Days 17-18: Almaty (Kazakhstan) – Rest days

Mariyam’s advice for Almaty was excellent.  Unfortunately, due to the heavy work load for the car we only got to follow it in a limited way.  We took the car to the local Nissan dealer who had emptied his workshop to allow as many of us to use it to do work on our car.  He  put his mechanics at our disposal to help us with certain complex issues or speed up the work.  We divided our roles, Mattia staying with the car while I went to look for supplies (parts, oil, etc.).

I hitched a ride with Nigel Gambier in his blue Lagonda to Red Scorpion, another mechanic which had a supplies shop.  It was a great ride during which he told me how this car had been in his family since his grandfather bought it new for his grandmother back in 1934.  It’s his only classic car and he has driven it on a previous P2P as well as in several other long distance rallies around the world.  He also uses it to take his family around on short trips.

In the garage Mattia carried out a full service and regular maintenance. Unfortunately what was supposed to be a half day exercise stretched over almost two days.  The starter motor mysteriously stopped working only to magically start working again once it was dismantled. Go figure! As work was progressing slowly I asked mechanic Bob Macharov to join Mattia at the workshop to speed things up and allow him some rest.

I found and purchased the best oil money could buy and to complete my other errands I then hired a driver to take me around.  He was of Turkish origin and I managed to exchange a few words with him in his language as well as in his limited English.  He took me to a large market.  I went through a maze of narrow alleys where hundreds of shops sold all sorts of car supplies, tools, consumables, etc.  I then found a glass cutting shop who had some thick Plexiglas.  I asked him whether he could fabricate a couple of aero-screens in case the windshield, which was being welded once again, were to collapse for the third time).  I showed him a picture of one which I had taken of one of the rally cars and gave him some indicative measurements.  He told me to come back in an hour. I took the opportunity to look for somewhere to have lunch and with help of my Turkish driver managed to order some delicious food. During lunch he told me how his parents had been deported by Stalin to Kazakhstan, how certain things were better now that the Soviets had left (the obvious ones – freedom, choice, etc) but how certain others had been better under the Russians – jobs, simpler life, less competition.  I went back to the glass shop to find they had completely bungled the job and had produced one screen half the size I had requested.  I looked around the shop and found that a mirror they had just cut had the shape and width that I requested.  I placed it over the Plexiglas and told them to cut it around it’s semi-circled top and indicated the maximum length. This time they got it and in 15 minutes it was ready.

Back at the hotel I discovered that car 22, a 1929 Chevrolet roadster not very different from ours, had caught fire on the way to Almaty and was now a heap of ashes.  The crew, David Clements and Russel Stevenson, who had been our yurt-mates, were now looking for alternative transportation to get them to Paris.  We later learned that they did find a modern something and spent their entire time in Almaty getting the right export and registration papers to allow them to continue their trip.  We understand this is the third example of crews having to do so.  Others, like David Rayner in his BMW have simply walked away.

The rest of the time was spent… well actually resting a little, something we had not done in several days.  We checked out a couple of restaurants in the evenings with some of our newly made friends.  Of these, Alashà, stood out for great food, live musical entertainment and belly dancing. We felt that both the local rhythms and belly dancing were far superior to anything that we had seen elsewhere.   Some of the locals approached us to find out more about our rally.  They had some great laughs at our adventures, probably thinking we were all nuts.  Some of them turned out to be local entertainment celebrities and took turns to sing to everyone’s enjoyment.   They then asked all of us to join them in the dancing to celebrate someone’s birthday.

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