Blog de Kaz III

26/06/08

Driving rain and overcast skies; balding chino-clad wannabes zipping around in 4 x 4s; Russian money-men barking orders.....no, I've not taken a detour to Knightsbridge, I'm now in Kazakhstan's Caspian oil capital Atyrau. Tour de Kaz has reached day 3 and after 2 glorious days on the steppe it's back to reality to stock up for what should be another 7 nights in the wonderful wilderness.

The fact that I have made it 400km from the Russian border tells you one of two things. Either I missed my stop on the train, or I have hammered out a couple of long days on the bike. Happily the latter is the truth. On the flat open roads of the steppe the speedometer has been hitting the 35km/h mark as regularly as the beadometer has touched "saturated". It's not pretty, I smell a bit, but it is proving very effective.

Success so far has been mostly down to a remarkable piece of good fortune in the form of a Swiss man named Ernst.

Having put my bike together during a sweltering night in my hotel room in Astrakhan, I realised that the pump I had brought was missing a crucial bit of plastic. Despite repeating pumping, the tyres were putting in a performance to suggest they had spent the whole journey on the vodka. It wasn't happening. Flacid tyres under this much weight were about as useful as a half inflated life jacket in the middle of the ocean but I had no option but to push on. Enter Ernst.

Ernst was on his way from Switzerland to Thailand on his bike and just happened to be checking out my hotel as I took the bike and trailer on their first spin on Russian soil. Pleasantries exchanged, Ernst agreed to give my tyres the stimulation they needed. He had something I didn't (a working pump) and I was soon (finally) on the road to Kazakhstan.

As I neared the border the countryside spanned out and the people began to change. Gone were the steely eyes, mullets and flat-tops of the Russians. The Kazakh faces are rounder, deeper, warmer. Also the waving etiquette started to soften. On the bike I am an uashamed waver. Russians like Londoners are not. In London the reasons for not waving are generally that the lycra-clad recipient of the wave is taking their cycling far too seriously to be bothered with pleasantries. They are usually training for an iron-man or some such endeavour and must devote their full attention to turning themselves into a ferrous metal (or at least an alloy). In Russia I found the lack of waving was a mixture of confusion and beligerence on their part. "If I wave does that mean I am being friendly? would Putin approve of such indulgent Western behaviour?". Early advances towards the border showed the Kazakhs take a wave in their stride and the return wave has been mostly accompanied by an ear-to-ear smile.

One Russian who was certainly not smiling, or waving , and most importantly not waving me through was the border guard. Now admittedly I had made the first wrong move. On a road that I describe elsewhere on the site as "impossible to get lost" I had on stage one taken a wrong turn. However all roads in this part of the world lead to the border and I thought I'd just go with it. I got a little worried when I had to load my bike onto a ferry and camels replaced people as my only company, but I was assured by the ferry driver (and the camels) that I was heading for the frontier.

Sadly, the frontier I had mistakenly chosen was one that could only be crossed if you were a Russian or Kazakh passport holder. I didn't do a very plausible impression of either, and despite a very plausible impression of a British passport holder offering a substantial bribe I was getting nowhere. The only option was a 180 degree turn and another ferry ride and 20km backtrack to the place I'd gone wrong. This would have been just about bearable had the midday sun not decided to make an appearance and the merest guff of a tail wind I had enjoyed on the way towards the border not turned into a full bout of nature's flactulance in my face on the way back. Not a good start.

Two hours later I successfully crossed the border and having engaged in some enlightening Vinokourov chat with the guards the Tour de Kaz began.

In the name of brevity I will keep my thoughts on the scenery concise. Suffice to say the Kazakh steppe has already overreached my wildest expectations in terms of wildlife and landscapes. It's easy to imagine a dull flat plain, but as I pedalled between marshland sprinkled with small birds, herons and ringing to the sounds of a thousand frogs on one side and lush steppe grazed by herds of camels and horses being coralled by the horsebound farmer watched by the steely gaze of an eagle on the other I was pleased to have made the trip. The other great thing about the steppe is that you can always claim to have seen everything. No matter how far away a sight someone mentions is, you can always claim to have seen it since you have a range of about 100 miles in all directions. No chance then of a fellow cyclist trying to catch me out with the old "did you see the horse with the wonky leg that looked like he had two johnsons?" "Ah yes you mean the second from the right in the herd 57 miles north west of Ganyushkino". This sort of stuff is very important to travelling folk in my experience.

Having put in 40km extra on Tuesday, yesterday was all about grit. 270km in a day pulling a dead weight of about 60kg was extremely tough but I'm pleased to have made it this far already and have taken a day to recover today. The kit is performing extremely well. I have christened my bike CAK. This stands for Cycle Across Kazakhstan, which is a fitting description of the bike's job, fits nicely with the other member of the team (Bob) and as the Welsh speakers amongst you will know allows me several possibilities if I ever need to hurl some abuse in her direction.

Bob has the satisfaction of stealing the limelight wherever he goes. No one is interested in me or CAK (apart from when it's time to pay the bill). It's all about Bob, and I'm beginning to feel like that Charlie whats-his-name who went around the world with Ewen McGregor. Still as long as he keeps hooking up with CAK and keeps that wheel rolling I couldn't care less. Here's hoping they both keep it up as I head off for seven nights on the steppe proper.