The 2300 Kilometer Diversion
No one has evert said after reading In Search of Greener Grass, ‘now I have to see Russia for myself’. It would be no exaggeration to say that when I rode to Vladivostok in 2010 Russia was host to the trips least enjoyable moments. The Russian tourist board did not offer sponsorship.
Well, many things have changed since that trip, and I think they all contributed to this significantly more positive experience 15 years later.
I can read the Cyrillic alphabet.
I speak a little Bulgarian which served me well in Russia, lots of words are the same.
I visited mainly muslin areas and beyond the media such people are world renowned for their friendliness and hospitality.
I think Russia may have invested in a few more road signs.
Perhaps the world has become smaller, and a lone foreign traveller is not such an oddity.
And I too am more familiar with that role and play my part better.
Finally, phones; everyone, and I mean everyone has a smart phone and everything can be translated.
So, the transit of Russia was significantly easier, I’d go as far as to say enjoyable, and other than one horrific mistake the food was good too. I’d stayed in Astrachan before and having just come from one city decided to stay in a truck stop motel outside of town on my last night, so I would be fresh for my border crossing into Kazakhstan the next day. Which incidentally crossed the same slick, hinges, metal toll bridge as before. What the hell are they spending the toll money on?
Now I was to retrace my steps across the steppe. Last time the transition into Kazakhstan was jaw dropping. What’s changed? Me I suppose, that damn experience you accumulate along the way. Now the mud huts were less shocking and look more like my bike shed.
The roaming camels more common place, but the friendliness still took my breath away. From officials to kids, car drivers, to herders, all had a wave and a smile for me. I’m sure this was a dirt road last time, not now, smooth and fast as I like, which is about 80kph, and the fuel they practically give away about 35p a Liter, but they didn’t have to give it away as out of Russia my card worked again.
Checked into a hotel in Atyrau, the ATM worked, so did the internet, it was uncensored, and what do you know, the border I wanted to cross into Western Uzbekistan is closed, for renovation, until September.
Stopping for a pastry and a coffee that was too hot to drink I found myself walking with the Monday city pedestrians coffee in hand, buds in ear and phone in pocket, 3 weeks to the hour since I set off. I hadn’t visualised this to be the transformation of my trip. I crossed again into Asia. And bought a mouse, not as a pet but or for company, be we do click, I never got on with the touchpad on my laptop.
So, all I had to do was take a diversion of over 2300kms. It was equivalent to being in London and wanting to go to Madrid but having to go via Edinburgh and then to Rome.
It really was the same distance, but without a single hill, 5 days of endless steppe. And once in ‘Rome’ which in this case was Tashkent I wasn’t about to go back to Western Uzbekistan to see all the sights I’d planned to visit on route.
There is not an extensive road network through this, the 9th largest country in the world. So, despite the indirect route the mileage marker started at 0 and as the days passed, I counted my way to present day, like I did on the trans-Siberian 15 years ago. Only this time past 2010 and stopped for a photo in 2025.
Now, I loved the Kazakhstan steppe last time, the wild emptiness, this time like anything you become familiar with, Rap, Wine, or weather Apps, I started to notice subtle differences. It really is a diverse landscape. Sandy, parched, green, flat, barren, undulating, scrub, trees, arable, and as before I would pull off and wild camp.
Camels became so commonplace I stopped photographing but never stopped looking, lots of birds of prey and small fury things that must be quite high density judging by the difficulty the big birds had taking flight with one in their talons.
One morning I got up to photograph the sunrise and then it conveniently went behind a cloud so soon as I wasn’t baked out of my tent I went back for a further doze. There was a rubble, it wasn’t my tummy it was thunder, and instantly, like in a movie it pissed down.
I had to jump out put on my flysheet cover the bike and bring in all that I’d carelessly left out. That storm followed me for most of the day.
Shades and ear plugs, the same songs playing I’m my head. Simulation in the variation of the roadkill, and the loads on various vehicles. Doze the heat of the day away in the shade of a random bus shelter, having evacuated the dismal dejected donkeys. I even saw a trailer from a Dutch company I used to work for; I’ve hauled that very trailer, back in about 1998.
My DNA is on that winding handle, those back doors. Small world. Big miles, big distances, big trailers, big sky, big heat, then I pulled off the main road and went small town.
Little moments, warm greetings, unique interactions, finding what I needed without knowing what I was looking for, a kitten while I ate, a photo with a pump attendant, the ‘station’ had no sign, no price, no defining clue as to diesel or petrol but he filled my tank and topped up my souls’ yearning, invited me to have lunch with him and settled for a selfie.
A river to soak my clothing and cool off.
Flirtation at a café,
and in some forgotten village I stopped for an ice cream and a few local men gathered, faces covered, protection from heat and wind much like my own. One old guy (probably my age) arrived on a bare bones of a bicycle, pins where the pedals once where, a fork tied to the cross bar, and he just threw it to the ground. After the photo shoot I suggested, and much shaking of hands, the bicycle rider who appeared to have very little in the way of material possessions pulled out a smart phone. His friends rolled their eyes as he attempted to find the camera and now on his phone is a photo of us smiling and embraced. That’s him on the right; you can just see his bike.
I watched the solstice sun rise out some farmed steppe, herons flying past and frogs croaking the final chores of the shortest nights song. My last and longest day in Kazakhstan retracing a lot of my steppes and finally to a new country, Uzbekistan.
Cheers, Graham
P.S. thanks to all who ‘bought me a coffee’ it goes a long way on the road and makes me feel like a real digital nomad.
