Way home

Day 25

Day 24

Day 23

We are around 4 hours from Russian border, so lets go. We decided to take the shorter route, which is destroyed and in a bad condition. However, we still have offroad tires on. Now, it shows how good was the decision to leave them. Again, lowered the pressure, the scooters got softer and we flew over the worst roads you can imagine. It is nearly unbelievable what difference the higher profile of tires and low pressure makes.

Over 1000kms we also keep asking the truck drivers to take us, but had no luck yet, they are going other direction, have full trucks etc. On the russian border I speak with a guy in Transit, but he is full as well. Then, there war 2 turkish trucks, but the drivers could not speak nor english, german, russian. Luckily, the guy from Transit spoke Turkish, so he explained them what we need and they said they would do it and we should wait behind the borders.

The border check was no problem, russian officers even communicate in english with us, which is very surprising and everybody is extremely pleasant. Behind the borders we wait for truck and are quite nervous, as we both wish this to work, because the knocking gets louder and we are in fear for the second engine. Once you enter Russia with a scooter, you have to leave it as well. If the engine dies, there are 2 possibilities, to burn it or to say it was stolen, in both cases it means a lot of paperwork and delay. And, there are also all the things we carry left.

After an hour, the trucks are coming and we give the money together. They want $300 from each of us, which is quite expensive, but on the other hand we will cross the whole Russia and from Ukraine we can sort out the transport of the scooter, if it dies. We dont have more like $250 each, so making the price a bit lower, loading scooters and gooo!!! Yeah! So much luck again. In the next 2 days we will rest and then only finish the trip via Ukraine and Poland to Czech. It is again unbelieavable how much luck do we have on our journey.

Radek tied his scooter wrong and it fell after some time and the windshield was broken, but never mind. Road is terrible, asphalt destryed and the trucks are not able to go more as 30kph. The guys are good drivers and drive long until night, in the same evening we did over 300kilometers. Night was spent in the trailer, where after a long time I can finally add some more pictures and info on Facebook and blog.

We are fine, there was a shower available in the motel same as a dinner. Tomorrow evening we will be at Ukranian borders.

Day 21

We wake up soon and set out. It is obvious that we will not make the whole Kazakhstan today, but will try to do as many kilometers as possible. Unfortunately the engine on my Honda knocks louder and louder and it sounds quite similar to the sound of Radek’s engine before it died in Georgia. But, it runs still…

Basically the whole day we just drove, with stops for fuel, which we need more often, as on the offroad tires the consumption raised for one liter and for the full tank we can make only around 140km. One nice picture of Radek, when he took off his helmet and had a Prodigy-style haircut.

I also looked forward that on the way back the strong wind will push us. Like in the murphys laws, the wind turned and we drove back against it as well. What was just great is weather, it was fantastic. There are clouds and temperatures are around 20-25 degrees, which makes the journey quite pleasant.

On the petrol station we meet extremely loaded Daewoo Nexia, full car of stuff, fridge on the roof and a huge trailer full of things. The guys were from Uzbekistan and transport things from Russia. They only take use things, as there are no import taxes. 1 kilogram costs 150 Rubles (something around 2 USD) One way is 8 thousand kilometers (4 there and 4 back). Guys were really nice and we had a nice chat and did few pictures with the car and our scooters.

In the evening we look for the place to sleep and find a Cafe next to the road, where the owner lets us sleep outside under the roof. There is no electricity and no water. To be polite, we at least order dinner, as she wants nothing for the night. Radek shows, that we want chicken meat and jumps there around showing a hen and we also say Net baranina to avoid the sheep meat, which we are already full of. The woman looks like she understands what we need to say and with a big surprise, after 10 minutes we get 2 plates of sheep. What was worse, the meat was already expired and stinked. What now? I suggested to leave it on the table, but Radek said it is unpolite and pretended to eat with an empty fork. Finally he said he will finish the meal outside with a cigarette and threw it away :))

The night was fine and the mosquite net worked finally, which was great as there were many many mosquites all around.