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Diary w/e 25th June
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| 19th JuneKevin is the normal typeface, and Rich gets the bling italics. We did it! We actually got away from home. OK, we didn't quite make the 8 am departure we had hoped for, but 9.30 wasn't bad, even though our "ten minute errands" to pick up the last few bits (like the 10lb sledgehammer Richard insists we need *yes we do need it*) actually took us until 11.30. Slight hitch - after two of our six thousand miles to the Mongolian border, we had what you could call a bit of a breakdown, with the fully loaded car coasting gently to a halt at the top of Hylton Road in Worcester. It was a recurrence of a niggle which we thought had been sorted, so after a two minute fiddle under the bonnet we were under way again - it's quite comforting to know what needs to be done, but we could really do without that happening again on a motorway somewhere! All rather embarrassing, really, but in a spirit of glasnost we felt we had to share the experience... We are quite sure there is far worse to come. The journey to Dover passed smoothly enough, but of course on a quiet Monday afternoon with not a lot going on, the Customs officers are bound to take a bit of an interest, aren't they? Having been through the port probably thirty or forty times before over the years without anyone taking the slightest interest, we got immediately diverted into the Security Shed to explain ourselves and be thoroughly examined. After a couple of sticky moments over some of the equipment we were carrying (best kept vague) we were allowed out blinking into the sunlight without having missed our boat and without suffering any invasive personal searches. Of course, the French Customs post at Calais wasn't even manned... Covered about 320 miles today. So we cruised along to Gent and are now parked up in a municipal campsite next to the rowing lake there - all very pleasant, and I hope the wash blocks in Ulaan Baatar are as nice. Tonight, we are mostly camping at: 51° 2' 45.18" N 3° 40' 52.91" E
20th JuneToday we had a good start and after finding our way out of Gent, we slipped straight onto the A14, we were on our way to Berlin. We left Belgium and popped into the Netherlands for an hour or so and then we were in Germany (we weren't stopped at the border, although a lot of British football supporters were). The autobahn is completely crazy, there is a crash about every half hour but they don't seem to learn, and as soon as the road opens up again, so does the throttle. After about 478 miles, we arrived at the campsite near Berlin, where Kevin was able to watch the second half of what looked like a pretty inept performance against Sweden.. Tonight we are mostly camping at 52° 21' 31.33" N 13° 0' 22.22" E
21st JuneThe day started well with an on the spot speeding fine for doing 30mph in a well disguised 20mph area on the short stretch from the campsite to the motorway. They were very charming as they relieved us of our money. The next excitement was the Polish border were we were waved through with the other cars after passing a four mile queue of lorries. We would guess that the lorries have to queue for 5 or 6 hours to get through. We had thought that the Germans were crazy on the motorways but this hadn't prepared us for the Polish roads! Overtaking manoeuvres are dangerous, imaginative and frequent. It is not uncommon on a single carriageway road to see a van overtake a lorry while itself being overtaken by a car, creating a three vehicle wide phalanx thundering down a road towards oncoming traffic. This is regarded as perfectly normal by everyone involved. This situation is made all the more interesting by the fact that we are driving a right hand drive car, so the driver is essentially flying blind when overtaking until the car is way over the other side of the road and has committed to the manoeuvre, however unwise it may be. As a result, we have to rely on a system whereby the passenger looks at the oncoming traffic out of the side window and shouts commands to the driver such as "put your foot down", "after this big red truck", "GOGOGOGO!!" or "NONONONONO GET BACK". Good times. Don't worry mum we're fine. We were making quite slow time when we stumbled across a new motorway, not marked on our map. It was as good (and as empty) as any French autoroute and helped us make up a bit of time, but it then disgorged us into the Poznan traffic, where we felt we could have been in pretty much any other European city (except for the 11 Zloty motorway toll - about £2). Soon we were back out into the wide open plains heading north east towards the Polish lake district, and normal Polish road conditions prevailed once more. It soon became apparent we were not going to achieve our ambitious 500 mile target for the day, as the sky darkened with what looked like the black clouds of Mordor chasing us. Eventually we found ourselves in the middle of the biggest thunderstorm we have seen for some time - we were held up at one point as the resourceful Poles cleared a fallen tree from the road, then the conditions and visibility got so bad we decided to chicken out and sit out the worst of it in a car park. After half an hour it got to the point where the thunder and lightning were about 10 seconds apart