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Two Humped "Camel" ride - Kazakhstan

After such a chilli border crossing our first objective was to find a nice sheltered place where we could have lunch… It turns out that the road from the Kyrgyzstan Border on the Kazakhstan side was actually really terrible. While riding along Heather startled some dogs which chased after her…. they then gave up.. unfortunately I was coming along behind her and they really wanted a piece of my leg.. one of the dogs was running along trying to grab onto my leg right next to the bike.. I accelerated hard on the rough, wet gravel road to get away only to find my traction went on holidays and I nearly ended up in the ditch on the side of the road with the dogs… it was so lucky that the traction came back and I managed to get away… It was a true brown pants moment.

The lunch break consisted of us sitting in a “picnic” area across the road from a police check point… it was interesting to see their “random” driver checks actually meant “lets pull over all red cars”… I think the police thought we must have been a little odd to be using the picnic area and I don’t blame them.. it was such a dump.. the only thing that told you it was a picnic area was the sign… really it just looked like a run down bus stop.. One of the other tell tale signs may have also been the hundreds of smashed vodka bottles all over the ground… anyway talk about trip highlight!!!…

On the way out of the canyon where the picnic spot was Heather got her opportunity to take a camel ride… it may not have been too conventional but at least she had her first two hump camel ride…

Camping under the full moon - Kazakhstan

That night Heather saw the first bigger wild cat of the trip.. we are not sure what the actual animal is called but its much larger than a house cat but smaller than the big cats of Africa.. Shortly afterwards we had a huge storm rip through the area.. thankfully it was just a 45 minute passing interlude on a pretty perfect night.. we had a really nice big fire and relaxed… finally back in Kazakhstan what a relief… You may think that sounds strange but after the crazy driving in Kyrgyzstan getting back to the “normality” of the Kazakh drivers was actually a real bonus… to be honest I never thought I would ever say such crazy stuff….

Cooking Breakfast - Kazakhstan

The next day we woke to a freezing morning… this marked the first opportunity for us to have a fire in the morning.. The thermometer was reading just 4 degrees and the wind chill made it feel like we just walked into the artic.. Lets hope this is just a cold snap… we are still a fair way above sea level.. around 700meters as we follow the mountain ranges along the China/Kazakhstan border all the way to Russia. It’s pretty hard to get lost on this section of the trip.. we just have to keep the glaciers in view on the right the whole way…. pretty simple stuff.. the cold wind really kept us working hard… having fires for breakfast lunch and dinner to keep warm.. we really should pull our thumbs out and actually get our motorcycle liners out and start using them… we are hoping its just a cold snap so that we don’t have to…at least we now have sunny skies so when we get out of the wind we can warm up..

Kazakhstan is a crazy country… there must be some sort of bike voodoo god here that has a tendency to break motorcycles.. since entering Kazakhstan from Astrakhan over a month ago here is a quick list of things which no longer work so well…

1. Tachyon XC video Camera.

2. BMW R1200GS Tank bag.

3. Touratech F650GS tank bag.

4. Canon 18-55mm DSLR Lens.

5. Oxford Boss Chain bike attachment.

6. F650GS mud guard.

7. F650GS Front fork seal.

8. F650GS front speedo/console mounting bracket.

9. Both bikes rear break lights.

10. F650GS side stand.

11. Hand guard bolts vibrating loose.

12. F650GS Chain guard.

13. Autocom 300 kits

A Lake near the Altai - Kazakhstan

Then we hit the roads going north.. they have some crazy road building techniques in Kazakhstan.. on this particular section of road for about 200km every 20 meters there is a ridge along the road… does not sound too bad.. except that at 90km/hour they give you a real jolt.. if you go and faster and they are basically a motor-cross jump… go any slower and the jolt becomes bone jaring… with the weight of the helmet on your head and the cross wind it gives you a serious case of whip lash after so many hours… a time later the ridges start again this time they are much worse.. the road towards semey (near the Russian border) is a dual carriage way… sealed road… with huge pot holes and sand pits… really we think that they don’t want anyone to leave Kazakhstan… all the roads we have used in and out have been shocking but many of the internal roads have been not to bad… at least in the east.. until now..the jolting of the ridges and the constant start/stop caused Heathers chain protector to somehow hit the chain… ripping it off and getting it wedged in between the spokes.. resulting in the chain coming off the bike.. we managed to get the chain back on the bike and ride to a camp site where we could re-tension the chain… but its just another thing to break.. at least now we had the chain correctly tensioned and Heather did all the work herself… a true mechanic in the making… soon ill become redundant…

