Day 14: Belokhurika, Russia to Semey, Khazakhstan

A brutal wake up call at 6am. I needed an extra half an hour to be able to make sense after last night’s long drive. The programme involves about 450Km to the Kazakh border and another 110 after that. It is imperative we make it before 4pm otherwise we will remain stuck in Russia until the next day. We manage to get ready to get our start stamped at 7:25 and after a very quick but decent breakfast we shoot out of this dump of a hotel.

The road to the Kazakh border could not be more different from last night’s. Miles and miles of flat cultivated fields probably part of collective farms established during the Soviet period. They are being harvested and the machines which are being employed seem to date from the Soviet era. The traffic is sparse, mainly old Ladas and Moskwich cars with some more recent copies of Japanese cars from twenty years ago. A lot of old trucks spewing their fumes as they struggle with their cargo along the road. We also spot quite a few horse drawn carts carrying people or farm products, certainly something we no longer see in Europe. We cross several villages with attractive houses, painted in lively colours, with contrasting window frames. They remind us of the ones we had seen in several Mongolian villages which, we realise, must have been modelled after the Russian ones.

We stop after a few hours to check some noise coming from the car. We discover that the underside of the car is covered in oil. We tried to figure out where it comes from but cannot. As we need to get to the border we decid to fill up whatever oil is missing from the engine and gearbox and move on, the theory being that as long as there is oil in both we are unlikely to have a serious problem.

We pass several cars that had problems including Alastair Caldwell’s Alfa Romeo 6c which, like our Chevy, never seems to finish a day without something happening to it, and Nigel Gambier’s Lagonda which is marred by electrical issues.

We reach the border at 3:30. This time formalities are less exciting than the previous day – no one misplaces any documents! The Kazakhs are even more efficient than the Russians and in a couple of hours we are back in the car bombing towards the town of Semey. We have never heard of this town before but understand it is in an area where the Soviets used to test their nuclear weapons… When we reach it we also discover that it is very polluted from its very visible coal burning power plants… and yet none of the street-lights are on after sunset.

We reach the hotel by 8 to discover that it compares unfavourably even to the previous night’s Russian establishment. It is a ghastly Soviet left over which has not received any maintenance since the fall of that empire. The entrance hall is lit by a couple of light bulbs, the reception is behind a glass window, the rooms are dreadful, the bathrooms beyond hope, lifts have stopped being repaired years ago so we have to haul our luggage up the stairs. And yet we are told that this is the best hotel in town where most rich local Kazakhs have their weddings and other functions. Too tired to complain we have a bite to eat and turn in. We almost feel we were better off in our tents in Mongolia…

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