Kazakhstan

Late June, early July

Government house, Baku, Azerbaijan.

So after a week of heavy alcohol and kebab consumption in Baku it was time to get the ferry to Kazakhstan. Seems like a straight forward task, but it turned into a right headache. The ferries across the caspian are of course old soviet boats, operated by what seems a fairly small Azeri company and by western standards they're unbelievabley unprofessional. I'd been given a phone number for the "ticket office" but it didn't seem to work so I'd been walking to the docks every morning for a few days to find out if the boat was sailing that day, as this ferry route infamously has no schedule. A week after arriving in Baku the ferry was finally going to sail (I'd been unlucky as a boat had sailed the same day I'd arrived), but not before an incredibely frustrating day trying to secure my passage on that boat. The whole proccess was not helped by the previous night having been a particularly heavy one on the booze. 

Azeri customs officers dropping the intimidating fascade for a brief moment.

The experience can be summed up like so: I spent over half a day outside the "ticket office" patiently waiting to pay to be allowed on the boat. After having dealt with everybody else the ticket bloke, who was a very unpleasant and stereotypically Azeri/Caucasian character, promptly got in a car and drove off to the dock leaving me stood baffled as to whether I just been refused passage on the ferry. As far as I can tell he had some kind of anti-motorcyclist agenda going on and he was going to let the boat sail without me onboard. The whole charade needs to be seen in the context of the guy and his secretary speaking only Azeri and Russian, and trying as hard as they could to communicate as little as possible to anyone wanting to take the ferry. Fortunately I managed to wander into the back of the office and found a guy who spoke english and another who looked like the boss, and after explaining to them I'd been sat outside all day waiting to buy a ticket they got on the phone and summoned old matey back. He didn't seem particularly happy about it. So with my wallet $220 lighter I could finally get on the boat. They'd almost finished loading it so I was rushed on which I think saved me getting any grief off the customs guys. I was pretty stressed out by this point, particularly as I'd apparently come so close to not getting on the boat, so when one of the crew stopped me on the loading ramp and told me my ticket was 'no good' and that I had to pay him $5, I was close to snapping. Needless to say I didn't give him the $5, though I was tempted to give him a good hard shove off the ramp and into the sea. This further added to my stressed mood as I was paranoid that he might take revenge against my bike with all my gear on it whilst we were at sea as punishment for not giving him his 5 quid.

International overlanders collective, sat on deck.

There was a small group of overlanders on the boat; French, American, British and Russian. Everyone had heard the horror stories of people being stuck on these Caspian ferries for days, and my advice to anyone reading this intending on taking this ferry is to be prepared! We sailed out of port only to drop anchor in the bay outside of Baku - There was a storm brewing in the Caspian and boats here are very cautious about sailing on rough seas. Apparrently some years ago this very boat's sister ship sank in a similar storm! The three or four days trapped on the ship merged into each other, with my mental state further strained by suffering chronic diahrea for the whole time on board. I was lucky to have a sizeable group of English speakers to talk with to pass the time, and in particular I struck up a friendship with the beautiful Russian photographer, Eva. She was travelling with three older French guys in two old Citroens, also acting as a translator as well as taking photographs. Speaking with Eva was my first insight into Russian culture and way of life.

Dusk descends over Baku as the ship starts moving...

...only to drop anchor and stay in Azeri waters for several days! Passing the time out on deck.

The boat eventually sailed much of the way across the Caspian sea overnight, so it was late morning when we arrived in Aktau, Kazakhstan. Clearing customs and passport control was very time consuming, and for the vehicles random bits of paper needed randon stamps from random officials - Of course none of these officials were actually too bothered with what was written on the forms, and they could only be found (or not as the case may be) in random offices hidden around the port area. Old fashioned sovietik beaurocracy at its best.

Let loose in Kazakhstan! With two less tyres to carry, the bike no longer looked so comically overloaded.

By the time we'd finished with customs it was late so the overlanding crew agreed to camp together somewhere near Aktau. Driving into the city to find a supermarket was good fun - A convoy of two 1950s citroens, a loaded up landrover with an array of bicycles strapped to it, and my loaded up bike - We drew quite a bit of attention in town when we stopped. When it was time to move off we had a massive stroke of luck that when attempting to drive out the city we got stopped by a Russian motorcyclist who first took us to his swanky office (he ran his own film studio!) to advise us on a lack of likely camping places, and then to a yacht club where we camped up for free on the edge of town.