Islamic Monuments - Kazakhstan

The next day we had to get to the Russian border.. we had about 40km to go to Semey and about 80km from Semey was the border. We had almost no fuel left and both bikes had passed their reserves.. we had exhausted all of our reserves to get this far…. the road from where we camped to semey was pretty easy… the surface improved and the traffic was light… we made it to the petrol station only just.. the petrol station we used was the only one that was still open.. we bought 47 litres of fuel… my tank is 33 litres they said we put 38 litres in and it was still not full… Heathers bike took the remaining 11 litres and was not even half full.. they basically had mis-adjusted the measure so they under served us with fuel.. and there was no way the octane was what they claimed… the bikes ran like shit on that fuel.. a complete scam in our view.. Shortly after the petrol scam Heathers pannier fell off the bike while travelling along a really busy road… thankfully I was behind her and I could stop and put the hazard lights on to stop any cars running over our gear which was now all over the road… we pulled over onto the foot path to re-pack the pannier and securely put it back on the bike.. this was the pannier which had been crushed in Kyrgyzstan so it wasn’t exactly straight… now it was even worse..

Its stalking us - Kazakhstan

On the way out of Semey just before the border Heather stopped for a quick pee break.. on the side of the road where we stopped we found yet another plantation of marijuana… it seems to be following us… I am starting to get worried by all these coincidences involving drugs… its not something that we wanted to have anything to do with before we cross the border into Russia (in fact at all on this trip)… I could just imagine touching the plants then the sniffer dogs at the border taking a liking to me… not a good mix.. when we arrived at the Kazakhstan border the guy asks us if we had any “sniff sniff” or “inject in arm” completely by miming.. it was very funny.. of course we didn’t and we all had a bit of a laugh about it and went to passport control.. This is when I was going through passport control the Kazakh guys took my photo with their camera as a part of the process.. right at that moment the power went out… am I really that bad that I can cause a black out?? It now took us about an hour longer to get through the Kazakhstan border simply because they had to do everything manually until the power came back on….now it was time for the Russian side… we had prepared for yet another marathon crossing coming into Russia.. fortunately for us the whole process for the Russian side was done in about an hour.. WOW.. after our 16 hour marathon at Sochi it really was a huge relief…

That night we found a campsite over looking some fields about an hour short of Barnaul in Siberia.. when Heather pulled into the spot she put her stand down… put the bike down only to find the stand broke off… dammit we checked out the stand and the welding had come undone.. luckily she had a centre stand.. yet another thing broken… and this time it was in Russia.. she really has a way with bikes…

We had to get to Barnaul so that we could find a Hotel and organise the letters from our inviting organisation to say we needed to go into the Altai. We knew that Barnaul at least had several internet cafes so we should be able to get everything sorted fairly easily.. On the way into town Heathers bike ran out of fuel.. we filled it with the 800ml we had remaining in our stove fuel container… she then took off.. I was stopped by the police and she kept on going.. I then left to catch up with her.. I kept getting the red lights so we lost each other again.. this time she pulled over and forgot that her side stand was broken.. she tried to put it down and broke it off completely when the bike fell over and smashed her pannier.. it also smashed the side stand switch so that the bike thought the stand was always down… YAY for electronics…

Victor fixing Heathers Bike - Barnaul

After about 10 minutes of trying to fix the switch her battery was now flat.. luckily a guy stopped on his bike and offered us some help.. about 10 minutes later we had 3 other people on bikes appear one of which was Victor, a guy who owned a local motorcycle mechanics. He was amazing he got the bike going again in about 30 minutes. We then followed him back to his work shop so that he could fix the switch properly and so he could weld the stand back on the bike.. not only that he also fixed

1. The air filter

2. broken pannier (its now better than new).

3. Side stand

4. Side stand switch.

5. Replaced some bolts on the bash plate which had been ruined by the tar in Kazakhstan.

6. Tank bag mount.

All up given that it was a Sunday night it was all done in a few hours.. It was such a huge relief and we are so thankful to all the guys in Barnaul that helped us 1) find Victor, 2) fix the bike..

If anyone is in Siberia and needs a Motorcycle mechanic.. Victor at www.motoxayc22.ru 8-903-957-0435 he is just off the road from the Airport coming into Barnaul.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 8th, 2009 at 3:00 am and is filed under Adventure Motorcycling, 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.