After our drive up from Olgii, Mongolia and our cold camp just short of the border, it took 4 hours to get out of Mongolia and into Russia. In the end it was a pretty easy and simple border crossing (after much anticipation, and not a little apprehension, on Dad‘s side); the longest parts were driving between the Mongolian border and the Russian border (No-mans land) and doing the customs declaration [Dad adds: which I kept on filling in wrong…(the form was in Russian only) and being told to do it again! After my third go it was accepted.]. To get our passports ‘stamped’ and do the migration stuff for Russia, we needed to drive into the border town of Tashanta, as surprisingly it wasn’t finalised at the actual border itself. We were planning to get insurance for the car but couldn’t find the insurance place, so…
In ‘No-mans land’ the road went from the usual shithouse, on the Mongolian side, to great, on the Russian side. The main roads in Russia were really good…the back roads….well, not so good.
We picked up several hitchhikers. [Dad: There are lots of people hitchhiking in Russia]. On the second day we picked up a young women with her toddler…they both got car sick! When she had finally had enough, or perhaps even, had reached her destination, and got out, another hitchhiker had her hand on our car door handle, ready to open the door and hop in (until warned off by the sick woman, I guess)!
We had brought a map of Russia with us but it was really inadequate [Dad: large scale (1:6,000,000) but more particularly, our map’s town names were in English while names in Russia are in Russian Cyrillic! We had no idea where we were at times, which, come to think of it, is not that unusual for us…] so we searched for a better one in Gorno-Altaisk and Dad ended up finding a really detailed, really good Melways sorta thing on pretty much the exact region of Russia we were driving through to get from Olgii, Mongolia to Semey, Kazakhstan!!! So that made it really easy navigating.
We spent 3 days in Russia. We camped one night in wheat stubble about four Ks off the road. [Dad: we always take pains to be well out of sight of any road when camping.] The first night we stayed in a hotel. We had to open the only widow because the heating was really, really hot, even though it was probably 0 degrees outside. No eating places in that town. Nil. Nix. No dinner.
Even though we had the best map in the world for this part of Russia we still got lost in Rubtsovsk, which is about 30 Ks from the Kazakh border. Dad ended up asking a young couple for directions, then a middle aged man came over to help out so the young couple drifted away slowly. The man tried to give dad directions by drawing on the dirt, then tried to hail a taxi to lead us out (all occupied) but eventually gave up and said why don’t I get in the car and take you to the road u need to be on (in sign language) for about 8 bucks (250 roubles, after a bit of bargaining). Once we got to the road out of town Dad realized he didn’t have the right change. So he and the man tried to change some money at a couple of shops but they were closed. Then Dad decided to top up the car with fuel, got change and gave the agreed amount to the man and off we went to the border. [Dad: the process for getting fuel in Russia is interesting…firstly estimate the amount of fuel you need and enter the figure on a calculator (or scrap of paper) - you can‘t simply fill the tank, take this to the babushka who is hidden behind a small door in a wall of the box forming the service station office. It is quite difficult to know whether these places are open or closed as often no-one is visible. The little door pops open, you indicate which fuel type is required by sign language (diesel is Dt , but in Russian Cyrillic letters), and a slip of paper soon emerges with the amount to pay in Roubles shown. Money is handed to the babushka through a sliding drawer, change given, and then all that is required is to put the nozzle into the tank, and pull the trigger. The flow stops at the volume paid for. No words are spoken. No water, no air, no oil, no maps, no lollies, papers, or milk…no human contact, no nothing, except fuel.]
[Dad: the border process on both sides was fast: 90 minutes saw us through. We had entered Kazakhstan…]
*Lonely Planet, Central Asia, romantically describes a proposed journey between Olgii, Mongolia, and Almaty, Kazakhstan, much as we have just driven, as Journey to Shambhala.
[Photos: Russian evening light; Altai lunch, just after the border crossing. The creek was just starting to freeze with ice forming at its edges.]
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