Russian and Kazakh locals crowding around whilst parked up in the city.

Local biker Vlad shows us somewhere to camp - A lucky break as it was by then dark.

Basha set up in the yacht club, though to keep the sun off, rather than the rain.

Getting out of Aktau and onto the main road proved problematic. The outskirts of the city were a maze of small towns and villages, and tons of roads but no roadsigns. I ended up navigating by the sun/compass and found a road in the right direction. It turned out to be the wrong one however, and I did a long stint riding on a remote sand track before I eventually rejoined the main route. The heat was intense and even in the shade it was baking hot. The tarmac eventually ran out and the "main road" turned into a massively potholed hardpac gravelly affair. I was keeping up a good pace riding around 45mph making full use of the capable enduro suspension on my bike. As the day went on I eventually caught up with the French citroens who were reduced to driving at 20kph (!!) in order to cope with the poor road surface without breaking their fragile suspension. I'd stopped an extra day in Aktau but with DR350 perfectly suited for the poor roads I'd made this time up within a days riding. Since it was getting late I opted to camp the night with the french expedition.

Citroën Acadiane van, with 0.6l 2CV engine.

Citroën Traction Avant, with beautiful Russian girl in the passenger seat.

Suzuki DR350, with scruffy young Englishman at the controls.

Ural 650, with three Kazakh teenagers desperate to get that camera-phone picture of a bunch of strange foreigners.

Who needs piped water when you've got a hole in the ground? Trying not to think about the conversation where someone warned me all ground water in south-western Kazakhstan is poluted from nuclear radiation.

The following day the Citroens set off at the crack of dawn, but despite planning on meeting them further up the road I was content to spend a few more hours resting knowing full well the dirtbike would travel much faster than the cars. The last town on the 'main road' for me was Beyneu, where I would part company with the Citroens who were heading to Uzbekistan, and head off across the piste on the first real off-road test of my trip. I pulled up in town just as the Citroens were finnishing getting a puncture repaired. I'd been advised that this town was home to a former Soviet-era motocross and enduro racing champion, and that he was always eager to meet passing motorcyclists. Eva promised to ask around incase someone knew him, but when we walked into the town's only supermarket we bumped into him doing some shopping! Lyosha invited us back to his house/workshop and gave us a meal and some Kazkh cognac, and showed us photographs of him racing scramblers back in the old days. He also offered some route info for me, for my plan to cross a vast sparsely populated stretch of desert towards Aralsk.

Filling up with petrol for the long remote way ahead. 22l in the tank, and 5l in a jerry can gave me a fantastic range - When the bike was running at its best up to 800km !

 Young boys the world over love motorcycles.

Lyosha had said that I was crazy to take the route I was planning on, his opinion was that it would be impossible to go that way without either a GPS or a human guide. I'm not one to be scared off from something so easily, so I decided to go ahead and give it a shot. I said my goodbyes to the French trio, Dominique, Bernard and Jean-Marie, and of course to Eva before setting off on the road out of town - Though not before an altercation with some drunken locals just on the edge of town, my first glimpse of the dark side of native Kazakh people.

I didn't get off to a confident inspiring start, as the info from Lyosha was to turn off the road onto a track leading the village of Turush. It hadn't occurred to me that would be quite a few tracks leading off across the steppe, and that none of them were important looking or indeed more sizeable or well used than the others. I picked a track and set off on the 50 or so kilometers to the village on what started off as an easy jeep track through mild sand. The route was really a maze of jeep tracks, and I had to keep making random decisions on which path to take. My confidence was only raised by seeing a truck and also a UAZ minibus which I hoped signalled that I was going in the right direction. The second half the way was more sandy, and small hills in particular seemed to have deep sand on the climbs and descents. I was relieved to spot a village after riding roughly the distance I was expecting to have done, but as I got close the sand became ridiculously soft and deep and I dropped the bike a couple of times fighting to keep it moving forwards.

