Mile after mile of nothing. The road was utterly appalling and passed a number of small oilfields which seemed to be closed. There were plenty of new tracks in the desert running parallel to the road with the occasional truck on them, mostly oil tankers carrying crude oil from the oilfields at Aktobe to the refinery at Atyrau. We picked up a hitch-hiker, a young lad who was miles from anywhere and walking through the desert towards Dossor which was over 100 miles away. We hadn’t seen another vehicle for ages, so we picked him up. At Dossor, he thanked us and disappeared while we found a shop and bought some grub. The shop people thought it highly amusing when I asked about a restaurant and told us there was one about 30 miles down the road. We stopped in an official parking place 20 miles west of Dossor.
We got lost in the major oil town of Atyrau, and had an interesting incident with an extremely irate motorist who drove slowly past waving his arms about. He stopped at a parking place at the side of the road but I ignored him and drove past. He then followed us and when I stopped in a parking place to look at the map, he stopped and got out of his car. I then drove off again and he got back into his car. He was clearly trying to stop and have words with us and, with a bit of luck, I was the last vehicle to pass through some traffic lights, leaving him well behind.
