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Camping before Makat - Kazakhstan

In Atyrau when we filled up with petrol we got some very strange looks from the locals when we said we wanted to make it to Makat for the night. Eventually an English speaker came up and warned us that Makat was not a safe place to be. He said that it was full of drunks, drug addicts and bandits. We decided to take their advice and camped in the Desert about 60km before Makat… We camped near a salt lake and watched the sunset.. At the camp-site the ground was moving… Millions of little bugs all over the ground.. everywhere you looked there would be hundreds of these little bugs.. You couldn’t walk anywhere without stepping on them.. Unfortunately as much as we had tried to find other places to camp they all had these bugs. It had been a long day and we needed to rise early to get some distance behind us…. The next morning we rode into Makat and from what we can tell the advice we got given was 100% correct. The road on both our maps goes straight through the town.. Unfortunately that is not how it is.. There is a turn off that goes back away from the way your going with a yellow sign about 8km before the town.. It bypasses the town.. We didn’t see the sign because it had been bent away.. and 1h:15m later we found someone that gave us accurate directions and got the hell out of the town after being given directions by 4 different people..all of which ended in dead ends in dodgy areas of town..One of them even tried to fleece me of my money. To make matters worse in Makat the roads in town really shouldn’t be called roads.. One of the pot holes was so big that the suspension on heathers bike bottomed out so much that the mud guard hit the Pannier rack and was ripped off being flung off back at James…

Road closures (Where's Heather?) - Kazakhstan

It was the beginning of the road to hell…..the Makat bypass was actually a very deep gravel road that was very difficult to ride on, Thankfully we followed a Kamaz truck and went off-road through the desert to the side of the road until the deep gravel was over (about 10km from the bypass turn off)… This was the end of the good road or the beginning of the bad road…

The kazakhstan Desert - Aral

As soon as we had left Makat there was a complete absence of any cars on the road at all.. It was now almost 100% 4 and 6 wheel drive trucks… although the road was not so bad apart from the Gravel section near Makat….. Given that this was the main highway from Atyrau to Aqtobe we expected to be able to get some distance done.. how wrong this assumption was….

That night we had done 230km and had been riding for 10 hours…. there are almost no towns, and the towns that do exist are often just a collection of mud huts we found ourselves camping in the desert again away from the road so that we could be safe and secure. On the ride out to where we thought we could camp Heather’s front wheel found a nice deep section of sand and she went for 6 over the handle bars superwoman style…I unfortunately didn’t see this whole episode and was only notified by the “please come and help me” over the autocom when she plugged herself back in…. my first response was to laugh, then we both laughed unsure from the situation or just being tired, we then picked the bike up and she got back on to get he bike out of the sand pit… it was hell getting through the rutted dunes to a place where we could camp… we ended up finding a place near where one of the gas pipe lines cuts through the desert in what looks like it was once a military training area… there was some remains of a truck that looked as though it had been blown up with twisted bits of shrapnel everywhere,

Heather was taking photos of the sunset when about 6 wild horses and couple fouls came close to our tent…

Roads - Kazakhstan

The next morning we rode out across the desert back to the road this time we took a different route hoping to avoid the sand pit that heather had found the previous day… Unfortunately this just made us find a separate sand pit which I hit. Bike jolted me off the pegs catching my leg between the ground and the bike, accelerating hard to bring the bike back around which I had hoped would take the weight off my left and stop it from being broken.. thankfully the trick worked and I managed to save my right leg from being broken and in the process getting a bad burn from the exhaust… typically right above where the boot had stopped was where I got burnt. Heather right behind me at the same section of deep sand had also come off.. I hobbled over to help her pick up her bike and we walked the bikes to some harder section so we could inspect the damage to my leg… it was burnt pretty badly and there was still skin burnt onto the exhaust.. all up I was lucky to have got away so lightly. During a small break Heather applied some dressings to the burn to stop it rubbing on my boot. Shortly after our accident we stopped in a small town to resupply our food and water… as is always expected now we get a big group of people all wanting to know where we are from, where we are going, and looking at the bikes.. they don’t seem to see many a) Australians and b) people on big non-Russian/Chinese bikes. One of the ladies gave Heather some chocolate biscuit/cake things and a container of apple juice… while James got loads of new food supplies… It was time to leave/negotiate the sand track out of town…

