Got as far as Dossor, following a Kazakh truck on a beautiful road and spent the night on what looked like a truck stop in the centre of the city. The adjacent building turned out to be a hotel for truckers and a succession of people came out to ask who we are, where are we from, where are we going and which football team do we support. When in Kazakhstan, say “Liverpool” and their faces light up. Everyone very friendly. They even offered to empty our portapotty in their bog.
We thought it was a bit cheeky to have our breakfast in front of the hotel so we set off early and stopped for breakfact by a graveyard with an impressive monument to a khan who ruled the place in former years. The unquiet spirits were welcome to join us but, having put the cans outside the vehicle to make room, it looked like we were broken down or out of fuel, so a car stopped and asked if we wanted help. Plus who are we, where are we from……
On arriving at the fairly large town of Kulsary we stopped at a Sinooil garage to fill our four 20-litre jerry cans with diesel, because it is 890 miles from Kulsary to Bukhara and Uzbekistan is notorious for not having much diesel. Kulsary is an oil town from which the huge Tengiz oilfield is worked, and stretches for miles with lots of little factories making things for the oilfield. We got lost and some friendly men planting flowers round an equestrian statue showed us the way to Beineu.
I stopped to take a picture of a camel in the road for a man in Tolsta Chaolais who is very interested in animals in the road, but a truck blasted its horn and the camel ran away. A motor bike pulled up and Henry introduced himself. A lovely young man who is attempting to be the youngest person to drive a motor bike round the world. It is a joy to know that there are people just as eccentric as us. He has a website: 35000miles.com, and we wish him well.
We passed into Mangistau Province, well-known to that august (now defunct) journal “Kazakhstan Energy Monthly” (editor D.Wilson) as Kazakhstan’s chief source of oil, and then ran into a sandstorm complete with tumbleweed and an empty tin can blowing across the road. The aim was to get to Beineu and as much as the road from there to Uzbekistan as we could before nightfall. I’m not driving on a potholed road after dark. I’m not daft!.
Beineu is a one-horse town where three huge gas pipelines from eastern Turkmenistan meet one from western Turkmenistan on their way to Moscow. We struggled to find our way out of it, asking a large number of people but not quite believing that they wanted us to go north when Uzbekistan is to the south. Eventually we took their advice and, after crossing a railway line, found the southbound road. It was a horror, with its only saving grace when dust from the frequent dust storms filled the deepest ruts and were kinder to the tyres than the rock hard mud with massive ruts.
After 47 miles in three hours we decided to stop at the settlement of Stantsiya Akzhigat and, asking permission from a tough-looking bloke, spent the night at an LPG-filling station.
