MikeandCarolgoEast: 05/18/12

Volga delta fishermen

Two fifths of the Astrakhan slipper thief gang

Our first view of the Volga, before it starts to split to hundreds of distributaries

Lenin (in coat) and Mike in Atyrau

The Kremlin Astrakhan

Rickety pontoon bridge on the way to the Kazakhstan

Carol had to be dragged away from the puppy heaven that was the Astrakhan truck stop and we headed east 100 km to the Kazakhstan border. The formalities on both sides were done quite efficiently although it still took just over two hours, that’s with a 10 km drive between the two border posts. Almost immediately into Kaz we saw some camels (picture posted earlier). They had two humps - on all our travels in Arabia we had only seen one humped camels. These looked so strange. Once through the Kaz border we had a night to use up before our booking at an Atyrau hotel. Having a hotel appointment on arrival seemed to be a condition of getting a visa but no one checked at the border. We decided to camp off the road (our first wild camp) on the way to Atyrau. We chose to camp about a kilometre from the road near a disused oil administration building and about 200 m from a small farm that seemed at the time deserted but later spewed out a good sized herd of cows, sheep and goats. The herder came over to see us and try our tea, nice guy but did not say a word even in kazakh. Later on two policemen arrived from nowhere to ‘say hello’ we suspected the farmer called them just in case we were some kind of subversives. The police visit was all very amicable and they were pleased to be shown the inside of a Tab. The only excitement in the night was the herd of 30 odd cows outside which started jostling, as cows do, and rocked the Ta b at one point. The next day we were glad for the comfort of the hotel and we even decided to stay an extra night, once we had established that we were unwilling to pay any more per night than we had booked on the internet - as the hotel had suggested we should. It was all the same the most expensive event of the trip so far at £150 for two nights. Most hotels in town are much more expensive as Atyrau is a prosperous town benefitting from the developing oil exploitation industry nearby.

Europe officially ends at the Ural river that runs through Atyrau. We first felt the Asiatic influence in Astrakhan where many of the people are oriental in appearance but by the time we got to Atyrau these people were in the majority. There are of course many people of Russian descent in the town, indeed in much of Kazakhstan (about 30% in 1999), as a result of many years of Russian influence and settlement in the region. Kazakhstan is actually a secular state despite Sunni Muslims being the largest religious group.

At Atyrau we had a good day in the Ural marshes to the south east of the town on the Asian side of the river. We left the Tab at a hotel for the day. To get to the marshes you need to make your way to the village of Damba and then continue southwards along causeways across the marshes, or to be more precise through the reed beds. Unfortunately the tracks all ended in channels too deep for the vehicle to cross but it was nice to get the Land Rover really muddy at last. It was not possible to get any good views of large expanses of water or mudflats because of the high reeds in every direction but all the same we had some good birds. Lots of Pygmy Cormorants, Night, Purple and Grey Herons and Glossy Ibis but only single examples of Spoonbill and Little Egret. A few Dalmatian Pelican overhead and a couple of White-tailed Eagles.

On our first night in the steppes we discovered that there is a shortage of wood and twigs for our kelly kettle, which we use as much as possible to save gas. After a few days of the steppes we have become really frugal, saving all paper and cardboard and picking up bits of wood lying around by the road. We have even used dry cow dung, which we find burns odorless a bit like coal, but is not such an efficient fuel as wood. We are not yet in a position to be able to say whether horse, camel, cow or sheep droppings are our preferred animal derivative fuel on the steppes.

As we pulled into to have lunch on the 12th a Land Rover Discovery with a roof tent arrived in a cloud of dust. It was a couple from Switzerland, mother Sarah and son Mark. They are also on their way to Mongolia. They could not stay long because they had an appointment to see a rocket go off at Baikanour cosmodrome on the 15th. They were planning to get to Aktobe that night - a journey we were planning to take five days to do.

Some nice birds on the Steppe so far, several pairs of Demoiselle Cranes, lots of Steppe Eagle including some on nests. One nest on the level ground could be driven right up to with the Tab. - it had two eggs. Other birds included Red-headed Bunting, Black Lark, White-winged Lark, Rose-coloured Starling, Ruddy Shelduck and Sociable Plover.

As we have headed north the weather changed considerably - we were consistently having cloudless skies and temperatures in the mid 30's but a nasty wind has started blowing from Siberia. We had a couple of storms - one with big hailstones (but still at still 33C) - which really felt to be battering the Tab but seem not to have left any marks. Then it started getting cooler and the wind stronger until just before Aktobe it became gale force and the temperature dropped to 17C with a very significant wind chill - the night of the 16th was even down to zero, the lowest since 19 April in Czech.

One of the great things about having the Tab with us it that it makes people, children, elderly folk and border guards, almost without exception, smile. Here in Kazakhstan we have had many toots from other cars and then waves. At the supermarket one day a woman asked if we were with a circus!

We have added notes on the coeliac page and about buying fuel in this region on the home page.

We meant to say last time that as well as appreciating your comments we have also really enjoyed hearing your news and that of home - so please keep that coming - we especially enjoy hearing how bad the weather is in the UK!

The road from Atyrau to Aktobe (596 km)

This is the only road from this western city to the center and east. It starts off fine and having had a little experience of Kazakhstan roads since the border, we thought how long can this last? We got to the town of Dosser (101 km) and it was still excellent and then on to Maqat another 30 km still fine. Unfortunately we could not find the road east from that town until we realised that a very rough unasphalted track was the road.. The next 260 km were really terrible. At best the official road was asphalted or was hardcore more or less graded but both these surfaces were so heavily potholed and broken up by the elements that unofficial roads had been created both sides of the road where cars had left the road to form parallel tracks in the steppe, usually within 100 m of the main road but sometimes 2-3 kms from the main road.. The big problem of these tracks is the dust. Clouds of it. The silty strata which compacts after rain breaks down to fine billowing dust which lies in pools and explodes from the ground when you drive over it. It gets in everywhere. Including a fine covering inside the Tab. Had we not been towing the Tab we could have gone a lot faster but the Tab is not good over large bumps and uneven surfaces or corrugations (the rippled surface that forms on well used sandy tracks). We were not in a hurry in any event and this rough section took four camp sites with our lowest daily mileages so far. About 30 km east of Bayghanin (56 deg E) the road improves and is mainly asphalted but of poor quality and still with anumber of potholes and rutting for the rest of the way. At least you do not have to leave the road very often. We had two more camps before Aktobe. It took us six days all told of about 4-5 careful hours driving a day but it can be done a lot quicker. The couple we met from Switzerland in a Discovery were planning to do the whole journey in one day and we understand they made it but it would have been a long hard day.