BMW Pannier Repairs - Kazakhstan

It was almost as though riding through the desert was not tough enough, dealing with Kazakh drivers and riders was just as bad. While in town negotiating a section of road a stupid kazakh rider with side car swerved into my bike sheering off the pannier on the left side breaking the locking mechanism and bending the metal clip. Luckily it happened 100meters from a Mechanic and a local friendly Kazakh who saw the incident was nice enough to help us by carrying the pannier to the mechanics to get it fixed ASAP. The whole process to fix the pannier was pretty quick taking only around 2 hours with loads of interested spectators. In the end it only required the replacement of two rivets and the bashing back into place of one of the mounting brackets… a bit lose though almost as good as new… now we had to find our way out of town.. the guy that helped us get our Pannier fixed gave us directions to take the first right next to the mechanics…. the mechanics gave us directions to head all the way back to Aqtobe and head down the main road… we ended up taking the first guys directions and found the road out of the town towards Embi pretty good once we got out of the town.. We are starting to realise that the roads between oil and gas sites are good and all the other roads in the area are not really roads more like dirt or gravel tracks through the desert.

Heather on a fast section - Kazakhstan

Now that we are in the heart of one of the big Kazakh gas fields the smell in the air is repulsive especially if the wind is blowing in your direction… We are using this as inspiration to try and do as many miles as possible. However it was getting dark and we had to find a place to camp quickly.. After an exhausting day we had only completed about 190km in 8 hours of riding… at least we are resting well in the evenings and waking up refreshed.. it would be hell trying to do this tired. We need all our concentration to see the changing terrain, pot holes, gravel pits, sand pits and other trucks through the desert..We had been hoping that the road would improve once we had finished our “short cut” and got back on the main route from Aqtobe to Aral….which was actually a denoted motorway… the M32… After about 2 hours of riding in the morning we got to an intersection which was meant to be the M32.. we had to now head further south.. when we looked south the road was blocked with a sign saying no entry… after asking some truck drivers (Several to make sure we didn’t get given the wrong directions) we discovered we had to follow a dirt track around road works for about 40km…40km of on and off again deep sand and poor visibility because of the sand/dust that the wind and other trucks kept on churning up. The heat had started to really ramp up as we headed south.. the temperatures had been pretty mild from Astrakhan (low 30’s) but now it was all about high 30’s and low 40’s. The high temperatures and the deep sand made riding/pushing the bikes through a real challenge with both of us sliding off a few times and needing to pick up the bikes to continue. After one particularly deep section of sand where we came across a French group of guys driving from Paris to Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in a 30 year old French Car.. Heather didn’t want to fall off on this section to keep her cool in front of the spectators that had stopped and I was completely bogged with the bike sitting on the sand with the rear wheel spinning in the air… it was a challenge but we made it through. We had a break and gave them some advice on the route to take…. basically avoid the way we came and continue north to Aqtobe.. As we went to get back on the bikes it was Heathers bike that caught on fire..

burnt out datatool cables on the F650GS - Kazakhstan

Heather retrieved a bottle of shaken soda water from the back of her bike when she opened it, warm soda water exploded all over her bike thinking it was about to catch on fire.. Thankfully Heather turned the ignition off quickly after the smoke poured out. The bike would not start after that and the bike’s alarm system was going off every 30 seconds, deafening our ears. Knowing that it was an electrical fault made us very nervous. Electrical faults are rarely fixable in the field and require parts to be ordered in IF you can diagnose what part is faulty. The vibrations of the 1600km we had done on/off road so far in Kazakhstan had worn the insulation off some wires on her Datatool alarm…

a good road in Kazakhstan

The wires then shorted out on the frame causing some excitement…. After narrowing down the fault to this we joined and re-insulated the wires that didn’t burn out completely. The entire time while we worked on the bikes we had a family of desert mice/animals that kept an eye on us from in the grassy section.. it was pretty cool but they didn’t really want to have any photos taken… and after about 2 hours we started on our way again.. This time we started looking for ways back onto the section of road that they had closed for road works… we successfully found a way back on and managed to maintain a huge 30km/hour for the next few hours until we ran out of energy and motivation to continue for the day… it was time to celebrate fixing the bike and doing such a hard days ride in the heat… Heather had organised a bottle of vodka at one of the days stop overs…. 480 Tehre for their top quality stuff… which works out to be around £2… We used this as part of our celebratory drinks with fruit juice which was cherry flavour… We had to use up the fruit juice because it had burst in her pannier anyway… thankfully it didn’t spill too much and make everything sticky.. Lets just say it was the best vodka we have ever had!

