Category kazakhstan

Before leaving Tashkent I spent several hours pouring over countless maps of Kazakhstan and Russia, trying to work out the best route to Mongolia. Since we rested a week in Tashkent, we had the added benefit of being able to read other team’s reports online, and the reports on road conditions in Kazakhstan were not favorable. One report in particular, from a team called Yak to the Future, told us that the roads straight North-East from Uzbekistan were so bad that it was actually easier and better for the car to just drive off-road. With some 1,500k to cover in Kazakhstan, our little Saxo would not be able to handle the abuse. Already, the car’s frame was cracking, the back tires rubbed noisily on the wheel wells, and the gear linkage popped out freely over big bumps. Our car simply carried too much weight over imperfect roads. We couldn’t take that risk. So, I continued to look at maps.

Eventually an alternative plan emerged. I decided to take our team some 700k out of the way on good roads, which would save the car and only cost us the additional gas money. Since fuel in Kazakhstan is relatively cheap, it was a good trade off. We would avoid Almaty and head towards Astana, cutting east before the city and bearing south-east and then north to Russia. It was a hell of a long way out of the way, but after hours of online research about the road conditions, I discovered that in 2007 the road I had chosen was refinished, making it a much, much smarter bet than the ancient panel-style cement roads that cut straight towards Russia.

We set off on our new route on the morning of the 23rd, with plans to make the Mongolian border in less than 5 days, with over 2,000k to travel across rough terrain with three border crossings. We were feeling optimistic. The road we chose turned out to be a good decision. We were essentially on highway for three days, with only intermittent dinosaur-sized pot holes. The worn ridges from semis on the roads remained, so that you were driving on the crest of two cement waves for the duration of Kazakhstan.

We easily crossed into Russia after a few days of non-stop driving, camping at night, and eating limited camp food at night. It was more work than play to cover that kind of distance. The Russian border, though we had heard it would be difficult and the guards had already acquired a reputation for demanding bribes, turned out to be a breeze for us. The only snag was that with his beard, the guards did not think Mike was the same boy from his passport pictures. After several minutes of laughing with them and threatening to shave on the spot, they let us pass. We looked at the map and made a snap decision. It was still early and we had made it through the border, we stopped in the first town to eat and take a short break, refill on groceries and water, and hit the road. We ran into another team that was aiming for the Mongolian border some 1000k away by nightfall.

The Mongolian border closes on weekends. We suddenly realized it was Thursday. If we drove until we arrived at the border we might, just might, make it through before closing time on Friday. We revved up the 1.1 liter engine and drove through the night, arriving at the Russian border at 4am. A team from Belfast was in front of us in line, we slept in the car for a few hours and at ten am we again greeted Russian border guards, but this would be the last time we’d see Russians in a long while, so we endeavored to enjoy the experience.

As with all good things, it was time for our little convoy of three cars to end. The Abandon the Cube team had visas and plans to head into Uzbekistan, while the FaceRace and Schumacher teams would head straight across Kazakhstan. As we neared the border with Kazakhstan, we decided to make the most of our remaining time together. After crossing the Russian-Kazakh border (we’ve become pros at border crossings, recently) we camped inside Kazakhstan just outside of Aterau. The road conditions were decent, but were the worst we had seen thus far on the rally. Pot holes would appear out of nowhere that were the size of small cows. More dangerously though were the ripples made by trucks on the roads so that the pavement was not flat, but consisted of two ridges in each lane. Small cars like ours had to drive on top of the ridges or else risk ripping apart the undercarriage. Because of this, the going was a bit slow. Add to this the fact that camels abounded in the area and, at night, camels venture onto the black pavement roads to soak up the heat of the dark cement.

We pulled off the road. It was entirely a flat region so there was no cover for our tents and cars. We decided to camp anyway, and after a bit of roof riding by Lauren, and a bit of football playing by the Brits, we pulled our cars into a flat area and began to set up our tents. We wanted our last evening together to be fun, so talk of a campfire raged through the camp. But, as we were setting up we noticed ants all over the area. We traced them back to hives all around the flats. There was nowhere to go to escape them. While we were investigating the strange ants, the mosquitoes emerged. I don’t expect there are many people on the planet who like mosquitoes, but this was ridiculous. If you pointed your flashlight above someone’s head you could literally see a grey, moving cloud of humming mosquitoes, diving in for the kill. Only Bill and Mike were able to stay outside their tents long enough to cook some quick noodles. Everyone else huddled in their tents, scratching their bites and watching for ants. It was like a bad Indiana Jones movie, with strange insects closing in on us from all sides.

