Russia and Kazakhstan

Submitted by alvoakes on Fri, 18/07/2008 - 9:08pm.

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

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Date	Message
18 weeks 2 days ago	We are in the capital of Kazkhstan. It took us quite a few days to get here from Kostanay as the Shogun had to be fixed up and we got lost a lot. On route to Astana the Hilux snapped a leaf spring so had to fix it in Astana. This gave the rest of us a day to take in the pretty terrible sights of Astana. Our goal was to walk to the tower that is all the Kazak money. On route we managed to go on some rusty pedalos, go on a horse ride round a fountain and visit a mini Kazkhstan thing that was extremelly odd. After 6 hours of walking we finally made it to the tower, it was faily impressive. We got in a lift and went to the top, where in typical Kazak style there was plenty of odd things to be seen. We'r now heading south to lake Balqash, then onto the Russian border.
18 weeks 6 days ago	We left the luxury of ourhotel in Uralsk and headed for Aktobe. We had been warned about the road by counless people but it was our only real option without taking a 1000 mile detour. Leaving town we passed a road sign reading 'Good Luck!', a slightly disconcerting but humerous sign. After driving an a good tarmac road for about an hour we passed a flock of camels, and stopped to take some photos. While we where stopped two Kazakh men pulled up and told us it would be best to follow them to Aktobe as the road was very bad. We did so but I think some people where certain they where going to slaughter us. After following them on good roads till sun down we pulled up to camp. read more »
19 weeks 3 days ago	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. read more »
19 weeks 4 days ago
20 weeks 1 day ago	So we have made it Kiev, thus far the Ukraine has been pretty hard work. Our border crossing was fairly easy, took two hours to get through. Almost got into a bit of trouble after the border guard asked me to drive up to customs, i didnt see it and drove straight through at 40. Luckily no one seemed to notice so a quitly reversed back 50 m to where i was meant to be. read more »
20 weeks 5 days ago	After a night camping outside bamburg we are on route to prague. Fuel leak appears to be fixed, lovely.
20 weeks 6 days ago	Currently in Vienna en route to Bratislava. We'll do a proper update tomorrow from budapest...
21 weeks 4 days ago	So with 3 days to go before the off, we are almost ready. The car is sorted, currency collected, sponsorship target met and the route is planned though almost certain to change. After packing up the car we seem to have a lot of space, suggesting we may have forgotten to pack a lot of things. With two days to find these forgotten things hopefully we'l leave with everything we need.