Monday, July 13, 2014 Had a leisurely breakfast and departed to the Russian border with expectations of good roads. We were very disappointed to find we had shocking roads the entire way. The boring desert scenery combined with the relentless…
Saturday, July 12, 2014 Once we crossed the border, we still had 85kms of classic Kazakhstan roads to negotiate before we got to Beyneu. And by “classic” we mean terrible. At one point we had to stop and fill up…
Saturday, July 12, 2014 Crossed into Kazakhstan. Very long day and several hours spent at the border. Uzbekistan turned out to be one of the unexpected highlights of our trip. Now we were on our way through Kazakhstan and onto…
Saturday, June 21, 2014 It is always good to start a border crossing day with a coffee. So we did. The 200-odd km drive to the border was on very good roads, but with the usual dangerous drivers, slow trucks,…
This post is about the government documentation we needed and obtained to bring our car and ourselves into Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan in General To quote our Lonely Planet guide book; “Visas and permits can be the single biggest headache associated with…
Thursday, June 19th We loved Almaty. Unfortunately we would not be staying more than 2 nights here. On arrival in the city we looked for a coffee shop, with wifi, to enjoy a latte and to look for a place to…
Wednesday, June 18, 2014 We decided to go with the ‘gun it to Almaty’ option which meant covering 1130km in 2 days. That way we’d arrive in Almaty on Thursday evening, have the Friday to sort the car and paper…
Tuesday, June 17, 2014 Semey is twinned with Ypres in Belgium After checking into our spacious hotel and finding out we had a ‘small’ immigration issue – and discussing our options (see notes below), we headed out to do…
Tuesday, June 7, 2014 After stopping at Coffee Art for a very nice latte we set off for the short 37 km drive to the border. We arrived at 10:32am to find 6 cars waiting in front of the border…