Despite the annoyance of the bugs and the extreme, lung-halting heat, we managed to get a few hours of sleep. In the morning, we pushed on to Aterau and arrived fairly early. We found a bank and quickly changed money, then decided to have a group lunch together before we split up. Parked outside a shopping center, another rally team pulled up consisting of two middle-aged men who worked as deep-sea exploratory oil divers. We all went to the town’s Irish pub. Apparently there were hundreds of Americans and Aussies in Aterau working in the oil and gas business. Who would have guessed? We had a beer and pizza and, back in the parking lot, took a final convoy picture and said our goodbyes.

Bill, Mike and I nestled into our tiny Saxo and pointed it due south to Uzbekistan. The rest of our tiny convoy pulled out their maps and began plotting a route East and then North towards Russia. It was a sad goodbye, and it was lonely to be a solo rally car.

It’s official! We’ve finally ironed out our route details to the finest detail. We have decided to head from London to Paris, and from Paris to Luxembourg. After a break, we’ll head to Nuremberg and the Prague for the 2010 Czech Out Party, which we’re all very excited about. From there we head south to Bratislava and Budapest before entering Romania for a few castle tours and vampire stalking. We then head to Chisinau and then into Ukraine to the famous port city of Odessa. From this point on the trip gets really interesting. We head due east through Russia, hugging the Black Sea coast until we enter Kazakhstan. We’ll cut inland and aim directly for the Aral Sea inside the Uzbek border. We’ll cut across Uzbekistan and then re-enter Kazakhstan heading north into the mountains. Back into Russia for a moment before entering Mongolia and racing across the open Steppe to Ulaanbataar. Yup, that’s what we’ll be doing this summer, driving across 1/3rd of the distance around the trodden earth. If none of this made sense, check out the nifty map we made (yeah, I should have led with that!):

View Central Asia Route Map created by ATC for the 2010 Mongol Rally

This map is awesome, and really shows the distance and scale of the land we’ll be covering. Some 8-10,000km through 13 countries in a car that even Mickey Mouse would say is too small– a 1.5l engine auto. Below is a picture of a rally car from 2009, ours will be very similar.

If you are more interested in the car, aka- how to buy, register and insure one in Europe, or even cooler (if that is possible) a post on all our awesome media coverage, or possibly the list of woe-is-me updates we made when we were feeling down, then check out these other posts or head to the Mongol Rally and Sponsorship pages, which explain it all.

After sleeping in the Almaty-1 train station we boarded our first Kazakh train at 5:12am bound for Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The train arrived a bit early and no one knew which car or cabin we were meant to be in, and in our limited (ok, non-existent) Russian we had a bit of trouble finding our births. Once situated in car number 9 we discovered we were meant to be in bunks 13 and 16. A very old, very sickly man who was thinner than a pencil and paler than paper was sleeping fitfully in my bunk while a giant, fecal-covered bag was resting on Mike’s bunk. The train attendant/scariest looking man on the planet approached us and heaved the heavy bag up over his head and threw it atop the birth above ours and ordered us up into two bunks. He came back five minutes later and demanded 700T from us to buy sheets for the bunks. I doubt anyone else paid but seeing as he was the largest shirtless Russian we’d ever seen we forked over the money (we later learned everyone did indeed pay for their sheets).

I’ll pause here to describe the train. Once in car 9 we were met with the most pungent aroma of vomit, human sweat, excrement and burnt hair. The smell was so string it made the skin around my eyes itch. The interior was paneled in fake wooden siding with bunks 2 high with a third bunk for baggage. Nowhere were there safety rails or hand grips. The tiny isle held additional bunks which doubled as benches. The bathroom was a tiny room with a stainless steel western toilet that was so stained and textured from years of use that it looked like a rusty old ship port hole.

Somehow, and probably because we had not really slept in the train station the night before, we fell asleep in our tiny bunks (so thin in width that you had to lay on your side or you’d roll onto the floor and get hepatitis. Throughout the night we made long stops in the middle of nowhere, literally the train would stop in a field and then, at random, take off again. By 8am the lights were flicked on and we rolled into a station for a brief stop only to discover that we had only gone about 20 miles down the tracks. Amazed, Mike set off to ask someone when we arrived in Tashkent. We had heard that it was a 12 hour ride, but that turned out only to have been true several years ago. Instead of arriving 12 hours later at 5pm we found out we would arrive 24 hours later at 4am the next day. We had no food, only a little bit of money in Tenge and the smell of vomit was making us nauseous.

Around late morning we made a stop and watched as everyone looking out the window panicked and dashed into their bunks. Even the sick old man pretended to be asleep. Several guards in elaborate uniforms got on board and talked briefly with the giant train attendant/giant before marching straight up to us. “Passport! Declaration.” We showed him our passports and he forcibly took mine out of my death grip on it and rushed down the isle. We could not both chase after him and leave all our bags, so Mike followed him. What ensued turns out to be a common occurrence on Kazakh trains. The man took Mike into the giant’s cabin and closed the door. He then patted Mike down and took all the money in his pockets, which turned out to be about $2 USD. Luckily the bribe-seeking Kazakh did not find the money belt containing hundreds of RMB. Mike took the event in stride and laughed about what a crappy bribe the guy got away with as he snatched my passport back from the cop and quickly returned to our cabin. From there after, at every stop we would watch for guards and, if we spotted any, we jumped into our bunks like everyone else and pretended to be asleep.