and the rain was a little less fierce, so we started off again, catching the drips through the sunroof in our drinking bottles (all Land Rovers leak, they say, and in a storm we can confirm they leak a bit more). After a few more miles, we turned into a local campsite near a place called Ostroda, and this evening we have been mostly cooking in the rain and camping at a Lat & Long we will have to give tomorrow, mobile reception permitting. We have liked Poland so far - although the parts we have seen have been very open, flat landscape (a bit like northern France) it has a very European feel in general, and the people look brightly dressed, fit and happy. Some of the towns have really attractive centres - we took an unintended diversion through a town called Brodvice (or was it Bradvice?) today, and it was really quite charming. The local lads gave us a cheer and a wave as we drove past them in the square for the second time... Tomorrow is a big day - hopefully we will get up close and personal with the Russian border, before trying to cross it the following day. We have now done the first 1250 miles or so, but from here on, things are going to get a lot slower.... Tonight we are mostly camping at 53° 41' 35.00" N 20° 04' 47.02" E. 22nd JuneA bright hot sunny morning greeted us after last night's excitements. Packing up was hot and sweaty, but that was OK, because the shower for which we paid an extra 5 Zloties each (about £1) was nice and cold - well mine was, anyway. Had a bit of a slow start - teenage lie-in syndrome still not totally conquered *I don't plan on conquering it any time soon*- then left about 10.30. The first big town we reached was Olzstyn, where we were suddenly staring at the familiar sight of a Tesco superstore - well, we had to go in to restock, but it was Tesco with a twist. They didn't know what to do with my Clubcard, and the fresh pasta was something called "Ukrainian", which we found out later involved stodge and meatballs wrapped in pasta. At least we only bought a kilogramme packet! Richard found some crisps and salsa dip, so he was happy *very*. We were now well behind time, and it was again pouring with rain as we left Tesco. That dampened the roads up nicely for the formula one race to come. We had hoped Polish driving might have improved overnight, but were sadly let down. However the roads were generally less busy, so it wasn't quite as crazy as yesterday. We were driving through the Polish equivalent of the Lake District - lots of really pretty lakes and hills - but no big mountains. Unfortunately, though, this meant that the main road (so called) was rather bendy and we could only average about 45 mph. After we got to Augustow, near the Lithuanian border, the roads got a bit faster, and we eventually reached the border, which our Lonely Planet guide said could take anywhere between two minutes and two days to cross as a motorist. Fortunately, the border guards were not feeling like a detailed search of a rather full-looking Land Rover and we were waved through with a look that said "I can't really be bothered to make your lives hell today, but next time, who knows...." We wound our watches forward another hour - now two hours ahead of home. We raced across Lithuania, where the roads are much better than our experience of the Polish ones. The countryside started out really flat and open, again quite like northern France, but soon it became more undulating and dotted with very attractive lakes every few miles - really large and unspoilt ones. Definitely worth a closer look at some point. We managed to reach the Latvian border near Zarasai at about 9 pm, and raced on towards a rather hopeful looking campsite mark on our map near a little town called Spogi. We had not seen a campsite sign all day, so we were beginning to feel a little nervous about where we would camp for the night. We stopped in the village and asked a couple of young girls if they knew where a campsite might be - well actually, we pointed at the campsite sign on the map, said "Camping?" very loudly and looked quizzical. They got rid of us by pointing down a lane off the main road. After driving down there for a couple of miles, we stopped a lady on a bicycle and tried the same tactic. She spoke lots of Latvian, pointed down another lane, made gestures of "something tall" and "swimming", then blew us a kiss and left us to it. We were beginning to feel a bit concerned about finding the place - or whether it even existed - but after driving the way she had indicated for a mile or so, we saw a high wooden tower off the road by a lake, so we went to investigate. There was no campsite, but a load of Latvian teenagers having a bit of a private party by the lake. Their combined English amounted to three words, three more than our Latvian. But by trying the same tactic, we got a suggestion that there might be somewhere to camp about 3 miles further on down the lane. We pushed on, more in hope than expectation, until we found a sort of lakeside swimming centre being run by a family from their house. Somehow, despite no common language, she agreed we could stay for a night in her field (campsite under construction for next year) and had to be forced to accept 5 Euros for the privilege of having us there. The setting is absolutely idyllic - views across another gorgeous lake, which we might