Russia and Kazakhstan

To everyones relief we made it out of Ukraine alive, it truelly has a lot of work to do if it hopes to hold the Euros in 2012. Although the Ukraine wasn't great, for the rest of my life i will remember and incedent with ducks in a shopping mall in Kiev, i'll explain that when i get home.

The Russian border took about 3 nd half hours, lots of queing and border guards taking the piss a bit. At one point I had to fill out a form about the car, the fella handed me a form in cyrillic. He watched me stare blankly at it for 10 mins, clearly not knowing what I was meant to write, then came over and spoke perfect English and told me what to write, he was just trying to wind me up.

Once over the border we came across our first police checkpoint, I could clearly see there ws a sign in the road saying stop, but for reasons im not fully aware of I just kept driving. Many whistles where blown, I pulled over and was swiftly carted off to the police hut. The head policeman wielding a semi automatic rifle kept threatinging to steal my driving liscense in between shouting 'STOP!!!' at me. It was a far more threatening experience than the Ukrainian police, though we got away without a fine.

That evening we met up with the convoy again, Mongol Warriors, Team Ullan Battered and a new recruit Team Gibbo. After meeting the teams we chatted about the border crossing and it turns out they got the cyrillic form i was given in english, i was not happy about this. We camped in a field looking over the city of Kursk.

Next day we had a long day of driving trying to make it to Saratov on the Volga river. I was feeling pretty ill so Tom had to do more driving, By the time we pulled up at about 1am just short of Saratov everyone waqs pretty low.

Feeling much better in the morning, spirits seemed to rise as we where aiming to cross in Kazkhstan that evening and everyone was pretty excited. The drive was longer than anticipated but the road to the border was brilliant, not bumpy enough to ruin the car but just bumpy enough to make it really thrilling to drive down.

The Kazakh border was long but was quite good fun, the guards where nicer than previous borders and spirite where high in the convoy. Took about 4 hours to get across but seemed much shorter. As it was late we camped just the other side of the border.

Awoke to soem wild horses and a beautifull view of the kazakh steppe. Driving onto Uralsk everyone who passed us beeped us and was waving, In Ukrain and Russia we got beeped a lot too, though that was in rage. The Kazakhs thus far seem really nice, we pulled up at some lights and the car next to us offered us some vodka with a huge smile, we politely decline as we where driving and all.

We arrived in Uralsk and the first hotel we came accross was a 4 star one, we took a punt and asked how much it was. £35 each for the night, after not washing in 4 days we decided to pay up. the hotel is excellent and I had the most satisfying shower i've ever had.

Tomorrow we are attempting to fix our fuel line again then pushing on to Aktobe.

Really gutted to hear about Team 1st Gear, hope they made it home ok.

Bye bye

Al