, we are not adventure journalists. Just adventure wannabes.

Thanks for the info on Semey, Denise. I had read that somewhere but totally forgot while we were there that it was the place they tested nuclear bombs. Well, we definitely didn't eat any of the dirt at our campsite so I'm sure we'll be right. Looking back, I wonder if it was some kind of old gravel pit for roadworks. Still not sure, but would be interesting to see it on Google Earth.

Today has been great. It's only lunch time but we've stopped for a bit of a rest. It's been a more interesting day today. The scenery hasn't really changed which is weird because we're so used to the scenery changing hourly as we drive, but it hasn't changed for the past few days since we've been in Kazakhstan. We did see snow-capped mountains in the distance. Can you believe that!? I obviously have no idea about this country because I did not expect to see snow-capped mountains. Our altitude is ~600m but we're not sure how high those mountains are in the distance.

There's a bit of farming going on in this part of the country. Cattle, goats, sunflowers, wheat and some other type of crop farm but I can't figure out what they're growing. MumC you would love all the fields of sunflowers! We got some pictures for you.

We've stopped outside a town where we had lunch at a cafe. We're now resting in the shade of the car with doors and windows open to let the breeze through. It's pretty hot out there in the sun and again, with no trees to stop under, we're very thankful for the shade of the car. Graeme's having a nap and I'm obviously typing up this edition of the blog.

Late this morning we stopped at a little town to have a break. We decided just to get a tea or something at a cafe, because it's a good excuse to stop. We pulled up at a small, glaringly pink building with a blue roof. There were lovely flowers out the front and it looked quite cute. We walked in and it was very apparent that cleanliness wasn't high on their list but catching the multitude of flies was. There was old fashion fly paper full of flies on the table we were to sit at and the sugar bowls had quite a few flies having a great ol' time in them. Oh well. We ordered tea and sat down to await what would come out. First of all, the young girl brought out two cups, two teaspoons, a little jug of warm milk, a bowl of cream (what the!?), a small plate of biscuits and lollies (sure, ok), and a box - yes a box - of bread. Hmmmm, we were wondering what the hell do we do with all of this, and ummm, where's the tea? We thought, oh well, this must be how they have their tea, just
milk and whatever cream stuff this is in the bowl. We put a teaspoon of the cream into the cups and poured in the warm milk. Was a bit gross but we thought we really should drink it so we're not being impolite. Five minutes through struggling with this dilemma, out comes the girl again with a pot of tea and a pot of boiling water. We both burst out laughing after she walked away. What a couple of western tools we were in this place! So, we ended up with tea afterall and we're assuming the cream was for dipping the biscuits and bread into? Still not sure, and we still sound like we have no idea what happened. We couldn't stop giggling the whole time. It was a great stop, thoroughly enjoyed it!

Due to the distinct lack of trees and decent shrubbery in this country, it's very difficult to do a bush pee. So unfortunately I often have to use the public latrines. "Latrine" is polite for "poo splattered hut". When we stopped to get fuel this morning I went to use the "latrine" outside (no indoor toilets round these parts). The human crap and urine dotted along the path leading to it like land mines was my first clue that the "latrine" must be horrible. How bad must it be that I'm dodging crap along the path TO the toilet!? Not even the locals want to use this one. Yikes. Curiosity got the better of me, I just had to know what was so terrible that people were crapping on the path. Woah nelly! It was horrible. Thankfully the door was wide open so I didn't have to touch it to observe it. There was literally poo splattered up the walls and covering the floor. What are they eating!? Aw it was horrid. I dodged my way through the land mine path again back to the car and Graeme
said, alright then, I had better go too. Ummm, no you don't want to. We laughed and laughed. Everyone loves a bit of toilet humour. Needless to say, there's a small tree up the road from that place with my name under it.

I also realised today that a lot of the town names in the road atlas we bought in Semey don't match the spelling on the signs. That makes it a bit difficult. It's almost as if the road atlas is in Kazakh and the road signs are in Russian, or vice versa.