swim in tomorrow before we leave - the temperature has again been up in the 30's most of the day, though it is cooler now in the evening (allowing the mosquitoes a straight run at our veins and arteries). So in the end we managed 400 miles today, and are now two time zones from home and about 70 miles from the Russian border. Tonight we are mostly avoiding mossies and camping at GPS position 56° 03' 50.03" N 26° 50' 30.19" E. Don't assume silence tomorrow means we have a problem. We may just have had stuff confiscated by the Russians, or reception might be bad or something. Who knows? We certainly don't. 23rd JuneWell, they said it wouldn't be straightforward, and they were right! We had a slow start to the day, a lovely swim in the lake to freshen up, a bit of a re-pack to get things tidy and straight for the border, then we set off around 11.30. We reached the border around 2 - or, to be more accurate, we reached the end of a very long queue of lorries - about 3 miles, nose to tail, by our reckoning. We had changed our plans slightly and aimed for the crossing point near Sipule in Latvia, which was on the road direct towards Moscow; our earlier plan had been to head up to the border crossing at Karsava on the St Peterburg road, but we dropped that after we found out we should not need to divert to St Petersburg to register once we had entered Russia. So here we were, at 2 pm at the border. The short version is that it took us seven and a half hours to cross the border, but we did not have any problems about the car or any of its contents. Now here's the long version, if you are interested: Luckily there was a fast lane for cars and buses past the lorries, which took us right up to the first border post on the Latvian side, where we were only about the 15th car in the line. That looked pretty good to us, but as I ambled up the line, not a lot seemed to be happening. As luck would have it, the car at the front of the line was German and I tried out my O level German on him. He said he had arrived 4 or 5 hours before, but the line looked shorter to him now, so we might be through in a couple of hours. I may have misunderstood him, but he seemed to say we were luckier than the lorry drivers, some of whom had been there three weeks! I cannot quite believe it, but when you looked at the average frequency of lorries going through the barrier, and the length of the queue, it could well have been true. For us, it turned out we only had a three hour wait before we were called through the first barrier in the obstacle course. This was in fact Latvian border control, where I drove along the "goods to declare" channel, just in case. The border guard's first job was to explain to me that as I had not stopped on the line on the road before the booth (as the light above it was red), I had committed an offence for which the fine was 100 Euros. It turned out in the end that his English was not up to dealing with all the paperwork with me, so he let me off with a warning. He did want to check the chassis number of the car with the registration document, though. After our papers were checked, he then allowed us through to the next obstacle, which was the first outpost of the Russian side. It was a man in a kiosk with a lifting pole who would let through a few lorries or cars every half hour or so - about half a dozen. So we had another long wait. Luckily a kind man in the car in front, who spoke some German, explained to me that we also had to ask this man for our immigration cards to fill in - which we duly did. Then we were finally allowed to join the main queue at the proper Russian border post. This was again a very long wait, followed by an inspection of the car and our papers, and a whole new paperchase in Russian. We had to work out what the various shoutings at us in Russian meant we were supposed to do, mainly by copying what other people were doing. Our German-speaking friend was only around for part of the time, and nobody else spoke a word of English. It turned out we needed a little tiny shred of paper with details of our car - obtained from the first Russian kiosk where we got our immigration cards. Then we had to present that, with our passports, filled out immigration cards and "vehicle passport" (the V5 Registration document plus the "International Certificate for Motor Vehicles" which we got from the AA), at the first window, where they were checked while our car was being looked at. Various details from our papers were entered carefully by hand on big sheets of paper, and our passports and visas were looked at very thoroughly. We were then told to move forward to the next window to make our Customs Declaration - the "deklaratsia" we had heard about. But there was a hidden catch! Before we could make our declaration (which included a request for temporary importation of the car) we had to go and buy a sticker for the windscreen (not sure why, something to do with Russian road tax, I assume), pay a fee and get an official receipt for the temporary import permit and buy Russian motor insurance. Without a word of Russian, this was not easy. But eventually, after being told to wait a lot in various places, I assembled all the bits of paper I had been given (3,600 Roubles, about £70, for the motor insurance, from a very pleasant lady who had perfect English and had lived in London - the only English we heard all day) and went back with the declarations for Richard and me. There followed a farcical five minutes before I understood they were asking me to write out a copy of my declaration as well as an original, then finally they stamped everything about five times and let us through. There was a sting in the tail, though, in the form of a last lifting barrier by a kiosk manned by a particularly unhelpful guard who asked to see the first scrap of paper we had been given in relation to the car and then demanded a fine because some stamp was not present on it (or something). He didn't even pretend to put the 1,000 Roubles in an official till, and simply lifted the barrier and waved us on. So at 9.30 pm (or 10.30 Russian time) we were finally on the road in Russia. Our plans to cover a good couple of hundred miles were well and truly blown, so after driving for an hour or so down a spookily empty road through apparently endless forests, we parked up with a load of truckers in the yard of a big roadside eatery near a place called Pustoshka. We fought off the mossies and bolted into our roof tent with a few basic supplies, and that was our day. Let's hope tomorrow is a better one - but at least now we have done the border and we know what to expect next time. No GPS reference today, we are a bit chairy about using it yet, even though it was never even mentioned at the border. Added on 25th June: GPS ref tonight was 56° 20' 05.2" N 29° 28' 24.4" E. 24th JuneWhat a difference a day makes! Strange night, with lorries coming and going, the odd thunderstorm and heavy rain, but no-one bothered us at all - or even seemed to think we were unusual. Mind you, truckers are a private lot, especially Russian ones. The quick version is that we covered over 500 miles today, including circling right round Moscow on its "outer" ring road, and then holed up in a hotel in a town called Vladimir (used to be the capital of Russia before Moscow, many years ago, apparently) about 100 miles east of Moscow on the main road out to Siberia. For the long version..... Woke up refreshed, wandered into the cafe to see about a shower and breakfast. The breakfast the other guys were eating didn't look very enticing - something like red cabbage soup/porridge. So decided to give that a miss. The lady behind the bar said their were no showers ("niet" to "doosh?"), and for a bath I would have to go somewhere out the back - she even took me out the back and pointed in the general direction of everywhere whilst saying a lot of stuff I didn't understand. At least, I think she was trying to point me at the bath, she might have been simply politely throwing me out. Anyway, I circled back round and sneaked into the washroom for a quick basin wash along with the other delightful gentlemen of the road. We agreed we would pack up quickly and take a breakfast al fresco on the road later. Just as we set off (after putting the tent down) there was another big downpour, but then it settled down to a grey overcast with a cool breeze, which was rather nice after the last five days of non-stop 30 degree plus daytime temperatures. But sure enough, an hour later the sun broke through and it became hot hot hot again. We set off expecting to be stopped, interrogated, searched, incarcerated and probably beaten every ten minutes. In fact, though we did see quite a lot of police (including at their permanent roadside checkpoints) we were not flagged down at all. We have come to the conclusion that from the front we look rather military and therefore the police are quite specifically choosing not to mess with us - only finding out their mistake too late when they see the GB plates disappearing over the horizon. We have also found the Russian roads rather more to our liking - initially long, mainly straight and largely deserted, they did get a bit bumpier as we went on, before becoming very good again once we were near Moscow. Nearly all are single carriageway, but overtaking is not nearly as death-defying as we had seen in Poland. The only slightly odd thing is the way that motorways (so called) quite often have traffic lights, bus stops, only occasional central crash barriers and zebra crossings - and infinitely variable speed limits. Our tactic is just to stay somewhere in the pack if we can. The traffic to start with was probably 90% heavy goods vehicles, but as we neared Moscow a lot more cars appeared. One very common accessory here is blacked out windows, even on lowly Ladas, so it can be a bit odd not seeing the other drivers. Oh, and cyclists usually adopt the UK pedestrian approach of cycling against the traffic on the "wrong" side of the road - a bit worrying the first few times you see them coming towards you on a fast highroad! Getting fuel has been easy - no recognisable brands, but lots of fairly modern roadside filling stations (is there any other sort?) You generally have to pay before they turn the pump on, which is a bit worrying - you shove a 1,000 Rouble note through a glass partition, gesticulating wildly at Richard standing hopefully by the pump, and shout "diesel". So far, it has worked every time - we get a full tank and the right change. At least it's only about 15 roubles (35p) a litre - and petrol is not much more. We were making such good time we agreed to skip lunch - we aren't getting a lot