We approached the Kazakhstan border which looked like it had a new building. It also looked deserted. Following a couple of women, we found half a dozen people waiting to get processed by two immigration officials in separate booths. One was processing people in and the other was processing people out after they had been to the ‘customs’ desk. They took an age and while we waited, 3 Russian women, one carrying a baby came in and then went to the official ‘processing out’ and got processed in ahead of us. Our man seemed to be watching paint dry quicker. After 30 minutes or so, we were the only two left and Trev stepped forward. After tapping on his PC for 5 minutes, he asked for Trev’s vehicle documentation. When we indicated that I was the car owner, he suddenly announced that he was going for his tea and we would have to wait. Eh? How can you half process someone? Both officials left and we were left on our own in this building.

I was fuming. I had hated all the delays and paper chasing when we had come into Kazakhstan on our previous visit via the Aqtau ferry. We had had to wait overnight for it to open and the following day it had taken us 6 hours to get processed (they stopped for lunch as well and shut down). When we had left Kazakhstan to enter Russia (having re-entered from Uzbekistan), we were apparently missing a ‘customs form’. They wouldn’t let us out and finally an official had asked us both for a $20 bribe in a back office for not having the paperwork. We had never been given this form on our first entry either. I hate Kazakhstan border officials with all my heart.

So here we were again. Marooned. It was after 6pm and we still had a fair journey to Atyrau. After sitting for 10 minutes, another official turned up. ‘What are you doing here? He gestured. ‘Your twat of a colleague has gone for his tea and told us to wait” I gestured back. “Atyrau?” he asked. Where else – it’s the only place to go from here. We pointed to our car outside. He huffed and puffed and then let himself into the booth. I passed over my passport and he tapped away and stamped my passport. Then I had to pose for a photo by a camera above his head. Trev was getting processed within 5 minutes and got his stamp.

He then waved his hand and said “Go!” “Machine passport?” I asked. “No machine passport” he replied. Eh? “Aagreement between Kazakhstan and Russia” Eh? First I’d heard of it. Every other country outside the EU requires you ‘import’ and ‘export’ a vehicle with paperwork. “Customs form?” I asked. “No Customs” “GO!” he yelled. Eh? Well we knew we needed that one from the last trip. “GO!” he yelled again. So we Go-ed.

Outside, no one was interested in searching our car. We had just set off from the border when we were waved down by a policeman standing by the side of the road. I had only got into 2nd gear! What’s the scam now? He asked us for our passports and my vehicle details and then waved us on. Thank god for that.

We had a couple of problems. There was no money exchange or touts at the border so we had no local currency (Tenge). Secondly, we had last filled the car in Volzhskiy and had less than half a tank left and I had calculated it was around 300km to Atyrau. We had no idea where the first garage was but saw one within 10 minutes of the border. Excellent - except that they had no fuel. They indicated there was another one up the road. There was and this one had 4 cars waiting. We discovered why. They had run out of fuel as well and everyone was waiting for a tanker to arrive.

We had no choice but to keep going. The landscape was flat and seemingly barren. Something appeared up ahead on the road – it looked like a giant haystack had been built in the road – except that it was moving. As we passed it (only just since it took up both lanes), we discovered it was a tractor pulling an overloaded trailer. We passed another one later on. Camels were spotted by the roadside. Darkness started to fall on the virtually deserted road and we had seen no signs indicating how far it was to Atyrau.

I kept our speed at 50mph and we just ploughed on through the darkness. We didn’t pass any more garages and never saw another settlement. Fortunately it was too deserted for police checks as well. We were resigned to eventually running out of petrol and sleeping in the car and sorting it out in the morning. Then I saw a sign saying 100km to Atyrau and thought we had a fair chance of making it.

