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…

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…

Russia: Border Crossing and Documentation

This post is about the government documentation we needed and obtained to bring our car and ourselves into Russia. Russia in General The Russia government website has a pretty good description of the process to temporarily import a vehicle into…

Barnaul (Барнаул)

Saturday, June 14, 2014 Barnaul is twined with Flagstaff in the United States. And Flagstaff hosts overland expo each year. We don’t often pre-book accommodation, but we did for Barnaul. It is a bigger city and we didn’t want to…

Biysk (Бийск)

Black Friday (черная пятница), June 13, 2014 Woke up early as our room did not have curtains and the sun got up early here. Still, we took our time and enjoyed breakfast and a mid-morning latte (our first ones since…

Kosh-Agach (Кош-Агач)

Wednesday, June 11, 2014 The drive from the border to Kosh-Agach was very painless. We were driving in search of a place to stay based on some loose information we had received from the Land Rover driving Norwegians we had…

Across the Mongolian/Russian Border

Wednesday, June 11, 2014 We set off from Ölgii around 9:30 and headed towards the Mongolian/Russian border. Most of the road was sealed but we did have our last stretch of unsealed Mongolian road as well. In a strange way…

Ölgii (Өлгий)

Sunday, June 8, 2014 On arrival we rushed around and picked a hotel. The one we liked was full. Ended up making a poor choice of room in a good hotel, which was fixed the next day with a room…

To Ölgii (Өлгий)

Sunday, June 8, 2014 We had a leisurely 6 hour drive to Ölgii. The roads started out dusty and bumpy but ended with near prefect sealed road (there was one very large pothole to be avoided). The scenery was wonderful and…

Khovd (Ховд)

Thursday, June 5, 2014 Our hotel had the usual challenge, ie.:lacking hot water. But we setup our camping shower and used the kettle to boil the water. It was good to get cleaned up and wash away the dust and…

Traveling to Khovd (Ховд)

Wednesday, June 4, 2014 We woke up to find a dusting of snow on Sterlin as well as on the northern slopes of the surrounding hills. In our cozy hotel room we were completely oblivious to the weather outside, so…

Altai (Алтай)

Monday, June 2, 2014 The ‘improved’ road away from Uliastai headed up and over a pass and was in poor condition. But the views were wonderful and we took the driving slowly. Altai was 200kms away and we thought the…

Uliastai (Улиастай)

Saturday, May 31, 2014 We sure must have slept well as we woke up to find it was past 8am! Not bad! Specially with the sun coming up around 5:15am. We enjoyed breakfast on this windless, warm morning, after which…