31 Jul Another day in Kazakhstan
Note: since we just gotten Internet for the first time since the dawn of time, I’m uploading notes from each day so sorry for the flurry of random 2am commentaries.
July 29. Kaz improves, or at least our impression of it. Once we made it into Aktobe, the roads improved quite dramatically. Before that, the term bad road cannot stretch far enough to describe upon what we traveled. Rutted disappearing washboard dirt tracks with huge dips or bone rattling broken asphalt and gravel combined to prevent speeds of over 10-20 kph most of the time.
And the dust. Every time another giant truck passes us, we are inundated with a huge cloud of thick desert dust that clings to everything on top of and in the bus, including us.
Since we are camping, and rationing water to make sure we have enough for drinking in the 50 Celsius heat, we cannot wash with anything more substantial than a few baby wipes.
However, Aktobe represented our transition from desert to steppe, and not only did the road get better, but the dust ceased and the landscape turned from barren desert with a few grazing camels and skinny cows to more lush wheat fields and pretty horses.
This is an overnight day, meaning when we got up this am, we’ve not been out of the bus and won’t until we get to Aralsk sometime early am. With the better road, we need to make up for the time the terrible roads to the east cost us.
As an example, we covered 600-700 kms in a day in Europe, while we managed not quite 150 on our worst desert day. And to complicate things, we need to register with the immigration police within 5 days of entry, which is up on the 2nd, and Aralsk is the nearest town with an official. If we get caught without checking in, there are fines and we will be deported.
We did have our first Kazakh police stop today, but the cop stepped on the bus to a chorus of cheerful shouts of “hello” and lost his nerve for a shakedown, ending up just wishing us safe travels and waving us on our way. I credit Will and Tommy, who were navigating and driving, for their excellent handling of the situation and reading the cop perfectly.
We saw another rally team, the Flying Lederhosen, who were stopped a couple of days ago in Kaz and the policeman put the driver’s passport in his pocket until they handed over bribe money. Unbelievable.
At last we arrived in Aralsk at 3:30am on the 30th–a very long driving day. The final shift was expertly driven by Pietro. We tried stopping at a truck stop in town, but had a scary experience when a carload of local youths came by, shouting at us. We then returned to the outskirts of town, parking among the truckers where we felt more secure.
In a few hours we will be able to get our immigration cards stamped and perhaps get to see some of the vestiges of the Aral Sea as well.