Eventually we saw the lights of Atyrau from afar, but it took an age to reach them and as we approached the outskirts, the fuel reserve indicator was illuminated. We had 20 miles left in the tank and this was a big city. There were no garages en route as I followed my nose into the centre which was at least 5 miles. We eventually reached a main road with banks and hotels and I spotted an ATM to get Tenge currency. One problem sorted. We trawled around and came across our first garage. It had just closed though the cashier stayed in her locked office. Our watches said 10pm. I gestured for another garage and she pointed somewhere. We followed ‘somewhere’ and found nothing.

I saw a man sitting in his stationary car on his mobile phone. I stopped and indicated we needed fuel. He gestured to follow him and off we went. We ended up following him to 4 garages which were open but would not serve us petrol because we needed a petrol credit card which of course we didn’t have. I was seriously worried about our situation. We still didn’t have a clue as to the location of our hotel. When we were looking for garages, I had asked a couple of girls who giggled and explained it was difficult to find but that we had to cross the river. I now asked our ‘tour guide’ who didn’t know, but I gave him the hotel telephone number and he called up for directions. We followed him for 15 minutes sure that the car would die a fuel-less death, but somehow we got there. With the heat, humidity and long day’s drive and the tension, we felt exhausted.

The male receptionist at the Victoria Palace Hotel was chatty and said that there was a garage nearby but it was complicated to find. We could deal with it tomorrow. We noticed a clock on the wall that said 12.30am. The clocks had gone forward another hour at the border and we didn’t even know. No wonder we had no luck with garages. But we had reached our destination. It was our 3rd visit to Kazakhstan and 8th country of the trip. Wired from the journey, it was 2am before we went to bed after downing a few welcome glasses of wine.

Friday August 19th

Kazakhstan Background: (used before on the previous trip) Currently, Kazakhstan only means one thing to people: the Borat movie whereby an English comedian pretends to come from there and portrays himself as a celebrity from somewhere no-one has heard of. It’s not surprising why when you know its history which is essentially that the Russian empire tried to remove its existence from the map leaving it as a vast expanse of nothingness in which to test their nuclear military hardware. Radioactivity is still a problem is many places and we discovered that our compasses did not work in Kazakhstan.

The Lonely Person’s guide says it is “A bewitching, dream-like landscape for those with a taste for the esoteric. If you're not a fan of endless semi-arid steppe and decaying industrial cities, Kazakhstan may seem bleak.” It’s wide open spaces and occasional lunar landscapes, more than make up for this. For starters, the country is nearly four times the size of Texas. We are talking big.

The CIA webpage summarises Kazakhstan history as “Native Kazakhs, a mix of Turkic and Mongol nomadic tribes migrated into the region in the 13th century, but were rarely united as a single nation. The area was conquered by Russia in the 18th century, and Kazakhstan became a Soviet Republic in 1936. During the 1950s and 1960s agricultural "Virgin Lands" program, Soviet citizens were encouraged to help cultivate Kazakhstan's northern pastures. This influx of immigrants (mostly Russians) skewed the ethnic mixture and enabled non-Kazakhs to outnumber natives. Independence in 1991 caused many of these newcomers to emigrate”.

Kazakhstan, the largest of the former Soviet republics in territory, excluding Russia, possesses enormous fossil fuel reserves and plentiful supplies of other minerals and metals. It also has a large agricultural sector featuring livestock and grain. Kazakhstan's industrial sector rests on the extraction and processing of these natural resources.

The CIA website concludes “Kazakhstan's economy is larger than those of all the other Central Asian states combined, largely due to the country's vast natural resources and a recent history of political stability. Current issues include: developing a cohesive national identity; expanding the development of the country's vast energy resources and exporting them to world markets; achieving a sustainable economic growth; diversifying the economy outside the oil, gas, and mining sectors; enhancing Kazakhstan's competitiveness; and strengthening relations with neighbouring states and other foreign powers.”