Graeme:
Heaps of Mazda's in this country. I can't figure out why!? Maybe the vintage of the cars is somehow related to the end of the soviet era? The distribution of cars would be:
10% Ladas
40% Mazdas (626, 626 v2, 626v3, the one that the eunos was. Hatch back, sedan, wagon and family mover. No new Mazda 1/2/3/6's though!? Every variant you can imagine, but it's gotta be mazda)
20% Audis (Weirdly only the 20 year old models)
20% Mercedees
10% All Others

Yes - the cafe was a laugh. It's so funny how quick we tried to look normal by combining the seemingly incompatible ingredients and how quick we were content with the results. Thankfully there was no one around, we would have looked mighty weird.
Sorry to disapoint, but we've hardly taken any photos and videos. Hopefully the ones we have took will give a fair indicator of why. It's just that there's not been anything to take photos of! I've been playing with the camera of a night, shooting stars, roads etc while it's cool and still. I've taken some more 360's (my totally favorite new thing) which will bore the socks off you, but oh well. They do give an amazing perspective of time and place. No longer do you look at a static photo any more, you see the ground beneath you, the sky above, and the tumbleweeds in the behind you. I can't wait to upload some to get your feedback.

I changed the fuel filter a couple of nights ago. It was pretty dirty I guess. I drained most of the contents I could into a clear cup. About the top 2mm looked purplish like water (that's if diesel isn't as dense as water, I can't remember!?), followed by a cup of dirty brown diesel, then half a teaspoon of silty rust. Naturally my first reaction is 'Oh the car is going great now' but in reality nothing would have changed :)

I guess I underestimated how much digital media we would collect because the laptop is now close to full. In Vladivostok I bought an 500GB external hard disk purely to backup the laptop, figuring that the laptop's hard disk is 500GB, so why would I need more space? The backup hard disk stays in my back pack, whereas the laptop stays in the car or at hotels. I suppose I've got to buy another external HDD and store stuff on there and hope it doesn't fail or get stolen? They are not expensive, but it means putting the second half of our holiday's eggs (digital media) in only one basket which I don't like the sound of. I might start uploading the better photos in higher quality photos to picasaweb as a rudimentary online backup. The video's are way too large to backup online, but then again the best bits are likely to be in our Youtube videos anyway. Anything else would just be a waste of space... like today's example: Busting out to 'I said I loved you but I lied' by Michael Bol
ton

Today's been darn hot which is cool (lol @ english language), but a decent wind cools you down real fast provided you're out of the sun. We've got ~250K to Almatay which we will probably knock over tomorrow. We'd done 200KM by lunch time today. As a bit of fun, I googled the existance of a McDonalds in Almatay - evidently not, but there is KFC and Pizzahut. Immediately I didn't feel like either of them, but I suspect I could be swayed by salty chips.

Tonight's camp (pictured) is atop beautiful 'fields of gold'. Kazakhstan is looking much more interesting today. Not so flat, dry and dead. Today's driving has passed numerous mountains, blue fast flowing creeks with aquaducts, towns and generally more life. The roads have been much better too. We dropped a bit of tyre pressure which is making a positive difference.
The other picture is me dunking biscuits in cream - I'm not sure if that was what the locals do?

Road rage

.not driver rage, rage at the actual road. It's RUBBISH! We were treated to 50KM of bliss today. Super wide, super smooth, 110kph road. The memory of which is shattered by 350 kilometers of miserable, bone shattering, hate filled crap. Call me slow, but I think I've figured out why no one else goes through Kazakhstan, these roads are so rubbish that I couldn't tell you if we drove through forests or open plains. Ugh - so over it! and only another 4500km of it to go! We're ~1/8th through distance wise.

I said last night that we would have an early start and cover some distance, well a more fruitful approach was starting early, stopping for a good hour for lunch, then back at it. It's like two half days. We stopped at just before 5PM but realistically it's still too early to stop as it's hot and windy. Oh well, better to be hot and bothered than drive till you snap.

Tonight's dinner is some kind of beef cubes, mashed potato (peas corn and cruton variety) and gravy.

We were helped by a lovely empty-nester couple who's kids have moved to London. They called their son to translate to us. Effecively we were given directions to Almatay. Through translation confusion we didn't get his number, even though he said get it from my dad so you can call if you have any trouble. It would have been nice to meet them in London - oh well. They drove 30KM out of town to show us where the turnoff was. They may well have been going that way anyway, but it was still kind. Our map is just a basic street atlas, the kind you'd get at a service station. It's getting the job done, but not knowing our exact location on it, combined with no street signs is making navigation difficult... even here! I did buy a Khazakstan physical map online but even with three plus months to deliver it they didn't come through. I bet it still hasn't arrived actually. I bought a digital version online from this same mob and thier website broke three times over the course of a month.
ugh.

