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Bikes at Sunset - Kazakhstan

After our stay in Astrakan it was time to head off for Atyrau and the Kazakhstan border… Leaving Astrakan with the maps we had proved to be more difficult than we thought…. how hard can it be to follow some signs right?… well we got lost and ended up riding around for about 45 minutes until we found the right road.. We should really have filled up with more petrol in Astrakan before we left but they all had long lines and we wanted to make it to the border.. We had been told to expect delays of at least 12 hours to cross into Kazakhstan.. It was luckily not the case. We arrived and the line of cars was relatively short (maybe 15 cars).. All up it took about 2 hours which was a huge relief after our 16 hour epic at Sochi. At the border crossing the customs agent who was sorting our customs declaration (the legal paper work required to bring the bikes into Kazakhstan) said it will cost 4000 Russian Roubles for the declaration fee…. that’s about £80.. I did not remember reading about any Kazakhstan customs fee’s so I went to consult the lonely planet book.. I then came back with the book… Luckily the guy didn’t speak or read English.. I pointed out that in the book it said that there was no fee… all of a sudden the guy was a little angry.. although he still wouldn’t give me back my paper work until I paid him a fee.. In the end I negotiated 300 Russian Roubles and I got my paper work back.. what a tosser.. I still felt that if I had waited longer we would probably have got it all back for free.. However it was now around 4pm and we wanted to make some tracks into Kazakhstan before it got dark. In the end we got through and made our way about 160km before camping in the Desert… Heather found a place to camp in the Dunes and setup the tent. While I went and collected some firewood… (not enough.. Heather had to go and do the job properly and get some more firewood). We got warned in Astrakan that we needed to make sure we had a fire to keep the wolves away at night. It was so nice to have our first open fire since leaving the UK… During the night it rained which would have made it difficult to get out of the Dunes had it continued for any longer.. Thankfully it was not to bad and we made our way back to the road for an early start the next morning. The ride into Atyrau was pretty uneventful and we arrived around 10am. It was time for lunch, get some more supplies and some petrol.. The next few days we would be crossing the Desert to the Aral sea….

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 9th, 2009 at 1:16 pm and is filed under Adventure Motorcycling, Astrakan, Kazakhstan, London to Sydney, motorcycle touring, Russia, Wild Camping. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.