The village was just a collection of farm houses in a smallish area, and inbetween them was bad sand with no obvious tracks to ride on. By now I'd sussed that there wouldn't be "a track" to ride on, but instead I would have to brave a constant maze of paths and choose between them as best I could to keep me moving in the correct direction judged by the sun or by my compass. I didn't stop in the village, apart from to drop the bike in the sand, instead carrying straight on travelling East. I dropped my tyre pressures as low as I dared - 5psi rear, 10psi front - and struggled on, riding the still terrible sand. It was starting to get late in the day as we'd deliberately left Beyneu towards the end of the afternoon to avoid the unbearable midday heat. I was boiling hot, exhausted, and lacking in confidence that I was going to be able to ride the 600km or more of this terrain to get back to civilisation and roads. I dropped the bike again but unfortunately in a rut with the wheels higher up than the handlebars , and I was so tired I couldn't pick it up again. I was probably there for at least 30 minutes, struggling to manhandle the overloaded bike and regain some strength. When I eventually managed to get it upright, I got on and tried to kickstart it only to lose my balance and promptly fell over again but this time on the other side. Now the slope was in my favour, but I was so exhausted it probably still took 5 minutes to steady myself enough to pick it up. This time I forced my sidestand down through the sand before trying to start the bike - Had I dropped it again I doubt I could have raised it that evening without removing all the luggage first. I rode another 15 or 20 minutes, thankfully clearing the section of really bad sand, before calling it a night with dusk already descended. I was so shattered and physically drained I didn't cook or eat anything, nor did I bother putting up the basha to sleep under.

The next morning I didn't feel like having any breakfast, so I set straight off eager to put the previous evenings difficulties behind me. The sand was mostly a lot more forgiving, and I must have rode for over an hour making good progress. The tracks led to several farms, at which point I'd pick another track from the farm which best suited my intended direction. This worked great till I eventually got a farm which had no other tracks leading to/from it. Bugger. I didn't fancy heading back the way I'd come, and it occurred to me there was no way of know that any other track I picked up wouldn't finish the same way. I tried to ask a lady at the farmhouse the way to the next village on my route. She didn't seem to know how to respond so called out her son who had obviously been asleep and obviously also been drinking heavily the previous night. He didn't seem to recognise the name of the village I wanted to head to, but when I showed him the map he spotted a different village and confidently pointed me the way. Probing him further he pointed out a direction to my intended checkpoint, the village of Bozoi, but there was no obvious track of any kind and it seemed he'd just worked out which was the correct bearing to take. The first village, Matai, wasn't quite on the straight line path I wanted to follow, but it seemed like a more likely target for me to reach so off I set.

I was directed to follow what some kind of cattle path which led to a watering hole. I'd hoped that a vehicle track would emerge from the churned up sand, but there was no obvious way to go after the watering hole. With nothing else to do I set off across open desert/steppe riding again in bad sand. There were prickely bushes everywhere, but steering to avoid them in the deep sand saw me sliding all over the place, and of course dropping the bike several times. I had to settle for changing direction as gentley as possible and ploughing through whatever was in my path. The desert here was punctuated by "bowls" or "depressions", which contained the worst sand. I tried to avoid these whenever I could, but accidently straying into a couple meant having to ride out with high revs in first gear, a lot of wheel spinning, and plenty of foot paddalling to try and keep the momentum from failing. I'd worked out that to find a track heading in the direction I wanted, rather than perpendicular to it, I needed to travel in a direction roughly 45degrees from what thought my bearing was. I did eventually get onto a track but after some distance I again found myself at a small farmhouse with no other tracks to take, with exactly the same result.

The sand started getting less soft, the farmhouses more frequent, and the tracks more well trafficked. When I saw people outside the farmhouses I stopped to check if they agreed I was on a track leading to Matai. As far as I can tell Matai wasn't a village at all, but a place, a collection of farms in a general vicinity. There was however what looked like a military station, notable only for a large radio tower. Just near to this I stopped at a farmhouse to work out my next direction. The guys I spoke to were quite clear about the direction I needed to take to get to Bozoi, even though it wasn't the way as the crow flies. I took got a rare photo, but thought better of it than photographing the suspected military post.

I confess to having felt like the last of the great adventurers...