Dinner was fantastic and hit the spot real good. Tomorrow will no doubt yield much of the same, but at least it won't come as a surprise.
Cassie is like a baby giraffe. I can't beleive how many times shes hit her head, elbows, knees and feet in the car. Although I'm taller, I obviously haven't confused the interior of our car for a jumping castle. What's weirder is that has just resigned to the fact she will bump into things, rather than changing her behaviour. What's that about?!

Position: 12-08-17 18:13:41 +0600 +0000
http://maps.google.com/maps?&ll=47.18012,80.68827&q=47.18012,80.68827&z=16

Kazakhstan

Cassie:
Our border crossing this morning took one hour total. There was no customs clearance for the car or us to be done on either the Russian or Kazakhstan side. So all we had to do was get our passports/visas stamped out of Russia then into Kazakhstan and we were done! We were in Kazakhstan by 10am Russian time, 9am local time. Woah! We got to the border just before 9am anticipating yet another whole day of border crossing. The border back into Russia should be an interesting one because I think we need to get a barge over the Volga River. Anyway, that should be in a couple of weeks' time, in the meantime we've got a new country to explore.

So far we've visited the city of Semey today. It's quite a large city and we spent a good deal of time there to have some lunch, get some local currency from an ATM, and a road atlas which isn't the best in the world but will hopefully get us around ok. And we had a good ol' fashion waffle icecream cone on our walk back to the car. It's fairly warm here today and the sun's shining so it was a nice treat.

For the second time this trip we feel like the land literally changed at the border. The first time was when we went from Russia into Mongolia. This morning on our way to the Russian border we were driving through grassy land with trees dotted here and there (seemingly most of it had been cleared for farming). When we crossed the border into Kazakhstan we noticed that sure, there were still open fields that were being farmed and trees here and there but somehow it appeared more barren and the ground turned from dirt to sand. The roads have been asphalt so far but they're pretty rubbish. You wouldn't want to drive any faster than 70-80km/h. So with almost 5,000km to traverse across this country it's again going to be slow going. I also suspect that we'll hit sand/dirt roads soon enough, particularly as we head further west.

We stopped really early today because we're both pretty tired. It would be nice to go home for a week, rest up and sleep well then come back and continue. For some reason, resting at a hotel is different to resting at home. Our camp is off the highway sheltered from view by an area that's been dug out. Not sure if it's natural or manmade. Either way, as the sun gets lower it should provide us with some shade too. There's no trees in this area and the ground is very dry. Again we're very thankful for the solar shades we can put up on the car windows to block out the sun.

Our next main stop in Kazakhstan will be Almaty. It's interesting how much english is spoken here in Kazakhstan so far. The Russian border guard this morning spoke quite good english and he told us not to expect any english at the Kazakhstan border, or in fact in Kazakhstan itself. That really didn't worry us. Obviously it makes it super easy for us when people speak english but it has never been much of a problem if neither them nor us can speak each other's language. Funny thing was, the first Kazakhstan border guard we had to liaise with spoke fairly good english and was so excited to be able to speak it. He was so helpful. Then when we got into Semey we haven't had any trouble communicating with the locals because they spoke either bits of English or Russian. Again, that may change as we leave the major cities and head further west, but it still won't be a problem. All the way through Mongolia the only two words we knew were "hello" and "goodbye" and strangely that was en
ough. However, we don't know a single word of Kazakh because I couldn't find a Kazakhstan phrase book and ran out of time to order one online before we left. It should make for some interesting miming and hand gestures to explain what we'd like.

We're now 4hrs behind home time. An advantage of traveling overland rather than flying across all these timezones is that there's no jetlag. Quite the opposite, we gain an hour every few days or so as we set our clocks back an hour. It'll all catch up with us on our way back home, but oh well, at least we'll have time to recover at home.

