After the Russian Altai and a quick stop in Barnaul we are now in Kazakhstan and we reached the city of Almaty.
The road was long and many things happened since our last message. So on August 11th we left Barnaul that we really appreciated for its relaxed atmosphere, pretty architecture, cleanness and the fact that we found everything we needed there (Internet, food, cheap diesel, water and a bottle of our favorite Baikal Vodka!).
Camping was great around Barnaul and in the Altai. My best memory was from the camp near the Seminsk Pass where I had the chance to observe a family of Ural Owls at dusk (with at least three chicks it was a lifer for me!).
Anyways, South of Barnaul we entered in Kazakhstan in a record time of two and a half hours (the KZ side didn’t even looked at the car and didn’t even bother to give us our immigration cards!!). At the first little city that we crossed (Semei) we met our Belgian friends: René and Jonas (www.uazimut.be). They are on their way to Vladivostok with their Lada Niva. A few beers on a terrace and good food in a little restaurant while talking about our respective trips and adventures was a great moment. The next morning we had our first good and bad experience with the authorities of this country. First we did our registration for the immigration in 30 minutes at the local immigration office with a very friendly officer that helped us with all the forms. But then, few km out of the city, we got stopped on the side of the road and got charged about 35€ (a fortune in KZ) for not driving with our head lights on outside the city. To make a long story short I got my driver’s license back by throwing the money in the police car and got away while the cop put his index on his mouth (chhhttt… to make me shut up I guess). Mother F****r!
That day was not so great also because a few kilometers later we heard a bad metallic noise close to the front wheel of the car. A quick check revealed that our first leaf spring of the suspension was broken. I somehow fixed it tightly with a rope but our next stop had to be for more serious repair. In the next city (Oskemen) we went to the big Toyota dealer and after a lot of long thinking and researches they told us that we could order the part without any problem but the part would arrived in November! Thanks a lot Toyota, we will try to find a quicker way to fix our car. So we searched the city and met Nicolae, a mechanic that also had a Toyota Land Cruiser and that welded another leaf spring under our broken one. This was only a temporary repair since a new spring has to be found somewhere in order to drive securely again. Nicolae was incredibly welcoming and showed us all his cars, garages, machines, sauna, he invited us to share the borsh (Russian soup) for lunch and when the work was done with the car he refused any payment. I hardly imagine a mechanic in Bruxelles spending 5 hours to repair the car of a Kasakh tourist for free but I guess that’s one of the great part of a trip like this: we meet incredible people!
After this episode we started to drive East and South along the beautiful Lake Zaysan. This took us a few days and here again we crossed beautiful landscapes, camped in lovely places and caught our last fishes in little rivers. Two more days after that were necessary to reach Almaty (sometimes on an ok road but often on really bad shaped and full of holes “thing” that perhaps used to be a road once but looks more like a track full of obstacles now).
So we arrived in Almaty on Friday 20th in the middle of the afternoon. It’s a very nice city, full of trees and things looked promising to find what we need to repair our suspension. So, all the next day was spent in a part of the city called “Car City”. Anything is supposed to be foundable there… anything, except new or used leaf springs! Even in the “car bazaar” that we searched for few hours everybody was looking at us like we were looking for Jurassic dinosaur bones or something. In fact leaf springs have been banished long time ago and it just does not exist here anymore. So we gave up in the late afternoon and decided to reach the lake Bolshoe in the nearby mountains south of Almaty. The border with Kirghizstan is just on the other side of the mountain and the landscape is absolutely stunning. We camped there for the weekend. Birdwatching was excellent there since I had the chance to see the most wanted bird on my list: the Ibisbill that breeds there (since my D200 is still in Moscow I have no pictures to show for this, sorry). There was also lots of red-fronted serin and one male blue-capped redstart was an excellent sight to finish the day. The surroundings of the lake are very alpine and beautiful and it would have been a perfect day if we didn’t got stopped by military that searched our bag with their German shepherd and fainted to keep our passports for some stupid reason. They gave us a fine of 30000 Tenge (about 150€) for this bullshit and after some discussion we got or passport back by throwing a bill of 5000 Tenge on the ground on front of the soldier’s boot… Well done guys, this really makes me respect people in uniform a bit more every times!
Our way back to Europe is finally decided: we will cross again Russia to catch the ferry in Sochi to reach Trabzon in Turkey. At the beginning we wanted to cross the Caspian Sea reaching Azerbaijan, but unfortunately the Azeri embassy moved to Astana, the new capital of Kazakhstan since 1998 and we don’t have the time to send our passport there for the visa. So on Monday we went to the embassy of Russia to apply for a new transit visa. The lady there was super nice, spoke perfect English and even with some humor in the discussion our visa application was accepted. We will receive them in 4 days. The next day we met Mat & Elise again (our French friends with who we traveled through Russia and Mongolia). Their stay in Mongolia was a little bit longer than ours so we had to split north of the Gobi desert and it was great to see them again and share all our travel stories on front of a beer. They also had to fix some part of their Toyota BJ75 so yesterday with the help of Roman (a local friend that loves 4WD) we found a garage that could repair our leaf springs and do the routine oil and filter change. With the feeling to be homeless, we will get our Land Cruiser back tomorrow so for two nights we rented a room in a nearby hotel. It’s a little bit of the old soviet style but at least we have hot water in a private bathroom and a real bed to rest for two nights.
If everything goes right we should get out of Almaty tomorrow and start to drive towards the Caucasus. We have now about 12 days to drive something like 3000 kms (about 500 km/day if the road is good) and visit the Aral sea (hope to find some beached boats and see some water maybe).
Our next Internet connection will probably be in Astrakhan in Russia so until there have a good end of summer!!!!
Don’t hesitate to leave a comment (just click on the link under the pictures)!
Cheers,
H&E
PS: contest n° 5!
For some strange reason, old Italian music from the 80’s seems to be very popular here in Almaty; we hear it everywhere.
Whoever can tell us 2 songs that we heard here regularly wins matrioska n°4!
(Little hint: Ricchi e Poveri e Albano & Romina Power!!!).
PS2: Grand merci à Pierre (notre ange gardien) pour ses bons conseils et sa disponibilité. Thank you also Darkhan and family for your kindness and hospitality, we spent a very nice moment drinking tea, looking for Toyota parts on Internet and watching pictures of our respective trips.
PS3: Good road to René and Jonas who just repaired their Lada Niva with pieces of washing machine!!