With a population of around 15.3 million people (average income $11,000) of which 47% are Muslim and 44% Russian Orthodox in religion, it has major deposits of petroleum, natural gas, coal, iron ore, manganese, nickel, cobalt, copper, molybdenum, lead, zinc, bauxite, gold, and uranium. Arable land accounts for only 8% so the country relies on its natural resources. Not many people know this, but the apple and the Tulip originated in Kazakhstan. The Romans discovered the apples which were originally up to a kilo in weight (per apple). The Dutch discovered the tulip and exported it to Holland to become a major flower export. Currently, the country is run by President Nazarbayev, pretty much as a police state. There are police check points everywhere.

Atyrau (pop 147,000), 30km up the Ural River from its mouth on the Caspian Sea is the command centre for the huge Tenghiz oilfield 200km south. The Ural River which meandered through the town marks the border between Europe and Asia. Our hotel was on the European side. We had sausage and egg for breakfast while the background muzak went wrong and played at the wrong speed. It was two songs before any of the staff noticed.

We needed petrol urgently. Four staff in reception argued about which garage would be closest or easiest to reach, and then argued over the directions. In the end, it was decided that the security guard should accompany me, which he did and within 15 minutes, we were back at the hotel with a full tank and 14 litres spare in one of the jerry cans.

Back in the centre, we checked out the new public square fitted with fountains and a monument to the 19th Century Kazakh freedom fighters Makhambet and Isatai. The modern blue domed Mangali Mosque was nearby along with 10 storey oil company buildings. The central part of the city was very westernized. On the way out of town we spotted the imposing orange Russian Orthodox church (1888).

We followed a police car and somehow found the road to Beynau. There was a sign saying 600km to Aqtau – it would actually be 900km. There was good fast road to Beynau via Dosser (what a great name for a town). We passed camels, large graveyards, and a Lada carrying a mini haystack on its roof. Beynau looked familiar. We had stayed here overnight on our previous trip before heading south to Uzbekistan. Following a sign away from town, the road appeared to go nowhere and asking some men, they pointed back towards the town. There were no signs and we ended up in a part of town that just had dried bumpy mud for roads. The road to Aqtau was definitely not here. Trying to find our way back to a sealed road., I spotted a policeman walking down a track and asked for directions. He jumped in the car and took us back out to the original road where we had turned around and pointed down an unmarked, unsealed track. We had been thinking that it had taken us 20 minutes to get here, and how on earth was he going to get back to where we picked him up. He got out of the car, pointed at a building and said ‘I work here’.

We set off down this dusty track with the occasional truck coming past which blew up a storm of dust. The road was unsealed, uneven and very rough. Even the edges of the track were rough – washed out and then dried mud tracks that had been worn down by heavy trucks. I had taken over the driving at Beynau and couldn’t find a consistent path to take. I veered to the right and left and in the end zig-zagged along the raised central part. I was averaging only 50kph and the car was taking a beating with the potholes.

After three hours on this road, I hit another deep pothole. Trev turned and said, “The oil sump can’t take much more of this. If it cracks, that’s the trip over”. I pushed on. It was after 7pm and we still had a long haul to Aqtau. The ironic thing was that we had travelled along this road from Aqtau to Beynau in 2008 and it had been sealed. It was the one road we were repeating on this journey but in reverse. Yet it had changed beyond all recognition.

The car smashed into another pothole and we felt a thud. Trev got out and saw oil leaking from the sump. “That’s it. It’s gone. You might as well pull over to the side of the road.” “What happens if we keep driving?” I asked. “The engine will eventually seize up”. I kept going and sure enough within 5 minutes, the car just died by the ‘509km’ post at the side of the road. We had driven 3485 miles in the 7 days since leaving home.

Preparing for the worst, we had both bought backpacks. These were packed and it was just a case of what else could we carry in them. We prioritised by starting with 3 bottles of wine, some cans of beer and some snacks and then the maps. The minimal car stuff – oil, a few tools and some of the food including a half eaten sausage in the back seat with a loaf of bread was all left behind. I also removed the car radio and compass to take home.