Graeme:
I've just been introduced to a new application for my phone which takes 360 degree panoramas - thanks David. Oh how I regret not having this application earlier. There have been so many breathtaking locations which can never be captured with just one photo. Creating one perfectly is a bit tricky, and I have botched a few of them so far, but the last one I got of our camp today is pretty darn good. Capturing 360' panorama's isn't anything particularly new, but with this application, no longer do you not need a special tripod head to capture it, but moreso, replaying the image on a handheld device is so intuitive. You just pan around as if you were there! Look up, it looks up, turn left, it turns left - all as if you were taking the photo yourself. Hopefully this adds another level of depth to our journey. You guys will be sick of them by the second one, but hey, you don't have to look at them ;-)

As Cassie said, the border crossing was seamless today. I was concerned with it's ease and clarified with the border guard that this would pose no problem whatsoever when reentering Russia - 'nope, none whatsoever, it's just because we don't have facilities here for sniffer dogs etc, otherwise it's all normal' - orrite. I sure hope so.
I have a perspective on Cassie's topic of why hotel rest isn't as fruitful as home rest. I think when you're paying for accommodation in a brilliant place that you'll never be again, watching TV seems like a waste of time and money. So you go out. You wash clothes, you upload videos, you Skype people. It's all gotta get done.

Yeah, fuel is less in KZ - 57 cents a litre today - Dammit! As we've come west, the cost of food however has felt like it's increased. As you know, previously we'd both be fed for $12 now it's more like $30. Lunch today was very ordinary and it cost $21 It's not that it's particularly expensive, but when it's rubbish, just like at home you feel jippped.

Oh and these roads are rubbish... deceptively rubbish. It looks normal and lovley, with a few sets of skid marks the only clue as to what's in store. The undulations in the road surface build up in some kind of rhythmic waveform that compound one after another. One bump's ok, then the next two have you out of your seat. Very weird stuff. Going slow is the only cure and the trucks are the best proof of that. They go slow... real slow. Like 20kph.
I'm excited to be here, but I think the roads have come as a suprise. 200k/day might be the max again. Due to the heat of the day, I think we'll be starting earlier and finishing earlier. OK cool, I'm off to change the fuel filter. It's funny how they seem to tighten themselves. When I installed it with only one hand, it was only justtt compressing the seal, still quite loose. Oh well.

Responses to comments

Hello to the anonymous in Barnaul. Yes we loved it very much. Thank you

Hello to the Canadian couple, it's a shame to hear you've had gearbox trouble. Can we help in some way?

Also, we crossed the KZ border with ease and are having lunch in Semey.

Yep

We're camped 10KM outside the Kazakhstan border, between a busy rail line and the highway. The noise is OK now but will no doubt result in fairly ordinary sleep.

Barnaul was completely awesome. Super clean, no traffic hasstles, never once heard a horn. We did a heap of grocery shopping this morning, but still unable to find cordial. I don't know the cost of fuel in Kazakhstan so way we filled up in Russia at around 70 cents a litre. How can you loose if you're paying 70 cents a litre?! We figure that with fuel and food we can get a long way in case there is problems with ATM's or banks etc.
We're not stressed about the border crossings any more, they are just a process after all. It seems to take the stress our of it for us by starting the border crossing first thing of a morning. The only thing we want to avoid is crossing on a Friday. That way if anything goes wrong, we should be free by the weekend one way or another. I've heard some of Kazakhstan's borders are 24 hours, but even after ten minutes research we were unable to determine which ones were. Hopefully the further we go west through europe, the more 24/7 they should become. We are a little bit surprised at how difficult it has been to find route's to the land borders. Most times we've stumbled on them. We just drove through a hovel of a town, and only through a few fluke turns we ended up on the main way to the border. It's mindblowing how you can bump through 10KM of potholes, what felt like 40 rail line crossings then bump up onto a brilliant tar highway without consideration that one sign to either
the border, or a town beyond it could be a huge help. I was 'chatting' with the fuel station lady and indicated we were heading to Kazakhstan (30KM away). I gestured a direction expecting a nod, but it was more like she'd never heard of it. Perhaps this is indicative of a bigger problem.
So far, the land border crossings have been chanced upon. The Russian side of the Altanbulag crossing into Mongolia, had a degree of confidence, provided by an incomplete but new multi-lanned highway. I guess they are holding off on signs until it's complete?. The Mongolian side we would never have found. Same with the other Tsagaannuur border, there was a main looking road, that disappeared into a fence that looks like it's been there for 60 years. Only goat tracks lead to the actual main road... WHY ARE THEY NOT LINKED? If you're going to build a compound in the middle of a road, surely you'd have to build a road around it?!

I'm quite excited at the prospect of entering another country. No doubt people from countries that have land borders are probably underwhelmed by this prospect, but as an Australian, we never get the opportunity to nip into another country before lunch.
We've been virtually mosquito free since Chita, but tonight there are little blighters which are transparent and full of blood - ugh gross.

