After a noisy night (nearly sleepless for Dave) in the budget hotel that was our only choice in Kostanay City, we gathered in the secure parking area for our morning briefing.
It was going to be a long day of Kazakhstan steppe land and road conditions that varied from good to really, really bad. Watch out for the pot holes!
Leaving Kostanay City, we passed by their petroleum storage tanks, and...
over the river, to the countryside.
This area of Kazakhstan grows a lot of wheat.
And their town/regional signs boast of this productivity.
Almost every town has a "welcome" sign. From what we can gather it usually boasts about what they produce. We're not sure what this is all about, but it was interesting.
The morning ride was on mostly good roads. The scenery remained an almost monotonous sea of wheat - so much so that it was pretty exciting to see a small lake appear nearyby.
And occassional cemetaries. The muslim and christian orthodox burial sites are separate. This one is muslim. The small blue dome has a crescent moon on it.
About mid morning we stopped for a rest break (i.e. pee stop) in the little town of Miuntka.
As usual. we attracted the attention of locals who wanted to find out where we are from, where we are going, and to have their pictures taken by the bikes.
John is always looking for that next generation of customers. We are now officially in Asia, and it is increasingly apparent in the people's appearance.
This little boy was very enthusiastic about the motorcycle. And so cute, too!,
We were soon back on the road. We had 510 km (318 miles) to travel today - not a long ride, but given road conditions, very tiring. Besides the pot holes that can destroy our bike wheels, we had other hazards to avoid.
Apparantly, the young ones are not street smart.
This colt, with its mother in tow, jumped right in front of John's bike.
During the morning we saw several large grain elevators...
...small, weatherbeaten villages with houses barely better than shacks...
...but mostly endless fields of wheat. We are told that winter here is brutal.
While we did have plenty of bad road with massive, deep pot holes to avoid,
...much of what was bad during last year's scouting trip by Janis and John now had fresh asphalt. Smooth riding for us.
We have no pictures of the truly bad roads, because David has to ride standing up while I hold on with both hands. The bad areas were handled well by all riders, and we escaped without any bent rims, although a couple bikes do have rim damage from earlier riding days on this trip. We are all now very aware that any significant damage can mean the end of a ride because there are no backup machines on this trip, We carry a lot of spare parts and can fix many things, but a broken wheel would be a big deal and probably put the bike and rider into the support van, a place no one wants to go. We are therefore riding slower in potholed areas and picking our way through to avoid carnage.
After 260 km, we stopped beside the road...
...to gather everyone toegether for our gas stop.
We pulled into a Shelf - not Shell - station. To make the gas stops as efficient as possible, we use one pump. John pulls just past the pump, Svetlana runs into the cashier to have them activate it, and we each pull up in turn to fill the tanks. Svetlana then pays for the gas from a group kitty. It goes pretty quickly. We have two basic types of BMW GS bikes on this trip - standard GS 700, 800, or 1200, and Adventure GS 800 and 1200. The Adventure models have a much larger gas tank than the standard bikes, so the limiting range of about 150 miles is created by the smaller bikes. The concept is that we carry a few spare liters of fuel in the support van, but that if we ever get into trouble where gas is sparse (we have already experienced a few stations with no fuel), in places like Mongolia or remote China, we can siphon out of the bigger bikes to keep the smaller bikes running. We hope it won't come to that, but it is a plan.
This man was interested in looking at the bikes. We try to communicate with the locals as best we can. Sometimes they know a little English, which helps, but other times we just have to resort to gesticulations, pointing and smiles. Here, our oldest rider, Andre, is explaining the intricacies of satellite GPS frequencies to a local farmer. Or not.
Our next stop, lunch, was just a few miles away. Boz, who generally doesn't eat lunch, decided to ride ahead to the hotel.
Along the way we passed this farm compound.
The wood barns are interesting, because they are built up off the ground. They appear to be built on pilings, with funnel-like features underneath to drop grain into trailers.
Just before we made it to the town where we planned a lunch stop, we saw Boz standing beside the road with a police officer.
Soon we were all pulled over. The day was about to get very interesting.
Svetlana hopped off John's bike and tried to sort out what Boz's offense had been. The official language in Kazakhstan is Kazak, but over 90% speak Russian too, so Svetlana can communicate on our behalf. I am not sure how a lone traveller from the U.S. could ever negotiate the language barrier in these situations - simply checking into a hotel is a comedy of pantomime for us, often ending with intervention by Svetlana to clear things up.
It turned out that it wasn't just Boz. Another town had radioed ahead, and this town wanted to know why our whole group was in Kazakhstan. First, we had to wait for the chief of police to arrive. Svetlana asked it we could wait at the lunch cafe, so as not to lose time. But no, we had to wait right there. Oh, and we weren't supposed to take pictures - hee hee :)
Soon, the chief arrived and Mike and Svetlana went over to explain. I just love how Mike towers over the chief.
We all waited on the other side of the road as they questioned Mike, Svetlana John and Boz.
Of course, we had to have a little fun while we waited. Boz, you big clown!
Well...turns out the wait was well worth it. The chief ordered the officer to give us a police escort, complete with lights and siren to our lunch stop.
We paraded through town...
beeping our horns past apartment buildings (check out the satellite dishes)...
and finally arrived at the cafe...
where we said goodbye to Mr. Officer.
It turns out that there was another benefit from the police stop. Janis, who was in the support van, had called ahead to the cafe requesting lunch service for our group. The cafe owner replied in the negative because they had a wedding party of 170 people to cater that afternoon. After checking around, he discovered that there's not another cafe for miles! He called again. They yelled at him, "Are you crazy - we already said NO." Well, during Svetlana's conversation with the the police chief, she stated that we were on the way to this particular cafe for lunch. He called the cafe and told them they had to serve us! Victory! It pays to make "influential" friends along the way.
Lunch was good. We were served appetizers, soup and plof (rice and lamb) family style. Very good meal. We left stuffed and happy. Hope there was something left for the wedding reception.
We were halfway to the hotel, but still had some bad roads to ride. Again, I had to put the camera away for a while.
The topography changed during the afternoon ride - we were getting back into the hills.
We drove past this monument. I'm not sure what it's for, but we've seen several horse statues since we entered Kazakhstan. I'll have to do some research.
Another grand entrance to a city that isn't very serving of grand entrances. It looks arabic. Kazakhstan is more than 50% muslim.
We're getting closer to the mountains, and the lakeside resort destination, Rixos Borovoe Hotel.
Some of the staff was there to greet us and take pictures.
We parked in a secure underground garage.
We quickly made our way to the reception area, received room keys and began making plans for tomorrow's day of relaxation and rest. No tours, just rest. I scheduled a massage and Dave is planning to get some sleep. Last night was full of barking dogs, hammering, and loud voices outside our window, which was open due to no air conditioning. This resort looks great and that should not be a problem.
We are enjoying Kazakhstan, the world's eight largest country - but it is clear why there are so few people spread so far apart. As Dave says "there's an awful lot of nothing out there."
Interesting that the horses are wandering free...are they marked?
ReplyDeleteInteresting that the horses are wandering free...are they marked?
ReplyDeleteI thought the gilded statues and the fountains were hard to beat. Must've been the glitziest spot you saw for several days. Looks as though Dave's fully recovered from his health issues . . . if his rosie cheeks are any indication!
ReplyDeleteIt's not a party until the police arrive!
ReplyDelete