of exercise at the moment anyway, so not particularly hungry. Richard munched the avocado and chocolate covered gingerbread we had bought in Germany and I snacked on apples. We finally got to Vladimir (see above) about 8.30 pm, and used our Lonely Planet guidebook to find a hotel. They only had "luxury" rooms left (surprise surprise) and secure car parking is £2 extra for the night, but it has allowed us to have a proper shower, go out for a proper cooked meal (not pasta, for a change!) and get a good night's sleep (hopefully) in a proper bed. Most important of all, it gets us a registration stamp in our immigration cards - you are required to register in this way within 72 hours of entering Russia, and if you don't have the stamp on your card, the road police will gleefully impose a fine. We will probably have to do this again in a few days time. The restaurant we ate at was a bit of a revelation. It was the one recommended in the guide, and also by the hotel. It had loud music blaring outside, so when we said we wanted to eat somewhere quiet, the rather sinister looking owner appeared and said (in French, the only language we shared) that would be fine, there were plenty of private booths from which we could watch "the show". We beat a hasty retreat back to the noise! A couple of beers and a chicken kiev each with trimmings set us back about £12, even in the tourist trap to end all tourist traps. Finally, the saga of Richard's slippers. He decided it would add to the comedy value if he could say he had worn the same pair of carpet slippers all the way to Mongolia. After six days, they were already threatening to walk there on their own, and after banishing them outside the tent he has finally caved in and left them soaking in the bath in an attempt to de-pong them. We will see if he has succeeded, and if they will indeed survive all the way... Got sweat rash, but we're in a real bed so it's ok. Never seen flies as big as the ones here. Yuk. Yes we actually are in a place called Vladimir and it's not made up! And yes some French guy tried to get us into his "adult"club. Needless to say we weren't interested. At all. No really. Hahaha, they pimp their old Ladas with tinted windows, big exhausts, big speakers, stickers that say 'Pioneer' and such like and huge radio antennas. All I wish to say is lol. The Landy is out the back of the hotel, so we are a bit nervous about its state in the morning, but we are assured the parking is secure (secured with an old bloke and his dog). I actually did some washing today, it took ages as per usual and there is no way it is going to be dry by the morning. Here endeth the day of Richard Poole. Now go away I'm going to sleep. Tonight we are mostly living it up in the lap of luxury (though some air conditioning would be nice) at GPS position 56° 07' 55.5" N 40° 24' 59.3" E. We did over 500 miles today! We'll soon be there at this rate... But the roads apparently get poorer as you go east, so who knows? 25th JuneA day of mixed fortunes. About 400 miles covered, but a couple of brushes with the law and an encounter with a really colourful character! Sorry, this is a long one - if I'm boring you, stop here! OK. After a good night's sleep, we started the day slowly. A Russian hotel breakfast was a bit of an experience (porridge with sliced peaches on top, tough bread, a pot of yoghurt, a small tetrapack of pineapple juice and some cold gammon, dairylea type cheese and jam - no coffee or tea! - all served without a trace of a smile). Then we took a last luxurious shower, collected together our washing (which had mostly dried overnight, except for The Slippers) and headed down for the car. It was still there, and untouched! We gave it some care and attention - it had drunk a bit of oil and the washbottle needed topping up. Then we gave the guardian of the locked car park our little stamped piece of paper from the Hotel reception (the Russians absolutely love little stamped pieces of paper - on the border post they actually carried their stamps around with a swagger as a sort of badge of rank). This meant he could let us out (after I had signed his book, presumably to say the car was in better condition than when we left it there). Then we drove off, not knowing what to expect. The first thing I expected was that I would like some more apples to replace the huge bag from Lidl in Potsdam which I had steadily been munching my way through. We were passing lots of little private enterprise fruit and vegetable stalls on the way out of Vladimir, so we pulled over to buy some apples. I went up to the little old lady behind the stall and said in my best Russian "Yabluka, pazhalsta" and she pointed at the pile of apples right under my nose at the front of the stall. I picked off a handful of what looked like the best ones, but she pointed out to me that a couple of them were not quite perfect, and reached down on the floor behind her to get some more to offer me. I paid her a random amount of money (her calculator was missing some bits on the screen so I couldn't make out the actual number she asked for, and when she showed me on the abacus, the silly Englishman didn't understand at all!) So we drove off with our apples, feeling very pleased with ourselves at our brilliance as linguists. Richard then drove us all the way to Nizhny Novgorod (100 miles +) in