Oops ! Kazakhstan

Day 115  Monday 25^th July 2011  

I woke up before the alarm at around 5.30 so I took the plunge and got up and had an early shower.  We were soon packed and ready to leave and so we said our goodbye to Omsk at 7.30 which would mean that with a fair wind and following the M51 we would make it to Chelyabinsk at around 5pm.

Lady luck was on our side. There were no lorries on our route and progress was swift and we had soon racked up the first 100 miles or so but the forward momentum was halted rapidly when we reached a police checkpoint. We stopped and went to the first hut and showed our passports and vehicle registration documents then we were allowed into through the first barrier. A young Russian customs guy asked us if we had any guns, ammunition or drugs – “Nyet” we said and then he asked us to allow the men to have a look inside our panniers.  A cursory glance revealed to them that all we had was camping gear and dirty washing so we were free to proceed. I asked why so much security and he smiled and said “well, you are leaving Russia and entering Kazakhstan”. We can’t we replied, we have no Kazak visas. We now realised that the road cuts through the top half of Kazakhstan, no problems for Russians, but big problem for us as we had no visa so we did a u-turn and re-entered Russia. A look at the map revealed that we should have noticed that the road went through the border but it had escaped out notice. Our only route was a 300 mile detour starting at a junction some 20kms back along the route.

This is the view on the road around here.. nothing as far as the eye can see across the Steppes

We made it back to where the road heads north towards Ishim and began the arduous task of trying to make up for lost time but any notion of doing so was quickly scotched as the road surface rapidly declined and we had around 90kms of potholes, dust, dirt and gravel before we got back to good asphalt again. We decided to head south at Ishim towards  Kyrgan but the roadworks in Ishim town centre made it a bit of a lottery to know which road to take so we gave up (especially as one of the choices would lead us 90kms back south to the Kazak border). We retraced our steps again to the IR402 and set our goal as Tyumen for a night stopover as the journey to Chelabinsk would not now be feasible.

At least the weather was good. We were now in the Steppes and vast swathes of land either side of the road revealed small areas of rain in the distance but none that affected us or our progress. We arrived inTyumen at around 6pm and I set my Garmin to find us a hotel and from the list I chose the Hotel Vostok and we were led by the nose to the front door of what appeared to be a shut down building undergoing renovation work. Mark checked with the car park guy and, yes, the hotel was open. The receptionists were excellent and they helped us book a good room with air conditioning and wi-fi plus the added bonus of evening meal and breakfast. A quick shower and brush up we made it to the canteen type facility and had our first, interesting, but tasty eats for the day and then a couple of beers. I got our passports back from reception where the young lady told me rather apologetically that she had overcharged me 200 roubles for the car park and she refunded the notes. I asked if she had a city map – she did but it came as a tourist pack costing 300 roubles so my little visit to reception saw me gain 200 roubles but then spend 300 roubles – very clever these Russians ! Armed with our map we vowed to hit the town tomorrow for a spot of sightseeing.