The road to Astana had been (relatively) smooth, so the next morning we crossed our fingers hoping that the road west and north to the Russian border would be the same. We really should have learned by now never to get our hopes up.
Between Astana and Pavlodar, the road was so unworthy of being called a road that our average speed dropped to 30km/h. The classics were all on display: poor asphalt, potholes the size of the car, bumps, ridges, massive semi trucks on a narrow two-lane stretch of pavement. To illustrate this point, we passed many local cars and trucks broken down on the side of the road.
Over the course of the trip, I had a “warning system” set up where I would see a disturbance on the road and yell, “BUMP!” or “HOLE!” or even “UPCOMING UNPLEASANTNESS!”. This particular road was so destroyed that warning with words took too much time, so my warning system devolved to just pointing and yelling, “AAAHHH!!”. It worked, anyway, and we did not join the legions of others on the side of the road.
Sadly, a trip that should have only taken a couple hours ended up taking much of the day, and we reached the Kazakh-Russian border in the late afternoon. It was a small border crossing, and there were just a handful of people waiting on the Kazakh side to go through. This did not mean that the waiting would be less, however. Out of laziness or malice, the wait was around 4 hours simply because the guards could make us wait. Russians got priority access, and anyone with Russian plates was invited through the metal gates ahead of us. We even saw an SUV from Afghanistan, who got shooed forward as well (which we thought was fair, anyone that drives through Afghanistan and lives should at least catch a break at a border crossing). More sudoku was completed, more mosquito bites were unwillingly acquired, and after sunset we were ushered into the nearly empty Kazakh border compound.
Every border crossing has their own rules. Most involve the filling of forms, standing awkwardly, and smiling sheepishly as the border official attempts to converse in English. These guards clearly hadn’t seen many passports from outside of Asia before, so upon seeing ours they called over a coworker to see the actual! people! from North America! Not much else was done besides basking in the glory of our non-Eurasian passports, and even this took an unusually long time. Eventually, they figured they had to let us (and our passports) go, and we moved on to the car inspection. When they say inspection, they don’t mean a cursory glance around the car. Oh no. They make you take out all of your possessions yet again, point at things that look interesting, laugh, then make you repack it all over again. On the bright side, this served as an opportunity for us to rearrange the back as things had moved around and become disorganized. The downside was my desperate need to use the facilities, and bending over didn’t help the matter.
Next came the line for the Russian side. A long line of semis had already parked and claimed their place in front of the Russian gate, and we feared that the Russian side had closed. This wasn’t the case and, after some jostling with a couple other semis and the cars that came with us through the Kazakh side, we got through inside an hour. This is when things got odd.
In order to cross the gate, we had to fill out teeny forms with all of our information as well as the car’s particulars. After the gate, we had to park our cars on one side then head to a nondescript trailer; there were no actual buildings in sight. Inside the trailer was one light, a lot of bugs, and one sleepy border official clearly regretting her choice of working the night shift. Without looking up she took our passports, stamped them, stamped the teeny pieces of paper, and let us go. Confused by how smoothly that went, we began wondering what the catch was. Would we be told to unpack and repack our car? Would the numerous Russian soldiers equipped with Kalashnikovs spring out from the bushes to test our readiness against bears in Siberia? Perhaps a surprise strip search?
No, no, and no. We were simply waved out and that was that. We were in Russia!!
We tried our best to make it to Omsk, but the border crossing left us driving in pitch black darkness. Less than 60km from the city, we pulled aside in a lovely forested area for some much needed sleep. Добрый вечер Россия!
Kia
September 18th, 2014 8:33
Russians are cool !