On Tuesday, June 4, we left our nice hotel in Pavlodar and headed to the Kazakh-Russian border. Just as we got into our car, a large dropping of an unidentified bird landed on our windscreen. In my (Anna) experience, when I have bird's poo landing on me or my belongings, it does not bode well for the day. Surprise-surprise, it was proven yet again in less than 5 minutes. We were stopped by the Kazakh police. The first question was what Pablo had drunk the previous evening. Half a bottle of beer (about 0.3l) was my reply. Aha, said the policeman, he is suspected of drink-driving. Go ahead and test him for alcohol said I. He took Pablo's driving license and handed us over to an obese man sitting in the police car who told us that we will have to go to a hospital for testing and our car will be towed to an impoundment lot. After 15 minutes they let us go. I have a strong suspicion that they wanted a bribe, but could not really find anything which would justify it. Or maybe I am too harsh and they were just doing their job. Anyways, this brought me back to reality: I got too relaxed by us not being stopped by the police while in Russia. This was the time to think what we can expect further during our trip. At this point, my only desire was to get out of Kazakhstan as soon as possible. This is how a couple of people in uniforms can spoil all the pleasant impressions of a place...
Our further trip was uneventful. Border was easy to cross. We just had to wait in between borders for a while for other cars and a passenger bus to be cleared before us. Both Kazakh and Russian border control officers were nice to us and were asking questions about our trip and even giving us some tips.
After we cleared the border, we drove to Ordynskoye - a village South of Novosibirsk. We stayed in a hotel in a small forest and enjoyed singing birds around us. This is where we learned about the oriental cuckoo (глухая кукушка in Russian). Already in Ust-Koksa and Multinsky Lakes we heard a very strange deep throaty call and saw a cuckoo making it. Today we looked it up on internet and found out that it was a different type of a cuckoo - an oriental cuckoo. I hope you learned something as well!
June 5, we drove to Novosibirsk to the UAZ Centre where we bought our car to resolve the tyre issue. The drive through the city was crazy - endless flow of cars, unclear road markings - drivers virtually decide how many lanes they want to have: 3 or 4 depending on traffic as lines separating same direction lanes are not painted. Traffic lights are almost hidden. Good we made it to UAZ Centre. There were two cars just behind us that had a not-so-gentle kiss.
Tyre issue: as you remember, we had a flat tyre at Katu-Yarik and the guy who repaired it in Aktash, showed us a bulge and a slightly deformed wheel rim. To cut the story short, when in Barnaul, we had the wheel rim restored, but could not find the same tyre we needed. We wanted UAZ Centre help us resolve this, because this was the "bonus from the factory". Our car was supposed to have 16" wheels, but arrived with fancy 18" wheels, which normally cost quite a heavy extra, but were given us for free. We didn't mind it at all, as we did not know that they will be so difficult to find and tyres would cost a heavy premium. In addition to a normal spare wheel, we also bough an extra wheel - to be the same as the ones installed, which were to be 16". Now we learned our lesson, but it was too late to ask UAZ Centre to replace the wheels. Should we have asked it before signing the contract, they would have done it. The tyres were already used and all papers signed. Thankfully, guys in UAZ gave us a discount for two new tyres (same size, but a different brand - as they neither had what we were looking for - apparently UAZ switched to them quite recently) and their installation was done for free. We now have 6 wheels and 1 tyre. We should probably start our own tyre reselling business.
As we finished with the car by 4 pm, we decided to go directly to Tomsk. It was quite difficult to find a hotel in Tomsk, as there are apparently several events going on in parallel and all hotels in the centre were full. We found a hotel at the outskirts. It is far, but it offers a decent room and is not very expensive.
Sorry, we don't have any pictures for these two days. We'll post photos from Tomsk soon.
Our further trip was uneventful. Border was easy to cross. We just had to wait in between borders for a while for other cars and a passenger bus to be cleared before us. Both Kazakh and Russian border control officers were nice to us and were asking questions about our trip and even giving us some tips.
After we cleared the border, we drove to Ordynskoye - a village South of Novosibirsk. We stayed in a hotel in a small forest and enjoyed singing birds around us. This is where we learned about the oriental cuckoo (глухая кукушка in Russian). Already in Ust-Koksa and Multinsky Lakes we heard a very strange deep throaty call and saw a cuckoo making it. Today we looked it up on internet and found out that it was a different type of a cuckoo - an oriental cuckoo. I hope you learned something as well!
June 5, we drove to Novosibirsk to the UAZ Centre where we bought our car to resolve the tyre issue. The drive through the city was crazy - endless flow of cars, unclear road markings - drivers virtually decide how many lanes they want to have: 3 or 4 depending on traffic as lines separating same direction lanes are not painted. Traffic lights are almost hidden. Good we made it to UAZ Centre. There were two cars just behind us that had a not-so-gentle kiss.
Tyre issue: as you remember, we had a flat tyre at Katu-Yarik and the guy who repaired it in Aktash, showed us a bulge and a slightly deformed wheel rim. To cut the story short, when in Barnaul, we had the wheel rim restored, but could not find the same tyre we needed. We wanted UAZ Centre help us resolve this, because this was the "bonus from the factory". Our car was supposed to have 16" wheels, but arrived with fancy 18" wheels, which normally cost quite a heavy extra, but were given us for free. We didn't mind it at all, as we did not know that they will be so difficult to find and tyres would cost a heavy premium. In addition to a normal spare wheel, we also bough an extra wheel - to be the same as the ones installed, which were to be 16". Now we learned our lesson, but it was too late to ask UAZ Centre to replace the wheels. Should we have asked it before signing the contract, they would have done it. The tyres were already used and all papers signed. Thankfully, guys in UAZ gave us a discount for two new tyres (same size, but a different brand - as they neither had what we were looking for - apparently UAZ switched to them quite recently) and their installation was done for free. We now have 6 wheels and 1 tyre. We should probably start our own tyre reselling business.
As we finished with the car by 4 pm, we decided to go directly to Tomsk. It was quite difficult to find a hotel in Tomsk, as there are apparently several events going on in parallel and all hotels in the centre were full. We found a hotel at the outskirts. It is far, but it offers a decent room and is not very expensive.
Sorry, we don't have any pictures for these two days. We'll post photos from Tomsk soon.
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