I set off yet again, back on sand so soft it was barely possible to even make out depressions/ruts made by vehicles, let alone tracks. But I didn't get far before I saw soldiers on the path ahead. I of course came to stop next to them, at that time fearing there might be some kind of training exercise blocking the way. A large misunderstanding caused by the inability to communicate eventually resulted in 5 soldiers physically hauling me off the bike, one of them riding it back to the outpost, and me walking back with the other four struggling in the heat and the soft sand. I was physically and mentally drained, I was suffering in the sun and the heat, starting to feel week from not having eaten, and dehydrated from not drinking enough water - I'm not sure what an appropriate amount of water to be drinking per day in those conditions was, but I think 5l was the minimum for me to feel okay and be able to occasionally pee something out.

The soldiers only wanted me to check in with their officer, but I hadn't been able to understand what they wanted, and they weren't able to understand I would happily have done so and wouldn't have just ridden off. The situation worked out massively to my benefit as I got water bottles filled from their well, got a meal and tea in their canteen, and got the way ahead spelled out more clearly. The security concern was actually understandable as we were something like 10 or 20km from the border with Uzbekistan. Being dragged off the bike I'd felt like my trip was going to end terribley right there, but in reality it was this altercation that probably saved it. The next riding stint was following tracks made by big military trucks driving through the desert. It was something like 140km to my checkpoint, and after a guardtower shortly after the military station, I didn't see a single person, vehicle, building, or livestock animal.

I was as worried as ever that I was not on the right track, and I even had visions of coming across civilisation and finding I'd strayed accidently into Uzbekistan. Sometimes there was just one track, other times the trucks had been making fresh tracks on the steppe. In one section of bad sand I came off at slow speed for the first time on the trip, and had to spend five minutes or so wriggling out from under the bike. I also noticed I'd started leaking oil from the cylinder head, but I wasn't going to contemplate looking into that until I was safely back in civilisation.

Dropped bike

Eventually I had a major fork, and I decided whilst there wasn't a lot in that more traffic had been taking the track heading up North rather than continuing straight ahead, North-East-East. Sooner after I imagined I could see something in the distance. After another 15minutes or so of riding I was again at a military station, again with a big radio tower. This was the place I'd been directed by the officer at Matai to head to, though I hadn't known it was purely a military post with no signs of any farms or houses. There was though some kind of gas pipeline, maybe ever a gas field - I'm not sure. At the time I couldn't believe my luck that I'd chosen to turn left rather than carried on straight, but in hindsight carrying on straight would probably have took me to the what's left of the Aral sea. The German BMW rider I'd met in Turkey, Olaf, had described riding this route including riding along the shore of the Aral sea, and I'm a little dissapointed I never actually got to see it. At the time though I was only concerned with making my route safely, and if I can say it without sounding foolish, surviving it.

The soldiers here who came out to see me looked a bit surprised to see me, and made a token effort to write my details in a notebook though I actually had to volunteer my passport to them as they seemed to be content trying to ask me things like my name, then work out how to spell them. I'd half hoped to be invited in for another free meal, but it didn't seem to be forthcoming. Instead I got directed on the way ahead, and now I was on a track following power lines, and I think also a buried gasline. I rode for an hour then decided to stop, eat and sleep. A massive herd of apparently wild horses cantered their way accross the steppe, but I was too tired to even think about making photographs. I cooked some food, and slept beneath the stars.

The next morning I was soon in Bozoi. There was some kind of gas refinery/pumping/whatever facility, and as I stopped outside it one of the worked started speaking to me in English. I was so shocked I didn't even think to ask him questions about the area, instead simply saying hello, complimenting his good English, and asking if their was petrol in this town. There was a small old petrol station, with the obligatory manually operated pumps. They had only 80octane petrol though, and being snobby and under the belief I could get petrol two villages further along the track, I only got the minimum I thought I needed. This was a proper village, with houses in a grid layout with fenced yards, and even a couple of small bits of concrete road on the edges. I struggled to find the track out of town, and whilst exploring a wrong track I got a puncture, the first of the trip. I was actually amazed I'd been able to ride so far on low pressures without problems until then, especially as the Trelleborg tyres I was using seemed to have a thin layer of rubber on the carcass.