about ten minutes (well, it felt very fast, anyway) on a motorway which was as good as any we have seen anywhere. NN was a closed town to foreigners until about 1990, and Andrei Sakharov was exiled there by the old Soviet regime. It looked like the sort of place you probably wouldn't want to be exiled to, but then we didn't see the centre so perhaps that's unfair. We crossed a pretty big river, the Oka (a tributary of the great Volga) on the way past the town, it was a bit like crossing one of the big French rivers, the size of say the Loire. The countryside generally was a bit like the large swathes of landscape between the border and Moscow - huge forests either side of the road, with some slightly more open patches with clearings a few miles across. It looked as if it was rarely bothered by people, but occasionally there was the odd outcrop of a small village or a farm or two - generally fairly untidy, but somehow the countryside looks sort of "right" - the kind of territory into which Napoleon and Hitler both sent armies that simply crumbled away in the massive spaces. The trees were usually decidous - birch is quite common - but then there are suddenly massive pine forests as well, giving off really strong resinous aromas to clean your bathroom with. That's nice. Every now and then (not just on this stretch of road) we have come across the aftermath of various Russian road traffic disasters - usually trucks which have caught fire or crashed off the road. As long as they don't actually block the traffic, they seem to leave them where they are, perhaps as a warning to others! After NN, we swopped the driving, and the road conditions deteriorated sharply. From first class motorway, we were suddenly driving on the old bumpy single carriageway again, with lots of bends and (even though it was Sunday) lots of traffic. It thinned out a bit after a while, and the roads got a little better. We were out of the local traffic and into the long distance haulage trade again. We then came across our first Road Police checkpoint where our military status clearly did not impress, and we were pulled over. Our road policeman was absolutely charming, and completely incomprehensible. I shoved all the important papers at him, said "Ingleeski, nee panymayou par Russki" (English, I don't understand Russian) and waited to see what would happen. He spoke no English, but gestured to open the back of the car for inspection. I did, and in response to a torrent of Russian, I said "Kyemping, Mongolia", which seemed to do the trick. He wanted to see what was in the mysterious box on the inside of the back door, and when I showed him our fold down cooker, that satisfied him.. We were obviously completely mad, and not to be messed about with. I was not sure what the next load of Russian meant, and wary about the fact that they are apparently authorised to shoot at people who don't stop, I just stood there looking bemused. That seemed to work, he said his only English "Let's go, Mongolia" and shoved our papers back at me. We drove off quickly before he changed his mind. About an hour down the road, we were employing the tactic of staying safely in the pack when we came badly unstuck, along with the rest of the pack. There had been a load of roadworks and some signs about not overtaking in them. We had obeyed these, then when the roadworks ended we followed everyone else who overtook a couple of slow lorries down the next hill. The police were waiting at the bottom, and were doing a busy trade of pulling every single car over. I actually had to queue for my interview with the chief traffic policeman in his car! After "dealing" with the previous drivers, and as the queue behind me built up, I did the "nee panymyou par Russki" bit and he did the stroppy policeman bit. He gestured that he was going to confiscate my license, then said the magic word "straf", which in theory means "fine" or "penalty" but actually means bribe. At this point the car door was closed to stop everyone else hearing how much he was going to rip the silly foreigner off for. The number two in the back spoke a few random words of English (like "Football, England good") and the number three leant in through the window for the entertainment. The boss wrote down "1500" on a piece of paper, clearly indicating that was the fine he expected me to pay, otherwise he would confiscate my driving licence. That would be about £30. We knew that in fact they have no power to fine at the roadside at all, but all Russians apparently pay a "straf" of about half the official fine in order to get it sorted quickly - and everyone is happy. The trouble is that I have no idea what the official fine actually is. So I tried our other tactic of offering the money, but saying "Kweetantzia, pazhalsta", which means "can I have a receipt". This got him a little cross, but he rapidly crossed out 1500, wrote down 1000 and offered me my driving licence. I decided that whatever the legalities, that was probably the deal to do, so I did. We again hared off quickly - but not too quickly! We were now getting quite close to a big town called Kazan, our target for the night, and the ancient capital of the Tartars. It is at the junction of the Volga with another river, and we crossed the truly huge bridge over the Volga as another of their spectacular summer storms broke