Around 10pm the giant (he had acquired a shirt now, but had it unbuttoned) gave us declaration forms. He found a translator who asked us if we had any money, any at all. Obviously after the bribe incident we lied and said no. This turned out to be a brilliant idea. They said we had to write something so we listed the guitar and computer (after he asked several times if we had one). We later found out the “translator” was a guard who was trying to get close to us to find out how much money we had left, as well as what other valuables.

When we approached the border of Uzbekistan, Kazakh officials border the train and again asked if we had money. Again we said we didn’t. Having not slept or eaten in almost 24 hours our sense of humor was weaning. They made us open our bags (but did not notice three of our 5 bags so did not search them and only ended up looking in the most boring bag full of clothing). They did a swine flu check and inquired again if we had any money or valuables. We kept saying no, insisting that we were planning on using our credit card (I had a deactivated card to show them just in case they stole the card). After a ridiculously long search of everyone’s bags on the train minus those of ours hidden on the top bunk, we saw a young Russian boy of about 17 taken into the back room and frisked. He lost several hundred T. We saw another man walk right up to the Kazakh guard and put a wad of bills into his hand and then point at his bag and walk away. The guards did not search his bag. We saw the old man from our bunk hide a box under his bunk and a boy of about 20 kick a black bag out of site while being searched. As we rolled away from the Kazakh border I had the feeling that everyone was transporting something illegal except us.

Fifteen minutes later it was 4am and we were rolling into the Uzbek guard station. The people on the train seemed less stressed and said the Uzbeks were not as hard to get through. Everyone stashed their secret packages and the old man revealed, mid-stretch, that he had stuff taped across his entire midriff. The Uzbeks had a nurse come take our temperatures and check our passports while a drug dog went around and terrified everyone. This was the first drug dog of the trip. The Uzbeks were friendly and efficient but again only searched one of our bags. They took no bribes and did not intimidate anyone. After we rolled away from the border we arrived in Tashkent thirty minutes later.

Zoom!

The Statistics Are In
7 Cities
4 Trains
3 Countries
2 Buses
2 broken backpacks
1 Car
$ 464 USD Per person (3,175 RMB)*
11,896 miles
Shanghai to Tashkent
Twenty days

*20 Days of normal living in Shanghai = 3,573 RMB ($523 USD)

Cathederal

We arrived in Almaty, the former capital of Kazakhstan, at 6:00am after 36 hours on the train. We immediately realized how screwed we were when we tried to buy train tickets to Tashkent for the next day using charades, smiles and Pictionary-like drawings. We both studied Russian for the month before we left, and discovered that knowing how to ask someone’s name and where they are from is useless and unpractical, albeit friendly. Finally, I figured out that there was a train, from another nearby station, leaving at 5:12am the next day. I promptly bought two tickets for 12,000Tenge after speedily changing my RMB into Tenge at a nearby counter using a similar method of charades and Pictionary.
From the train station, we hopped in the back of someone’s car for 400T to So Young’s Youth Hostel. It was hardly 8:30am, but So Young was awake and set about making a nice breakfast of fresh peppers, bread, popcorn and tea. A New Zealander woke up and joined us, and a bit later a boy from Holland joined in. We discussed everyone’s travel plans and how So Young, a S. Korean native, had ended up in Almaty (logistics expert for rail transport).
While we have many legitimate gripes with The Lonely Planet guidebooks, the section on Almaty was decent and set up an 8k ‘walking tour’ through the key spots in the city. We decided to add ‘buy Russian phrase book’ to our to-do list for the day. We walked all around the city in honest awe of the cleanliness, greenery, modernity and friendliness of the city and debated settling here for 6 months or so to learn Russian in a comfortable and interesting metropolis. This is still a possibility, although we would also like to see what Uzbekistan has to offer.
We had a fine 6USD lunch at a bier garten and then walked to the city bazaar and mosque, as well as an old cathedral in the middle of Pavlov park. We walked to the cable car, but decided not to take it to the top because of impending rain clouds. An hour later it poured so ferociously that the streets soon filled with water. We ducked, quickly, into the town’s biggest expat bar in an attempt to meet a few locals to hear what they think of living in the city- but the bar was deserted. Dashing through the rain, we reached So Young’s and settled in for some quality time with the other travelers and So Young, and a nice evening prepping for our border crossing tomorrow and uploading pictures.
More from Uzbekistan soon to follow.