Climbing out of the cosy warm bed, I switched on the dashboard of the van to look at the outside temperature. I thought it was a bit cold to be -1 degree and after I put my glasses on, saw that it was -11. The engine started straight away and I left it running for some time until the frost on the inside of the windows had melted.
The oil town of Kyzyl Orda could be recognised by a plume of grey smoke from the oil well flares where the gas was burned off. Driving through the town which, like all Soviet-era towns, covers a huge area we eventually found a bank where we got some Kazakh currency from an ATM and then went next door where I bought a Kazakh sim card for the mifi. We got some bread and meat pies fom a small corner shop, then got lost in Kyzyl Orda. Eventually found our way out with help from the MapsMe app and drove on up the M32 towards Aktobe. We turned off to visit the cosmodrome at Baikonur (where Yurii Gagarin was launched from) which still belongs to Russia and sends satellites into space. You need to apply for permission to get into the base so we turned round when we eached the barrier after I took pics of the entrance and a statue.
The small village of Aralkum used to be on the northern shore of the Aral Sea, but the sea has shrunk in recent years an is now several kilometres away. It used to be almost round but is now just a large number of unconnected pools. We passed through about 8.15 pm in the dark, and people at the side of the road were trying to sell dried fish. I guess the truck drivers buy them as a snack and there were huge numbers of giant Russian trucks passing through on their way to the stans.
We parked in the desert just off the main road for the night, with an outside temp of -7.5 when we went to sleep.
The next day we continued on across the dreary Kazakh steppe for 380 miles to the edge of Aktobe where we camped at a parking place at the side of the road. We passed the ugliest town in the world of Khromtau, a chromr-mining town with some monster slag heaps. The temp reached -16 degrees in the night!