Infected Burnt Leg - Kazakhstan

After 6 nights we had finally made it to Aral.. The road for about 160km north of Aral was great and we started to make great time again. On this section we stopped in the only shade we could find which happened to be a cow/horse poo covered bus stop. My leg where I got burnt was now stinging and it was painful to walk on… something told me there was a little problem with the burn….. After having a look at my leg we realised that it was now nice and swollen with red lines running up towards my knee and down towards my ankle. The burn itself was septic and had a beautiful aroma… this was despite using antiseptic cream etc… something was wrong.. it turns out the antiseptic cream had expired in 2002…. shit!!! while I was waiting for the burn to dry out and scab after cleaning off the old dressing and sterilising the wound.. two cars full of Kazakhs stopped to have a smoke.. the look of shock on their face and the directions they gave us to the hospital may have been a give-away that my leg was really in a bad way.. It was nice of them to be so interested and helpful when they saw my sorry state. We redressed the burn with gauze and bandages and continued on our way.. I would have to go to the doctors/hospital if it had not improved soon…

A huge relief the sign to Aral - Kazakhstan

Covering 480km in around 8 hours which was a new record for Kazakhstan. Aral as a town is not much to see and the road to the Aral sea was deep sand crossing dunes so we decided to give It a miss and only stopped off for more re-supply of our food and water.. At the store we got a packet of Chips to eat… only to find out that they are mushroom flavour.. yum you may say… well not really it was more like soggy old mushroom flavour.. I think its the first time we have ever not finished a packet of chips.. it honestly tasted bad despite being within the use by date etc…. maybe we mis-translated it and it was stinky sock flavour…

After Aral civilization starts again, there are now picnic areas (not that you would want to use them) , café’s, restaurants and other stuff along the road that people actually use… before Aral it was all about self catering and d,i,y.. there is still a huge lack of shade and the desert is still along the side of the road despite now being green on our maps… the herds of goats have increased in size and the general numbers of animals (eagles included) have sky rocketed… shortly after Aral we hit the Syr-Darya

Scenery - Kazakhstan

which is the main tributary into the Aral sea.. with that came green trees etc for a small area along the banks and then more desert.. in this small green area we found our camp for the night… and what a mosquito infested spot it was too… in the morning we woke to have a swarm of mosquitoes covering the inside of the tent… it was time to do a mad dash to the bikes to get a mosquito coil to clear them out.. Heathers mosquito phobia is now at volume 10++ as she constantly seems to think she’s being bitten by things.. thankfully this is a welcome reward to me as Heather is now my bug decoy…. ha ha ha… previously I would be the one being bitten and Heather would be spared… how lovely it is that the roles have been reversed for this trip…. We made a quick exit from the camp site without breakfast thanks to the swarms of Mosquitoes.. After only a short time on the road we both had so many mosquitoes and bugs squashed on our visors that we had trouble seeing the road ahead… swarms I tell you.. swarms.. millions of mosquitoes to splat.. Heather gets the mosquito killing award as her visor had so many if they survived the splat we could have trained a mosquito army.. After our mosquito infested night we decided that the desert was the best option and camped on the top of a hill looking out over a small valley.. thinking that nobody would be any the wiser.. about 2 hours later we had a Sheppard and his herd of goat/sheep come by on their way back to their secure pen for the night.. I talked to the Sheppard and he told me it was because of wolves that they had to keep them in the secure area by night…. he was saying that its been a good few years for him and his family because they have been unusually wet allowing for more goats and sheep to graze..so here he was herding his sheep and goats on a donkey with Gucci glasses and designer clothes and an i-phone.. I wish I had taken a photo but he was “no photo… no photo…”.. he was only 23 and had over 300 animals to himself.. his dad had another huge collection.. it just seemed like such an odd mix of cultures.. That night we didn’t have a fire and it was the first time we had animals come up to the tent.. we suspect from the foot prints in the morning we either had foxes or a wolf or two come up to the tent although nothing exciting happened..

Scenery - Kazakhstan

That day we woke early with the goal of getting to Turkistan to see the Islamic monuments which are so widely regarded. Turkistan as a city is umm.. interesting.. the driving was absolutely crazy and nobody follows traffic lights or signs.. its complete chaos and very unsafe for motorcycles.. in the end we valued our lives more and left town pretty quickly without seeing the monuments. Its unfortunate.. we should have parked our bikes and taken a taxi.. oh well.. Its now all the way to Shymkent… only problem is we have a gale force cross wind to deal with for the 160km into town.. It really seems that nothing can be easy in Kazakhstan….After 2.5 hours we arrived and after checking a few hotels and getting lost a few times we found a place to stay… ahhhhh relaxation.. and our first proper shower in 8 nights..(yes we did wash in a basin but its not the same)…

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 16th, 2009 at 1:20 pm and is filed under accidents, Adventure Motorcycling, Aral, Atyrau, Desert, Kazakhstan, London to Sydney, Makat, motorcycle touring, Wild Camping. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.