Time of writing, 4th August 2011, 9:55 pm. (GMT+5 we think). It has been a really really hard couple of days. I'll try to give the highlights and the lowlights for the silver Suzi crew.
After meeting up with a number of other ralliers in Astrakhan and having a nice comfortable (discounted) night in a hotel we set off east in high spirits. After reaching this region the temperature has been scotching and I have been really desperate for a swim. On the way into astrakhan a sidestream (still a few km across) of the river Volga seemed very tempting. I went for a quick dip but the bed was really silty and sloppy and the current was strong enough for me to not dare go too far out. The amount of goat poo on the bank didn't help make it any more appealing either so I didn't stay in it long. Hopefully I won't die of any kind of goat-poo related disease.
We'd make cracking time into astrakhan by doing our all-nighter so we were hoping to reward ourselves by a beach day at the Caspian sea. Unfortunately the one morning we a had spare the sun had hidden itself and it as blowing a gale. We decided instead to hit the beach on the kazakh side of the border.
The border crossing was relatively stress free as border crossings went. With a couple of minor beuocratical misunderstandings we made it into kazakhstan. It was painfully obvious that the region is significantly worse-off than the russian side. Suddenly there are wild horses, camels, goats and cows roaming everywhere. The countryside is remote except for a few small dusty villages. The road is decent at this point and we decide to take a detour towards the caspian sea to camp on the beach so we can have a morning swim.
As we came off the road we went into some sort of village and lots of locals came out to greet us. They had no words of English, we had no words of Kazakh (and painfully few even in russian). We managed to get through to them that we wanted to find the sea and one guy decided he was going to show us. He squeazed into the back to share the one spare seat with Tim and gesticulated wildly to guide us around the cows, houses, barking dogs, sand-dunes and curious kids. Eventually we reached the sea and another couple of locals showed up in their cars to see what we were up to. While being a bit scared by all the random guys showing up they seemed nice enough and showed us where to camp above the high tide line. Eventually they left us alone, (well after our guide asked for some money). Unfortunately we hadn't at that point got any kazakh currency so he had to make do with 100 rubles (2-3 quid) and a packet of crisps!
Just when we had sucessfully pitched we saw this new white massive Toyota landcruiser with blacked out windows coming towards us. It stopped... We pooed ourselves just a bit expecting local mafia. Then a bloke leaned out of the window and shouted "allright lads! How's it going?" in a Scottish accent! It turned out he was living locally (we guess oil industry), he gave us some tips on roads etc. Funny enough it turned out that the guys in the village were more like local mafia - caviar smuggling/poaching. I guess they see themselves as fishermen doing what they have done for generations.
Anyway, it lead to a rather scared nights sleep in which huge grasshoppers bombarded the tent and every noise seemed to be a lurking local coming to rob us. Nevertheless we woke up unharmed.
We forced ourselves out of bed at dawn around 7am local ( 2 am GMT!) and struck the camp. Despite the sun not being fully up Tim and I decided to go for a swim ( we won't see the sea for some time!). We tried to swim, but after wading out for at least a Km the sea was not even over our knees! I couldn't swim without dredging the sea bed with my beer belly. Even Tim had difficulties and he doesn't have a beer belly.
As for the rest of today. It turned out that our russian SIM card leaked credit in kazakhstan after receiving calls. We met some of the same rallyers at a petrol station and compared notes. (Kudos to the crazy guy doing it on a 125cc motorbike!). Apparently the road we were planning to take is "the worst road in the world". We figured it can't be that bad, we've driven though belgium already.
About an hour later we realised he was right. First potholes appeared large enough to actually hide suzi inside. It was better to drive next to the road than on the road. At times it was better to drive next to the bit at the side of the road where other people have been driving! Then the tarmac disappeared completely and we got gravel with gaps. We bashed our sumpguard so many times but it appears to be holding. The largest potholes must be over a metre deep and I've developed some good dodging ability. Our speed varied from 1-5 MPH on the worst bits, up to about 55 MPH for the small stretches that we got real tarmac. A really scary moment happened when someone screamed past in a 4x4 and flicked up a stone the size of a medium potato right at my face. It badly cracked the windscreen and shook us up a lot. Hopefully it won't get bigger - we won't find a replacement!
Also we realise that no tarmac is much better than bad tarmac. We only covered a few hundred Km today and don't think at this pace it is possible to meet up with Red Suzi at Aral. We'll have to head north via Aktobe and the hopefully better roads. Tomorrow maybe we'll find a trucker to ask about the roads.
Best of luck to our other car, we don't know when we'll next meet up. Still waiting on a text message. Currently camped in a sort of deserty steppe by the side of a busy dirt track, sandy, grumpy, but hapilly beered.