out, thunder lightning and heavy rain everywhere, and unfortunately the light was too poor to get any good pictures of the river, which was truly impressive. We also got caught in another storm just as we were filling up with diesel. Unfortunately the diesel pump was not under the canopy, and in two minutes outside I got completely soaked - as Richard sympathetically took photos of me from the dry inside the car. I got a really good one where you can see the individual rain drops! One thunderbolt actually struck about 200 yards away while we were filling up. We are getting the hang of this buying diesel thing. You always have to pay first. On the rare occasions when they have accepted visa, this has involved a complicated process of them taking 1,000 Roubles or so on the card, then crediting the necessary balance back after we have filled up. More usually, you just shove a 1,000 Rouble note through the window, they then turn the pump on and give you your change when you have finished. So far, we have not been diddled, but on one occasion they actually required us to nominate the amount we wanted in advance, so when the tank was full after 38 litres, we simply lost the other 2 we had paid for! After we reached Kazan this evening, we decided to push on until we saw an obvious place to stop. This happened when we saw our first campsite roadsign for about 500 miles. We pulled over straight away and I got out to see if I could find out if anyone could point me to the campsite - it looked like an ordinary roadside cafe to me. So I wandered around like a lost soul, saying "Kyemping" with a quizzical expression to anyone who looked like they might work there. Eventually I went inside the cafe to ask the nice lady behind the counter there. She thought it was best if the boss dealt with this, so she pointed me at the man in the military uniform with a sheath knife on his belt who I had been carefully ignoring. He turned out to be the owner, Ilnar, a very nice guy. He explained (that does rather exaggerate the level of communication, but you get the idea) that the campsite was the back yard of his cafe, that we could park there and sleep for 50 Roubles (just over £1) and we could eat in his cafe. He carefully shepherded us round the back with the car, parked on a nice level piece of builders rubble next to an abandoned lorry by the pile of bricks, then showed us the facilities - a toilet that was in need of some work on the sanitation front, and a washbasin in the cafe where you could have a wash down in full view of the other customers. The place was clean and felt OK, so we thought we would give it a go. Ilnar took us to the counter and ordered some food for us (we couldn't understand any of the menu, and he was anxious we should not be disappointed). We had a nice big bowl of meat, vegetable and noodle soup called "lagman" or something like that, a big cup of sweet Russian tea, a big hunk of bread and a beer (for me) and a lemonade (for Richard). The total bill (he wrote it on my hand, because I couldn't understand all the numbers) was 177 Roubles - about £4. So we have a campsite with all the trimmings, easy access to the motorway, and evening meal thrown in, all for a fiver. Ilnar was keen to talk, and swop a few words of Russian for some English ones. He gave us some advice about where to stop (and where not to!) on the road to Mongolia, and no doubt he will be giving us sound advice on our breakfast options in the morning. He also had some pretty trenchant views about what robbers the police are - just as bad the real gangsters, in his opinion - and the state of Russia as a whole. And we shouldn't go near his dog (tethered about 20 yards from our car) unless we want to be eaten! That was a long one! I've got a plan for anyone thinking "this is all very interesting but it has been sanitised for internet publishing". Some very clever person gave me a sketch book before I left and it has turned into a much less informative but much more amusing (how dare you?!) version of events (with drawings, cartoons and tickets and stuff stuck in for good measure). It is probably best read alongside this dissertation of 'a day in the life of a travelling man'. I'll try and print out each day's diary entry and stick them in my sketch book at the right day. If you are lucky I might even stick some photos in as well (and maybe even some maps of some sort), it depends if I can be bothered or not. Anyone who wants to read it when I get back is (currently) more than welcome, although I reserve the right to change my mind at any point without warning or any good reason and/or to charge a straf. I think I drove past a policeman who was trying to wave me down last thing today. He could have just been giving me a friendly wave of course. He didn't wave his baton at me (which they normally do if they want you to stop) so I assumed he didn't want me to. We didn't get shot so I guess it was OK? So tonight we are mostly washing the taste of police corruption out of our mouths whilst remembering which direction to walk in if we want a pee in the night, about ten miles west of Kazan. GPS reference of Ilnar's cafe/truckstop/campsite: 55° 55' 00.7" N 49° 09' 00.6" E. By the way, because our route tomorrow takes us out into the wilds a bit, we may not be able to get s phone signal to update the diary. We shall see... |