Our rough route through Kazakhstan should be just shy of 5000KM and as follows:
Semey
Almatay
Turkistan
Atyrau

I'm torn between telling you what things we plan to do through the trip, or keeping surprises.

Anyway, night night.

Position: 12-08-15 21:06:48 +0700 +0000
http://maps.google.com/maps?&ll=51.35262,81.13089&q=51.35262,81.13089&z=16
#END

Barnaul Day 2

Our blog is lacking pictures, so I figured I’d pack it full this time ;-)

This was 30KM into Russia from Mongolia.

This was a cafe…

Abacus in use at grocery store in Altai – complete with EFTPOS

I thought I was struggling with the grass seeds at our last camp, but I think the dog came off worse

Town pride is back on the table – Barnaul

Our hotel

Complete with ‘Hookah Room’ which charges by the hour… Perhaps this was NOT lost in translation.

Everything gets a hiding on the roads we’ve been on. It’s nice to be going through our stock of spares. This should be our last service on this continent.

I made a point of grabbing this photo before I took it for a service. ‘256,700 Magadan’ is the kind of oil filter you want to hang on the wall of your garage! Sadly it’s gone now.

That reminds me, I’ve got to install extended diff breathers when I get home to stop this from happening. The oil from both diffs had water in them. The service cost $~250 which I initially was a bit pissy about, but then again, that did include the engine oil, rear diff oil and power steering fluid. I supplied the oil filter, air filter, front diff oil. It’s been so long since I’ve had to pay someone to change oil that it doesn’t feel like good value, no doubt it’s normal though. They greased all the universal joints which is also good. When we camp tomorrow night I’ll change the fuel filter. I didn’t really want them taking it off as it’s easy to be careless and damage the water float sensor on the bottom.
It’s less than a month since we were in Magadan – wow!

In the bath at the hotel, bleaching our water containers which no doubt have developed some gross contents. There are no outdoor taps here, so we will have to walk past reception twice trying to be inconspicuous with 20L water bottles.

Cassie:

On our walk down the main street of the city tonight, Lenina St (every Russian city we’ve been in has a Lenina St without fail) in search of dinner we came across a small group of teenage guys and heard one of them speaking english. We stopped and asked did we just hear them speaking english and sure enough, one of them said yes, that he was trying to teach his friends some english words. This guy was 18yo, heading to university in St Petersburg soon to study politics. He’s super interested in America and Australia and wants to live in Australia for a period of time after his studies. His english was perfect and he said our accent made it very easy for him to understand us. I told him his english is excellent and his accent is quite American. He was so happy to hear this because he loves America so much.

We asked him if he would recommend anywhere for us to have a bite to eat and he suggested a bar. So off we headed and ended up on the top floor of a modern building, took one step out of the elevator dressed in shorts, thongs and t-shirts and couldn’t get back in the elevator quickly enough! It was the most swankiest place I’ve ever set foot in and the hostess who greeted us as soon the elevator doors opened immediately looked at our clothing and footwear. I’m sure she was thinking how do I politely tell these idiots they can’t stay here!? We saved her (and us) the embarrassment and went down to the next floor to a restaurant/bar that was themed as a fire station. Cool! Call me corny, but I’m a sucker for themed restaurants. They’re a bit of harmless fun and a bit of a laugh. The waitress taking our order was dressed as a member of the emergency services personnel, our cutlery was delivered to our table in a miniature replica of an old school, timber water bucket as we sat near the front of an old fire engine truck. Yeah, you all know you secretly think that’s cool.

Anyway, it was actually one of the fanciest, tastiest meal we’ve had….ever! Seriously. There you go, don’t judge a corny themed restaurant by it’s cover.

We didn’t get a photo of our meal tonight, but here’s some culinary delights from Barnaul. Coffees, milkshake and apple strudel…all the healthy stuff really.

We did actually eat proper meals during our stay here, these were just to fill in the gaps! In fact, I think we may have over eaten yesterday, it was all so good! It’s pleasing to note that neither of us have either lost or gained weight during the trip. We weighed ourselves on the baggage scales at the last Russian border (as you do!).