The traffic was few and far between on this road. We had passed vehicles going in either direction, but not many. It was now 8pm and getting dark. We decided to stick out our thumbs and hope for the best. If nothing appeared, we would sleep in the car and sort out something tomorrow. A car appeared within five minutes and stopped but it was full. Then another appeared soon after, It was a Lada Estate driven by a Russian and his mate. “Aqtau?” I enquired and indicated that our ‘Machine’ was ‘Kaput’. The driver got out and opened the boot and let us put our backpacks in. Then we were off – it was as fast as that.. We tried to explain we were English, but since they They didn’t speak much English, there wasn’t much conversation especially on the horrendously bumpy road.

Within 5km of leaving the car, we came across a stretch of sealed road. “Bugger, we were so close” I exclaimed, but the sealed road soon disappeared and we were back to even worse road conditions. The Lada took a beating (over the next few hours, the back suspension on my side gave way). Darkness fell and we had no idea where we were or how far we had to go. The Russians stopped for a cigarette and rest from driving. I didn’t notice the passenger polishing off a bottle of vodka during the trip.

In pitch black around 10.30pm we came across a traffic jam. At the top of a hill, the road had turned to mud and a long truck coming up the hill had jack knifed when its wheels had slid over the mud. It was blocking much of the road. Trucks behind it kept piling past trying not to get stuck themselves which meant that the trucks going our way couldn’t get past and the one nearest the jack knifed truck had got stuck in the mud itself. No car could pass until one of these trucks was moved out of the way. The driver in the original jack knifed truck sat in his cab and ate some food.

Our driver went over to see what was happening. The truck driver shrugged his shoulders as if to say ‘There’s f*** all I can do about it without a tow.” Other truck drivers were urging the other stuck driver to try and work his way through the mud. He reversed the truck and pushed forward, wheels spinning and gaining no traction. Smoke was pouring out of the truck. He reversed again at a slightly different angle and tried again and again and again. Finally, after what seemed to be an eternity, the truck was able to get through the mud and on its way.

Leaping back in his car, our Russian driver gunned the engine, did a 90’ turn and plowed through the mud to the other side. I have no idea how the car got across it because the Mondeo would not failed. Finally after a 30 minute delay we were on our way. Descending down though a muddy forested hill, we still saw no settlements en route. It was an eight hour nightmare through the night.

I think that Trev and me were both still a bit shell shocked to be away from the Mondeo and on another adventure so quickly. I was being shaken around in the back and trying to work out the implications of our problem. We were supposed to be leaving for Turkmenistan at 4.30am and here we were at 4am and we had no idea where Aqtau was.

Around 80km from Aqtau, we reached a surfaced road. The Russian was low on petrol and looking worried. His passenger was drunk and asleep in the front. Arriving, finally in a settlement, there was a long train that had arrived and the passengers were milling around before it took off again. Police cars hung around as well – probably because at 4.30am it was the only activity in town. There was a garage but unsurprisingly it was closed. This didn’t stop the Russian who knocked on the door and woke someone up to get fuel.

We finally drove into Aqtau around 5.30am. I had told the driver where we were staying but after two attempts, and just totally fatigued with the journey, he gave up and dropped us at the largest hotel in town. The female receptionist called us a taxi and told him where to take us. We walked into our hotel, the Silk Way at 6am to a surprised receptionist who looked stunning despite her night shift. “We’re a bit late. We should have arrived last night but we destroyed our car in the desert”. Then I had to do it in sign language. It had taken 10 hours to reach Aqtau and it was a hell of a journey – one of the worst I could remember. But the Russians had saved us and at least we were somewhere where we could organised. Retiring to our room all we could think was ‘what the hell do we now?’

Saturday August 20th

Despite being up all night, I couldn’t sleep. I knew I had to come up with an alternative plan. Our first problem was the Turkmenistan issue. Turkmenistan only lets you into their country on an ‘organised tour’ for a specific time. We had sorted out our tour with Stantours but had been due to arrive at the border at 10am today to meet our guide. Since we had intended to bring our own transport, we had planned to drive through the country with our guide over 5 days. Now we had no transport and we wouldn’t be arriving at the border on time. Our second problem was how would we get to the border and what would happen then with no transport.

