With little hassle we truck to the Kazakh border! Things seem to be going smoothly through the border, at least till we get out of Russia. There is a few kilometres drive through no-man’s land then we arrive at the Kazakh border. After about a half hour of stumbling around we think we are on our way - then they start searching our cars and asking for presents. They grease a hand held fan out of one the Peugeots and binoculars out of the other. Turns out they wanted more had held fans and kept telling us we were not allowed into Kazakhstan and that we had to go back to Russia. Our convoy came to the conclusion that conceding to give them anything has started a racket and we should not give them a thing more. They stripped our cars, held our forms, and generally messed us around for a couple hours till they got bored and turned their backs on us - we slipped away. Lesson learned. We feel that that one may have been the worst crossing w will encounter. A few minutes into Kazakhstan and we see our first camel! About the size of a moose, possibly bigger, but somehow even dumber looking - what a creature. The roads are still paved but the potholes and asphalt heaves threaten to gut the car every 50m. You might think you had wandered upon Saskatchewan if not for the mud and straw homes. It has been some time since we have seen a shower or water of any kind so we head down a dirt road in search of the Caspian sea which we think we have been told is about 5km from the highway near a town called Janbay. After about a half hour of dirt tracks that had the Pale Horse on his toes we arrive at a marsh, and marsh is all that exists as far as we can see. We pitch our tents on a cool little salt flat. Also, Jerry owes Chris a beer as it true that a beer will get colder if you leave it outside over night as opposed to a 3’ deep hole in the ground overnight. A few beers and shenanigans then we are asleep. To try and beat some of the death heat we hit the dusty trail at ‘half six’ the next day. It was actually very nice to be awake for a couple hours before the heat became unbearable once again. We received the sad news that one of the teams had been in a car crash in Iran, one guy passed away and two in hospital.
Day 2
Leaving Janbay and headed for Aqtobe we have about 700km to drive. Things start off well, and we get to Atiraw where we have lunch at the Guns & Roses Café for our firs cold beer in a long time and a proper toilet. Fantastic. Just outside of Atiraw we find a vacant dirt go-kart track, we had no choice but to go for a few laps. Bret go a little scared and the Ambulance had a minor collision withy the Suzuki. Great fun. At this point in the trip we enter what is supposedly an area controlled by bandits, which seems to mean the dissapearance of all civilization and roads. We spend the rest of the day driving in the ditch/fields because they are much better than the road, a connected series of car-sized pot-holes. We finish the day just outside of Maqat having made about 250km in a full day of driving.
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