Videos

These videos were huge, so it’s split into three. The first two are of the travel between Ulaanbaataar and Barnaul, which has been roughly split around Tsetserleg. The third video is more of a 4WD’ing video where Cassie crossed most of the Bokhmoron river. Some people have struggled to watch the videos because they keep stopping. Just a tip: Click play, then click pause. Go make a coffee while the little grey bar gets ahead of the circle down the bottom. Once it’s a good inch or so ahead, you should be able to hit play again without any trouble. For those who want a bigger screen video, click on the ‘YouTube’ button in the bottom right of the video to go watch it there.

Barnaul

Barnaul is quite the happening place. Very clean and no mayhem.

Cassie was first to have a shower, I’m about to go next, but we have to rush because the laundry lady will be arriving any second to pickup our bag of filthy laundry. Neither of us have had a hot shower since Chita – Seriously, I don’t normally smell, but I can’t stand even my own presence right now. In UB we only had a hobo bath which is never as good when it comes to cleanliness. Two and a bit weeks – very embarrassing. And a week since our river bath which again, doesn’t seem to break down the filth as well as hot water.

Photos: https://picasaweb.google.com/twomagadan/UBToBarnaul?authkey=Gv1sRgCMKPpZvXp5247gE

The three videos should be uploaded tonight so stay tuned.

100KM out of Barnaul

Drove for a bit today, good roads, beyond stupid drivers. So sick of them! Regardless of how high your spirits are in the morning, three wide on a two lane road gets you down by the end of the day. According to a book I just finished reading (ironically on Siberia):
-Russian man's average life expectancy is 59.
-Three and a half times as many people were dying in car accidents in Russia compared to Germany.
-Russian's consume twice the level of alcohol considered 'dangerous' by the World Health Organisation
-Russia's population is declining at a rate of 4% per year since 1993. In 8 years Russia's population will be below 100 Million

Spent all my time putting together video to share when we arrive at Barnaul tomorrow.
So far we have:
101 Cool photos ready to upload
10 minute video UB to Tes
~5 minute video Tes to Barnaul (Still compiling)
Altai is the Russian tourist mecca. It's nice to see tourism, the far eastern side of Russia sees no tourists it seemed.

"Back in the USSR"

Cassie:
Ok, so it's not called the USSR anymore, but we were trying to be clever by referencing a song title. Neither of us know the name of the person/band who sings it - can anyone shed any light? We're in the Altai region after crossing the Mongolian/Russia border yesterday afternoon. All up we estimate the border crossing took about 6 hours. You essentially have to cross two borders with each crossing which eats up the time. You have to exit one country and go through their bureaucracy then go to the next country's border to enter and go through their bureaucracy, all the while smiling and profusely thanking them at every separate stage for making your day hellish. Border crossings aren't hard, they're just long, tedious and boring. And when you're trying to cross on a Friday, stressful. I ended up having to fill out four customs forms at the Russian side because we made a "mistake" on the first ones (you need to fill out two customs forms - one original for them and one for us).
I say "mistake" in quotation marks because I filled it out exactly how the last Russian border wanted it completed, but it wasn't what this Russian border officer wanted to see. It was absolutely freezing at the border, had to be well below 10 degrees celsius and raining. At one stage the rain actually started to fall like snow! The wind had an awful bite to it too. I think our altitude at that point was around 2500m. All the border officers were in nice, heated sheds while all us plebs were lined up outside in the freezing cold rain and wind. It was like we were prisoners being punished as we're lining up for a bit of paper that would let us out past the high wire fences on probation, into "freedom". At the last office we had to line up at just before leaving the "compound" the lady was kind and half jokingly we stuck our hands and forearms through her window so that we could warm them. Thankfully she saw this as funny, it would've looked like we were trying to reach in an
d grab something from her desk. We were just desperate for warmth!

Anyway, we got through without any issues and the Mongolian exiting procedure was just as silly as the dance we had to do to get into the country.

