Wednesday July 27th.
We left Sorotov and drove through vast acreages of sunflowers and wheat as well as recently tilled fields. Although it was obvious that it s harvest time for the cereals there seemed little evidence of machinery working or in ploughing afterwards. At a coffee stop e met up with Steen and Joanna from Arbroath - I had met with them previously at Bristol and Goodwood - they were team Ta'Agila Sunrise as they ere driving a Vauxhall Agila. They were going to do a tour of all the "Stans" before heading for Mongolia. We accompanied them to the Russian / Kazakhstan border. The Russian were particularly "jobs worth" you wold have thought that they would have been pleased to get rid of us and our rusting vehicles. In contrast the Kazakhstan border guards were friendly helpful and even said welcome to Kazakhstan and shook or hands. We fortunately found the insurance agent this time and got some cover for our up to permissible 15 days.
By This time we had just over 1 hours daylight's left to drive 100 km to the nearest town and somewhere to stay and this turned out to be exceedingly optimistic. The road was full of potholes big enough to loose a double decker bus in ad as bad or worse then anything I had seen in Africa. The disadvantage of the Kazakhstan version was that there was a drop into a bullet each side so the lorries could not leave the highway and create a new dirt road?
Oral or Uralsk seemed a strange city with a lot of night clubs liquor kiosks and the drunks to go with them. We found an hotel and were confused about the actual time we obviously had crossed another time zone.
Thursday 28th July.
Due to our late arrival and then having eaten in the equivalent of a Kazakhstan McDonald's we had little sleep, none the less Gordon was up and implementing his latest theories about why the car was not running smoothly.
From Oral onwards the roads improved beyond recognition there was mile after mile of straight road with a mostly good surface. We were now crossing typical steppe terrain with Savannah grassland becoming more sparse as we traveller south. In Kazakhstan it is more of a pastoral existence with flocks of sheep and goats usually with a shepherd and cattle unattended. The horse herds were interesting are they just wild or are they managed as horse meat is available in the restaurants?
We made it to Aktobe another Kazakhstan town with lots of disco's, karaoke bars ten pin bowling and a large mosque, but nicer and less drunks than Oral.
IF YOU'RE READING THIS AND HAVEN'T CONTRIBUTED TO OUR CHARITY APPEAL PERHAPS YOU WOULD LIKE TO LOOK AT-
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Nomadic cattle on the Kazakhstan Steppe
Huge pig unit
Teams SOGs and T'Agila Sunrise
More of the above
It's all good protein even in Tesco Lasagna.
We left Sorotov and drove through vast acreages of sunflowers and wheat as well as recently tilled fields. Although it was obvious that it s harvest time for the cereals there seemed little evidence of machinery working or in ploughing afterwards. At a coffee stop e met up with Steen and Joanna from Arbroath - I had met with them previously at Bristol and Goodwood - they were team Ta'Agila Sunrise as they ere driving a Vauxhall Agila. They were going to do a tour of all the "Stans" before heading for Mongolia. We accompanied them to the Russian / Kazakhstan border. The Russian were particularly "jobs worth" you wold have thought that they would have been pleased to get rid of us and our rusting vehicles. In contrast the Kazakhstan border guards were friendly helpful and even said welcome to Kazakhstan and shook or hands. We fortunately found the insurance agent this time and got some cover for our up to permissible 15 days.
By This time we had just over 1 hours daylight's left to drive 100 km to the nearest town and somewhere to stay and this turned out to be exceedingly optimistic. The road was full of potholes big enough to loose a double decker bus in ad as bad or worse then anything I had seen in Africa. The disadvantage of the Kazakhstan version was that there was a drop into a bullet each side so the lorries could not leave the highway and create a new dirt road?
Oral or Uralsk seemed a strange city with a lot of night clubs liquor kiosks and the drunks to go with them. We found an hotel and were confused about the actual time we obviously had crossed another time zone.
Thursday 28th July.
Due to our late arrival and then having eaten in the equivalent of a Kazakhstan McDonald's we had little sleep, none the less Gordon was up and implementing his latest theories about why the car was not running smoothly.
From Oral onwards the roads improved beyond recognition there was mile after mile of straight road with a mostly good surface. We were now crossing typical steppe terrain with Savannah grassland becoming more sparse as we traveller south. In Kazakhstan it is more of a pastoral existence with flocks of sheep and goats usually with a shepherd and cattle unattended. The horse herds were interesting are they just wild or are they managed as horse meat is available in the restaurants?
We made it to Aktobe another Kazakhstan town with lots of disco's, karaoke bars ten pin bowling and a large mosque, but nicer and less drunks than Oral.
IF YOU'RE READING THIS AND HAVEN'T CONTRIBUTED TO OUR CHARITY APPEAL PERHAPS YOU WOULD LIKE TO LOOK AT-
www.virginmoneygiving.com/Neil Rudram.
Kevin at 100,000 miles
Kevin undergoing some ventral inspection.
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