5 months on the road: September 2010

Dear readers,
Here is a little update of our trip from Sochi (RUS on the Black Sea)… waiting for our boat that should take us to Trabzon in Turkey.
Crossing the Caucasus was neither a good or a bad experience. We didn’t find this time the same atmosphere that we enjoyed in Siberia and the Altai.
Police became quickly an annoyance with the same level of corruption as their Kazakh neighbors. We’ve been stopped at least two or three times per day. One of the good time was when they stopped us because, on a very windy mountain road I dare to drive ON the white lane in the middle of the road… they even showed me the video that they recorded hidden in a bush a few minutes earlier. Without a word of Russian I understood that they wanted 100€ for this. Absolutely absurd of course but with time my ability to play stupid and bother them with all my stories of travel, visa stuff, broken suspension etc… they finally let us go (also probably because the lane of other drivers behind me was getting long and easier to rob than us I guess).
After Astrakhan we passed through the city of Elista that is pretty nice to mention. It is the only Buddhist city in Europe and all the temple does make you feel like you are still in Asia.
Caucasus has this bad reputation about security so we tried to camp in remote area, hidden in bushes or woody field separation. We never had any problems with anybody here though and all was good until one morning one of our car battery decided to quit his duty to start the car when we need it! Unfortunately we were in a field where the dirt had been flipped so impossible to start the car by pushing it (and believe us, we tried!). Luckily enough we have two other batteries in the back of the car that we use for the refrigerator, water pump, radio and that can serve us as spare ones for the engine. So, all I had to do is dismantle our electric system and switch everything. There was a little stress when everything was done: one night of refrigerator + radio on in the evening lowered the power of these batteries and they were not charged enough anymore to start the car. Mother nature gave us a solution to this new problem: open the hood and let the cold batteries warm up thanks to the holy sun! After one hour well exposed the batteries were happy enough and accept to start the engine. One day of driving after that finished to charge the new batteries and the engine is back to normal now. Arrived in Sochi we bought a new battery to replace the dead one and I installed back in its compartment in the car for the refrigerator.
Sochi is also our getaway point out of Russia. Yesterday we bought tickets for the ferry that will take us to Trabzon (if you need information about this F***ing expansive way to cross the Black Sea don’t hesitate to contact us). The boat was supposed to leave tonight but the ticket office already announced one day of delay so hopefully sometimes tomorrow night we will be on board (please cross fingers for us)! The good aspect of this is that it gives us time to write you some news and enjoy Sochi… under a pouring rain!
We’ll talk to you next time from Turkey.
Cordiali saluti a tutti!!

H&E

Dear all,
Once again after a few weeks of silence we reached civilization and the opportunity to send you some news!
Our last days in Almaty (KZ) were nice as we spent some more time with our friends Elise & Mat and quickly saw again Aude, Brice (&co.).
After a couple of nights in a little hotel we got our Land Cruiser back from the garage with two bran new spring leaf and oil+filter change. We felt like it was a bit too early to leave the area so we went back to the mountain for another look on the Tian Shan mountains and it’s wildlife. This time I didn’t miss the White-browed Tit Warbler and the White-winged Grosbeak!
From there we still had 3000km to drive and reach the Russian boarder and about 10 days before our KZ visa expiration date… in most other countries this sounds doable but in Kazakhstan you just can’t predict how many kilometers you can do in one day. So we started to drive west, put our wheels on a piece of Kirghizstan that stretches a bit further north than the road on which we were surrounded by barbed wire (of course the army was everywhere to make sure that no one stops or do anything funny on this delicate border zone). Close to Shimkent we made our first stop on another mountainous area where we camped close to the Aksu Jabagly natural reserve. It is a beautiful place but we just had no time to hire a guide (mandatory) and visit it all so we just stayed on the side on a little farmer’s property that welcomed us very nicely and where birding was really good as well. In one afternoon and one morning I twitched the Blue Whistling-thrush, the beautiful Yellow-breasted Tit, White-crowned Penduline-tit, Long-tailed shrike and had a great look on a Barred Warbler which is always nice to see.
From there things started to become difficult on the road… First of all because of the corrupted police that stops you for anything … or just for nothing. Most of the time it’s for nothing (although we’ve been flashed at 68km/h instead of 50 in a stupid curve in the middle of nothing). Of course they always scare you and ask you money for such or such but this time with only photocopies of our passports in hand they couldn’t scare us much (we finally learned the lesson). So since the military in Almaty we didn’t give anything valuable (passports or money) to the authorities anymore. It’s not so easy but with some practice, if you can play as stupid as you can, speak only French or English, and start to bother them more than they bother you with lots of your own stories & bullshit, they finally let you go with just a warning or a disdainful look.
Further west we reached the town of Turkestan where you can see the impressive Kozha Akhmed Yasaoui mausoleum (some sort of a wise Muslim poet) built in the 14th century. We read somewhere that if you go there once in your life you don’t need to go the Mecca anymore (so if we were Muslims we would be done for this forced travel I guess!).
The city of Aral was our next destination. There, in the dust and constant wind we started to search for some beached boats, last dying witness of the existence of a sea there. We drove to the hopeless town of Jalangash where we did found some rusty carcasses slowly collapsing in the sand. We had a strange feeling there with some sadness and lots of thoughts about human activities, ecology, wild development, money etc… We didn’t reach the sea that is actually rising again since a huge dike was built a few years ago to separate the northern from southern part of the Aral Sea (which is now pretty much definitely condemned).
1500km were still separating us from the Russian border so we stop our thoughts and start to drive again. That is where we experienced the real shit roads that a pair of Polish bikers warned us about. They were right, the western road from Aral to Atirau is a real Hell. It looks like the road was paved once but it is destroyed like a war went over it. Full of rocks, holes, bumps, ditches, sand dunes, cracks… anything you can think of and don’t like to see on the road. Most places 15 to 20 km/h was the maximum that we could do. Our mental conditions and the car did suffer from this. Indeed, on a 250 km particularly bad section of this road we broke again two suspension leaf springs. We were just getting angry... For several days, doing sometimes only 250km per day we were thinking: how Kazakhstan and the people who live there can still tolerate this? Kazakhstan is full of petrol, big cities are wealthy and display lots of signs of richness so with all this, how can it still be like this? It is almost like an insult to the people abandoned in a middle-age condition.
One good thing happened on this road though: we met a French family, les rigadoulibres (who travel for a year with 3 children in central Asia on board of their mobile home). It was very nice to chat with them for a while, share our impressions and cheer up in the middle of the desert, on this shit Kazakh road!
Anyways, couple of days later we finally reached the Russian border and passed it without much problems. Once again entering Russia felt like a return home! Not only because we are back on the European continent (since we passed the Ural River) but also because it feels somehow familiar, almost like and oasis after crossing a desert!
First town we crossed was a good example of this: we filled up our refrigerator with vegetables and in 20 minutes we found a little garage where they could repair our broken suspension. In four hour of work the work was done using another leaf spring from an old Volga and a more solid one in the back from a truck (a Kamaz probably).
We are in Astrakhan at the moment, recharging our batteries before crossing the Caucasus. We have a 10 day transit visa in Russia and we will either take the ferry at Sochi to Trabzon (Turkey) or if it is possible we will drive to the border with Georgia, cross this beautiful country and enter Turkey from there. We’ll let you know what was our best option in our next message.
We Hope that everything is going well on your side and until next time we wish you all the best.
Cheers!

E&H