Asking the receptionist how we could get to the Turkmenistan border. She didn’t know, but said she would call around while we had some breakfast. This was communicated using sign language and writing on a pad. By the time we had finished, she had discovered that we could get a taxi to Yanhosen two hours away and get dropped at the shared taxi rank to get a ride to the Turkmenistan border. The only thing was that our taxi to would arrive at 1am the following morning! She also told us that we wouldn’t have to pay for staying on the wrong night. Bonus!

I needed to call David at Stantours who was based in Almaty, Kazahzstan. I had been emailing him frequently over the previous months to plan this part of the trip. Unsure of time zones, I tried to explain to the lovely receptionist I needed to call him which she did (there was no charge). It was 7.30am local time. David answered right away and I explained that we had destroyed our car in the desert, had only just arrived in Aqtau and wouldn’t be at the border as planned. He didn’t seem to grasp the concept and said ‘can’t you get the car fixed?’ I let him know that a) the car was a write off and b) it had taken 10 hours to reach Aqtau and that we weren’t going back to the car.

“I hope you don’t get into trouble over the car”. Tell me about it. David then added that the guide had already left for the border and why hadn’t I called earlier. Trying to stay calm I told him that it was because we had been stuck in the back of a increasingly wrecked car with a drunk Russian for ten hours and that we couldn’t get mobile phone reception in this crap country anyway. “We didn’t plan to destroy the car the day before we were due to enter Turk-fucking-menistan” I wanted to yell.

“We can provide a vehicle and driver but it will be an extra cost to the tour”. No shit Sherlock. Anything to do with Turkmenistan had cost us money. Why would tit stop here? Then I told him that we still had to be in Uzbekistan on the 25th as planned because we only had a couple of days on our visa to get out of that country – or get deported like last time. David came up with a solution. “If you stay in Ashgabat (the capital) for one night instead of two, you can catch up on the day you just lost”. This, at least would sort out our immediate problem. He told us to try and be at the border at 11am tomorrow morning where our guide would meet us and I told him that I would try and email him later with our plans to reach the border.

We tried to sleep but we couldn’t. We were still wired from the journey and were buzzing by having to start planning a brand new trip without a car. I was even making contingency plans. If we couldn’t get to the border, could we fly out of here, write off Turkmenistan and plan a different route?. But our visas dates were lined up in order of the countries we were visiting and it was just too complicated to make it work. Unpacking our backpacks, we did a recce of what we had brought from the car. There were 3 bottles of wine and half a dozen cans of Ukrainian beer and at a loose end and not having to drive for the first time in 8 days, it seemed to make sense to have an early snifter. After the terrible ride, it was lovely to nice to have a comfortable room, a hot shower and just stop moving allowing us to get organised to start backpacking from now on.

I was seriously worried about the ‘car importation’ problem. We had received no paperwork at the border, but could not be sure that the official had not typed in the car registration into my record. If we turned up at the border without the car what would happen? Would they let us out? If so, how much would it cost?

Around 11am, I went down to reception again and asked the new receptionist where the nearest internet café was. She had been introduced by our original reception finished her shift and she had passed on our tale of woe. The new receptionist said we could hire a laptop with a wireless connection. Someone set it up and I logged on to find an email from David from Stantours. He warned us not to produce any customs forms at the border. We didn’t have any to offer. ,I was able to tell him what we had planned to reach the border and that we would be there tomorrow. I also sent a global email to family/friends explaining our predicament and that we would be offline for a few days (even though this was the first time we had sent an email on the trip). We were also not charged for the laptop. This was an excellent hotel and the staff were great.

Once we knew that David knew what we were doing and that everyone else had been informed, the adrenaline wore off and we both crashed for a few hours and slept the sleep of gods. Around 4pm we awoke and thought that we should really go for a stroll. Walking down the road, we eventually stumbled across a local market, where Trevor was able, after a few non starters, get a charger for his mobile phone having left his built in charger in the car.

