Beyneu and Atyrau
Saturday, July 12, 2014 Once we crossed the border, we still had 85kms of classic Kazakhstan roads to negotiate before we got to Beyneu. And by “classic” we mean terrible. At one point we had to stop and fill up…
Stephen
Crossed into Kazakhstan
Saturday, July 12, 2014 Crossed into Kazakhstan. Very long day and several hours spent at the border. Uzbekistan turned out to be one of the unexpected highlights of our trip. Now we were on our way through Kazakhstan and onto…
Nukus
Friday, July 11, 2014 The drive to Nukus was quite uneventful. We made the journey in just over 3 hours. The fuel we picked up in Khiva was working, but, Sterlin was grumbling a little under heavy acceleration. So, we…
Khiva
Wednesday, July 9, 2014 The drive from Bukhara to Khiva was 430 kms through the Kyzylkum Desert, a journey that ‘the one that went before us’ took 10 hours to complete. So we woke up early, had a massive breakfast…
Bukhara
Monday, July 7, 2014 Pleasant enough drive to Bukhara, except the cop who leapt out of the bushes to pull us over. Apparently we were speeding, although we had no idea that we were. The chat was friendly enough, and…
Samarkand
Saturday, July 5, 2014 The drive to Samarkand was along good roads and we made excellent time. We didn’t even get stopped by the Police. Although we had a little trouble getting to our hotel, as someone had constructed a…
Uzbekistan: Border Crossing and Documentation
This post is about the government documentation we needed and obtained to bring our car and ourselves into Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan in General Getting our car into Uzbekistan was easy. Getting the visa for ourselves was not difficult, but did require…
Kygryzstan: Border Crossing and Documentation
This post is about the government documentation we needed and obtained to bring our car and ourselves into Kyrgyzstan. Kygryzstan in General Getting our car into Kygryzstan was straight forward and only required us to declare the car to customs…
Back in Bishkek (Бишкéк)
Thursday, June 26, 2014 We stayed at Nomad Hostel again, checking in just after lunch. In the afternoon we went for a long walk in search of three places, 1) A french style restaurant where we planned to have dinner,…
Bishkek (Бишкéк)
Saturday, June 21, 2014 We had pre-booked a guesthouse that is a favorite with overland travelers called Nomads and headed straight to it based on GPS coordinates kindly provided by Craig. We arrived to find they did not have our…
Across the Kazakhstan/Kyrgyzstan Border
Saturday, June 21, 2014 It is always good to start a border crossing day with a coffee. So we did. The 200-odd km drive to the border was on very good roads, but with the usual dangerous drivers, slow trucks,…
Kazakhstan: Border Crossing and Documentation
This post is about the government documentation we needed and obtained to bring our car and ourselves into Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan in General To quote our Lonely Planet guide book; “Visas and permits can be the single biggest headache associated with…
Semey (Семей)
Tuesday, June 17, 2014 Semey is twinned with Ypres in Belgium After checking into our spacious hotel and finding out we had a ‘small’ immigration issue – and discussing our options (see notes below), we headed out to do…
Across the Russian/Kazakhstan Border
Tuesday, June 17, 2014 After stopping at Coffee Art for a very nice latte we set off for the short 37 km drive to the border. We arrived at 10:32am to find 6 cars waiting in front of the border…
Rubtsovsk (Рубцо́вск)
Monday, June 16, 2014 Rubtsovsk is twined with Grants Pass in the United States. A place we have very fond memories of. Started the day for a coffee from Arabica Coffee. For some strange reason the coffees here in Russia…