Interesting story from yesterday morning, we nearly didn't make it to the Mongolian border. We got to the town of Tsagaannuur and headed in what we thought was the direction and out of nowhere a guy on a motorbike comes up beside us on the road gesturing for us to stop. Ok, hello, what's this. We were expecting some trouble if I'm honest because the town of Tsagaannuur looks like a rough and tough, dust bowl of a border town and we clearly stuck out as tourists heading to the border. He then proceeded to tell us in broken english that this is not the road to the border and that we should follow him and he will show us the way. Hmmm, I was a bit scared if I'm honest with you. We hadn't even driven 10km and I sensed trouble in the air. In my defense, I think everyone reading this would've found the situation a bit suspect. But what choice did we have really, it's likely he was telling the truth and he wasn't going to leave without us so we had to follow him. Worst case we could
just turn the car around. So through this dust bowl town we drive and sure enough, he led us to a main road on the other side of the town. You beauty! He then stopped for a bit of a chat, wanted some money, smokes or vodka from us for his troubles. Ahhh, so that's the catch. Unfortunately for him, we had changed all our local currency back in Ulaangom and neither of us smoke or drink. He then poked his head into the car to see what else we had but couldn't see anything much because we had the solar shades up on the back windows. In the end he got on his mobile phone and "called" someone, told us, yep, you're right to go now and so we said our goodbyes and headed off expecting there to be a roadblock further up with his mates blocking our path. Hello bullbar if that was to be the case. But no, I checked our mobile phone just after we said bye to him thinking wow, do we have mobile service here? Because what a miracle that would be because I haven't seen any mobile towers (th
ey're very obvious in Mongolia - literally in a town and much lower than our ones in Australia). Nope, no mobile service which means he wasn't talking to anyone on his phone. I think the guy was just trying a last ditch effort to get something from us by making it look like he had done even more to help us. I would've given him something for his troubles, but we didn't have anything that he wanted. We did give him a bag of lollies but he handed them back.

We met a Dutch couple at the border who had entered Mongolia at the Tsagaannuur border and were exiting from the same border at the same time as us. They were traveling in a Mercedes Smart Car ForTwo (worth Googling it if you're unsure what it is). Needless to say, they got to Olgiy which is about 208km from the Tsagaannuur border and turned around. Their car couldn't cope with the roads. We were amazed that this was their choice of car but gave them the much deserved kudos for even trying it! They then proceeded to tell us that they originally set off on this adventure on a scooter, had an accident with a truck in Ukraine, headed home to recover, kitted up their Smart Car at home for the drive and headed off again. What the!? They were absolutely mad but really lovely people. Sad story was, we were with them the entire way through the Mongolian border, encouraging each other through each step - real border buddies. Got through the Mongolian border sweet, no problems. Got to
the halfway Russian checkpoint (yes, it's crazy but they have a halfway checkpoint not far after the Mongolian border where they check your visa and passport before you get to the actual border). We're lined up behind the gate, the Dutch couple go through first because they were about three cars ahead of us in the line up. Then about 5mins later, they swing their car around and come back through the gate! They pulled up alongside us with long faces and I said guys, what's going on, what's wrong, why are you heading back to Mongolia!? They explained that they thought they had a double entry visa into Russia but it turns out they only had a single entry. They had to go to Ulaanbaatar to the Russian embassy there and get another Russian visa. Our hearts sank for them. We offered them water and any other provisions they may need but they declined. Graeme suggested they drive to Olgiy and fly to Ulaanbaatar because the roads are just too rough for their little car. My mind keeps
going to them. I hope they're ok and are keeping their chins up.

From the Dutch couple and another couple from Germany who were also our border buddies all the way through, we learnt that we had actually driven the difficult way through Mongolia. We went the northern route through Ulaangom on the A16 but all the tourists seem to go the more southern route and take the middle main road which is the A07 into Olgiy because it has a bridge across the massive river we had to cross. Doh! Oh well, I'm going to blow our own trumpet and say I think we deserve kudos for doing it the hard way. It was bloody hard on the car, body and spirit!

Mongolia was just amazing. A day would yield the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. It's a tough country to traverse because many of the roads are rough and it's so darn difficult to navigate. But my goodness, you're rewarded with the beautifully warm smile of a local and stunning vistas. By far the most beautiful scenery I've ever seen in my life. At numerous points the beauty seriously moved me to tears.

In answer to your question Nora, I don't know if there's bears in Mongolia. I have read that there's wolves. I was so hoping to see one, or even hear one - how spooky and cool would that be! But alas, no. We were really keen to see a bear in Russia, and because of all the forest fires in the area we were in we thought for sure they would be forced out of the depths of the forest towards the edges where we were likely to see one. But again, no.