Meat was being roasted outside on a wood BBQ and not having eaten a decent meal since Donetsk in Ukraine, we entered a small café to enjoy pork and chicken kebabs, bread and cold local beer. Having already visited and explored Aqtau on our 2008 visit, there was no reason to go any further since we knew how little there was to see. Back at the hotel, there was nothing else to do except read, nap, reduce our wine and beer supplies and wait until 1am.

Sunday August 21st

At 12.45am, we were surprised to get a phone call from reception to come and have our breakfast. It was only bread, jam and coffee but it was a nice touch even though our taxi driver had already arrived. He drove us out of brightly lit Aqtau and into complete darkness. There seemed to be no other traffic on the road. The driver didn’t speak English and constantly checked his mobile phone while music was playing on the radio. As anticipated it took two hours to reach Yanhosen. It was a 140km drive.

I couldn’t work out why we had left so early. Surely, no public transport would be leaving in the middle of the night. So it was no surprise to find the ‘bus station’ locked up. The driver chatted to someone, called our hotel and then passed the phone over to me. A man at the other end told us that there would be no shared taxi until at 6am and that the taxi driver would take us to a hotel where we could rent a room for a couple of hours to wait.

We were taken to the best hotel in town. It was locked but the driver woke up the receptionist. They wanted 14,000 Tenge (£60) which was more than we had paid for our hotel! We refused. The driver took us to another place and woke them up. They wanted 7000 Tenge. We refused again. It was only for two hours. In the end, we said “Just drop us at the bus station. We’ll wait”. The driver said it was too dangerous. I was thinking – well I’ve walked through Nairobi and Manila in the middle of the night and they were really dangerous. What is wrong with this place?

In the end he dropped us back at where the shared taxis would arrive. There were a few people hanging around. We found a shack across the road and sat behind it with our packs. Someone would come round and ask where we were going Turkmenistan’. Then they would offer a ride for $300 and we would laugh. Someone else would come round and do the same thing and offer another outrageous offer. We didn’t have to be at the border until 11am and knew that a shared taxi would eventually arrive.

Around 6am when it was still dark, a shared taxi arrived. It was a heavy duty 4 wheel drive jeep. The driver said it was 6000 Tenge each (£24 which was £4 more than the hotel staff had estimates but we were happy to get the ride). I sat up front. We then waited for other passengers to fill the jeep which only took twenty minutes and we were off. The driver cranked up his music and started to chain smoke. It was around 250km south to the Kazakhstan border. The sealed road gradually deteriorated and then disappeared into hard sandy ruts. Trev and me exclaimed glances and thought ‘The Mondeo would have struggled with this”. It was desolate countryside, with the occasional camel in view. We were getting thrown about by the lumps and ruts in the ‘road’. Somewhere on the journey, we parked at a shrine. Here, every driver stopped there to pay their respects and pray that they didn’t crash.

When we arrived at the windy Kazakhstan border at 9.30am, it was closed! There were a few vehicles in front of us waiting at a barrier that was down. A tall wire fence surrounded the entire compound. Eventually a couple of officials/guard appeared and in we went. This was the moment of truth.

The driver took everyone’s passports (there were five of us in the jeep) and seemed to act as a ‘fixer’. We were finally ushered into the building and we were, shock horror, stamped out of the country. No-one asked for any forms. They didn’t even ask to search our backpacks. It was such a relief to get out of the country and let the car situation take care of itself. Of course, we were coming back into Kazakhstan for a final visit to fly home. I suppose if the car was still at the side of the road and an official, if they could be bothered, tracked me down using the registration number, they could issue a warning against my passport record. But they didn’t know we were coming back and there was obviously no evidence that we had a car.

Without the helpful staff at the Silk Way Hotel, we would have never have got this far and I can’t thank them enough. I thoroughly recommend this hotel in Aqtau.