I can see why I'd took the wrong track - that counts as a good road in parts of Kazakhstan

A quick tube change later and I headed back into the village, before getting directed onto the right track. I was initially on a good solid track following some power lines, but they vanished into the ground and the track descended into the usual mixed condition, multiple choice sand riding. By now I was really getting the hang of the sand, and the constant bike dropping and near crashes were well behind me. The village of Begimbyet was marked on my atlas as having a petrol station, so my heat dropped when I arrived and found the petrol station long abandoned. I knew I'd made a big mistake in not filling up at the previous village, but with nothing else to do I question a local who seemed want to ride pillion and direct me to the petrol. This was another proper 'grid' village, smack bam in the middle of nowhere, so it wasn't entirely surprising that this guy reeked of booze despite it being lunchtime. Whatever employment the Soviet union had found for these people such as they built a village here, was obviously long gone. One guy meant to have petrol either didn't, or wasn't selling to me. I got took to a lady who did have some, and I got 10l of apparent 92octane for more than twice what I would have payed at a petrol station. The guy who helped me wanted me to stay and drink with him. Now ordinarily I'd jump at the chance to drink with the locals and get an insight into the culture, but it was so hot I could barely force enough water down my throat to keep myself hydrated, and I also picked up a slight atmosphere of subdued aggression in the village (which I felt in most small remote central asian villages to be honest) and didn't think it wise to hang around any longer than I had to.

This should have brought me near to the end of my off-road stint, but one last navigational blunder saw me follow the power lines rather than turning off on a 'main' track leading to the biggest town of the region, Chelkar. After discussing this with some locals at a farmhouse, I headed off accross open steppe one last time. It seems amazing to me, but the people in this area of Kazakhstan must have very rarely visited their neighbouring towns or villages, even if they lived in the middle of nowhere... Sods law dictated just as I found a good dirt track leading the last 10km or so to the road I lost concentration, clipped the edge of a rut, and went flying off the bike. Fortunately I wasn't hurt. I pulled up in Chelkar late in the day, with time to have a quick reccy of the town and fill up the water can before riding just outside the town to camp up for the night.

In two and half days spent out in the void like desert I must have seen at most 10 or so other vehicles driving about. This was the most extreme and testing part of the whole 6 month bike trip, and I can admit to scaring myself a little bit doing it. Even breaking down on a track could potentially lead to death before any traffic would pass, let alone out in the middle of the steppe where there are parts possibly nobody ever goes. I'd hoped to get the bike jet-washed in Chelkar so I could track down my oil leak, but they didn't appear to have running water there. I was paranoid that if I stopped by a local mechanic so I could safely fix my oil leak, I wouldn't be able to explain to them I didn't need them to help and risk breaking something. I fixed the leak where I'd camped - When I'd fitted the replacement cylinder head in Belgium I'd managed to put two washers on one of the head bolts and oil had started to leak out from between them. I also noticed the rear rack which my 'topbox' bolted to had snapped in half at some point very recently, so I had to find a mechanic and get it welded.

Not being able to communicate with the locals was starting to get to me and my moral was at a bit of a low point despite successfully fixing the snapped rack and oil leak. The weather turned really cold for some reason which didn't improve my mood, and then I wasted an hour or two getting lost due to the road layout in reality differing from what I had on my map. Things got worse when first the drysack with my basha and a few other camping things fell off the bike and I had to give up looking for it. And then I lost one of my flipflops as well. Finally I had to give up on my planned shortcut to Astana as that central part of the country looked really wet with lots of lakes dotted about, and whilst I suspected the track marked on the map would still be rideable it would turn into another hardcore off-road adventure. I was starting to come round a boring saftey driven mindset, that riding alone through bad terrain in remote places was going to wind up with me getting into trouble sooner rather than later. The net result was following the 'main road' south down to Almaty, though the first 50km of this main transit route was an off road stretch itself. I think most of the freight in the country is transported by rail as the road network would really not be recognisable to a westerner as a viable means of getting anywhere.

I'd been sleeping beneath the stars since departing from the French group, but now that the weather was not so good I was a little bit paranoid about getting a midnight soaking without anything to keep the rain off my sleeping bag. Fortunately the rain held off and I made it to Almaty without trouble after a couple of days of mile-munching on the now good asphalt road.