The Altai region in Russia is really beautiful. Today we've seen snow capped mountains, massive fast flowing rivers, huge rocky mountains, driven awesome mountainous roads and have finally camped alongside a river. Unfortunately we couldn't find a spot where we can access the water because it's holiday season in Russia and every Tom, Dick and Harry is out camping in this area. Damn tourists! Haha. I can see why the Russians flock here, it is a lovely place for a camping holiday and we would have our pick of amazing camp spots but they're all taken. It's actually nice to see the Russians holidaying and enjoying their country. The people who have recently pulled up and camped nearby to us occasionally pump up their car stereo to it's limit which is annoying but what can you do. Hope they bust their speakers?

We're 3 hours behind home time now. From here we're heading up to Barnaul over the next couple of days where we'll get a hotel, much needed shower and wifi hopefully. My hair is so gross it just stays in place when I take my hairband out of an evening. Ewwww. Thankfully we were able to bathe in a river in Mongolia and wash our hair on Monday. That feels like a lifetime ago as I type this on Saturday evening! You've just gotta roll with it and hope you don't stink too much when you pop into a town for lunch and some supplies. In Mongolia it was fine because we couldn't smell any worse than the nomadic farmers who stink to high heaven of cow poo, or sheep, yak, camel or goat poo - whichever you prefer.

The drive up to Barnaul is going to be a very slow, casual one because we can't enter Kazakhstan until the 15th because that's the entry date on our visas. We had to guess the date way back at the start of this year when we were applying for all of our visas. Thankfully we were fairly spot on with guessing the dates. We've been pretty tired these past two days so this will be some great forced "take it easy" time.

It's wonderful to be back on tar roads again before we hit the dirt again in Kazakhstan. I can't help but feel the toughest part of the trip is over. I do realise that the adventure will throw up different kinds of challenges as we go along, but hey, we've endured Siberia and Mongolia and we're still smiling and not ready to go home, surely that's readied us for anything else that is to come.

Graeme:
First things first - I need to clear up some confusion with the 'Altanbulag Border Scammer' Video. Just prior to leaving Mongolia, we were pulled over at an offical looking check point, with a very official looking man with MTA badge. He asked us to see our tax receipt. Cassie kept asking what he was after but I knew it all along. He was after our receipt that the 'scammer' provided. We showed him, he said, thanks very much and sent us on our way. IT WASN'T A SCAM!!! OMG I have been snickering about that for days now. I'll need to make the video private so we can all have a laugh about it, but it's not open to the world. A couple we met didn't pay on entry because they thought it was a scam and had to pay the exact same ammount (10,0000T) on exit.

Thanks to Dad and Warren for the suggestions on the dust. I think the problem is a result of a design modification I made when doing the fit out. In the back of these things, as with most cars, there are usually a pair of vents towards the back of the car that let air out when you put air in (like front windows open, closing a door or fan running on fresh air). When renewing the side panels in the back I deliberately covered these vents to stop a draft on cold nights. This is demonstrated when we have the fan on fast, a squeal, a bit like a baloon can be heard from the rear door seals as the air forces through them. I do agree, a little bit of positive pressure probably helps the dust senario, but I'll have to see what works best from your tips because our setup might be a little different from normal. Thank you.

I don't have much to add. Altai is beautiful, but oddly difficult to photograph. You just need to be here. We've seen so many overland travellers, all from europe coming down the highway today. In the realm of 50 cars? 40 of them would be landcruisers (2 troop carriers, 20 prados, 38 80/100 series) remaining few were land rovers or misc like F150's. Nothing entering Mongolia was 2WD.
It's been relaxing charging and cleaning all the camera gear.
This morning, 2 minutes into driving, there was an odd sound. Pulled over, it was the flapping of a rubber guard that keeps mud out of the engine bay against the drivers side wheel. The push clip had broken, so a cable tie and it was all good. Investigating this noise brought to my attention a few drops of coolant on the bottom radiator hose. Tightened them all up, all good now. As Cassie might have mentioned, last night was freezing, last time it was really cold at home I had the same issue. Damn new hoses. I should have just left the old ones on and carried new ones instead of replacing them ;-)

Oh, one thing that was staggeringly cool to me, was recreating one of the photos in the Long Way Round book! Do I sound obsessed much?! It was a pretty ordinary photo anyway, but I knew it had to be on this road. Sure enough, we looked for half the day using components of the photo such as the big power pole on the left hand side of the road, the 40kph sign, the funny trees etc. It turned out Cassie spotted it from a pattern on the fence. Inside I was adamant this couldn't be the place... one tree was about half the size, a whole new strip of street lights, different signage and fresh tar made for a different looking scene. She was right, and we got the photo. Niceeee!