Almaty (via Semey, Ayakoz and Taldy Korghan), Kazakhstan - 8074 miles from London

For the first time in what felt like an age we had been problem free since paying the bribe at the Russian / Kazakhstan border two days earlier. This wasn't to last and about an hour after lunch on the road between Pavlodar and Semey disaster struck after a momentary lapse of concentration on both our parts meant that, of all things, we crashed into each other! This was quite an achievement given that we were on a long and straight desert road with only the occasional other vehicle and, for once, a fairly good road surface.

The "slight dent" in the right-hand side of Peter's tank and the "minor scuffing" to the right-hand cylinder head cover

Tom had been running low on petrol for a while and we had not seen a garage, which was open, for a good hour or so before lunch. Tom was riding ahead and when he pulled level with a solitary building alongside the road he noticed that hidden behind this was a tiny garage. Although he had already decreased his speed a little before he got near to the building, when he spied the garage itself he slowed down sharply with the intention of pulling in to the left.
Unfortunately, almost a second or two before he had slowed down Peter had glanced over to his right seeing something or other that caught his eye. Since he was riding along at just under sixty mph the speed at which Tom had slowed down meant that the few seconds that that he had taken his eyes off the road were sufficient for him to get so close that when he looked back he saw the back of Tom's bike uncomfortably close to his and had time only to brake and try to swerve out of the way.

If neither of us had had the panniers on the bikes the swerve would have been enough to avoid the collision, but the presence of the panniers meant that each of Peter's right hand pannier and Tom's left hand pannier were ripped off their respective bikes. In addition to this, as Peter swerved, his bike slipped out from under him and careered across the road with him following it sliding along the road on his back. We think the impact happened when Peter was going between forty and fifty mph and Tom was going somewhere in the region of twenty to thirty mph.

Neither of us seemed to be badly hurt, Peter almost immediately having picked himself up was swearing violently about what had happened and storming down the road. As you do, we put shock to one side and both went into crisis mode trying to sort out the situation in the most logical way, dealing with first clearing the road of our possessions and then uprighting Peter's bike which had been lying on its side on the left of the road. When it was lifted up we were greeted by the sight of a badly dented petrol tank and, upon further inspection, a cracked right hand cylinder head cover which spewed oil as soon as the engine was started. The panniers seemed completely ruined, torn and bent into all shapes and we set to work sorting out possessions from around the crash site. Some were clearly permanently broken (including Tom's computer) and others badly damaged.

The battered panniers after the crash

Minutes after the collision, miraculously Shinara, who of all things lived in Belfast and spoke fluent English turned up on the scene. We had been extremely surprised to meet her at lunch in the roadside café. She and her family, who were traveling to Semey, helped us to collect our things together and said that they would take them to Semey so that we could pick them up when we made it into town with the bikes. The immediate problem was now how to get Peter's bike into a state so that we could ride to Semey and get some proper attention. At that point four young guys, Sasha, Max, Sergei and Andrei came from no-where and realising that we had a problem and without speaking a word of English they immediately got to work botching together some sort of repair which allowed Peter's bike to limp to Semey. They refused to take any money for the oil and other materials that they gave us or for the three hours of their time.

The guys who got us limping to Semey
We very gratefully left them and rather irritatingly it was during the ride into Semey that we discovered that the frame for Tom's pannier had been badly bent in the accident and was now banging on his back wheel whenever he went over any sort of bump. Given the problem with the frame and the fact that Peter's bike was over-heating, we road into the night (which in itself is dangerous in Kazakhstan) at about thirty mph, stopping every ten miles to top up Peter's bike with the oil that the four guys had kindly given us earlier.

The next day we went to Shinara's house and after being given lunch by her sister-in-law and being introduced to her brother-in-law (the wonderfully named Aslan-Bek who we will talk a bit more about below) we were taken by Aslan-Bek to a garage suggested by the kids the day before.

Tom's pannier frame being re-crafted
The mechanics put aside other work to put five or six people to work on our bikes. Four hours later we left the garage with a pannier frame that had been impressively bashed and welded back into some sort of pannier frame shape and which seemed to be no longer banging on the back wheel and a cylinder head cover that had been cleaned, welded back together with some sort of cold metal weld and then, thrown into the bargain, repainted.

Aslan-Bek then took us, with the smashed up panniers, to some panel beater friends of his. In an afternoon these guys managed to beat and bend the aluminium panniers back into shape (which we thought would be impossible) so that, other than looking a little battered, they almost looked as good as new. Having done this for us they then refused to charge us for any of the work they had done!

The panel beaters who repaired the panniers
We were both astounded by the speed and the skill exercised by the garage and the panel beaters. This is a sort of can-do attitude that you rarely see in the UK where we are too used to wastefully replacing and not repairing what is damaged. The efforts of these people managed to save us from, potentially a huge set back in our trip, and we cannot thank them enough for what they did.

Another big thanks must go to Shinara, her family and especially Aslan-Bek and his family Aisyly, Raimbek and Annel. Aslan-Bek is a captain in the Semey traffic police and, it is safe to say, enjoys the good life. Married with two children he lives in a lovely house with all the mod cons including his own personal banya (similar to sauna) in his back garden and his life seems to consist of mainly (and in no particular order) eating, drinking, hunting bears and other wildlife in the mountains, going to the banya and spending time with his family.

On our final night in Semey we were invited by Aslan-Bek and his family to dinner at their house and when we turned up flushed with the success we'd had with the bikes and the panniers we were greeted with a huge spread, specially prepared for us, of local foods, salads and somewhat ominously, lurking at one end of the table, a large bottle of vodka. Of the man himself there was no sign and we were told by Shinara that he was still at work and that while we waited for him to come back we should perhaps have a banya to relax ourselves and get us ready for dinner. To this end we were handed bunches of birch twigs (to beat ourselves with), soap, towels and escorted to the banya.

First Aslan-Bek's banya and then as the evening progresses we get to play with his guns
About fourty five minutes later, emerging, slightly battered but refreshed, from the banya we went back into the house and the four hours of eating, drinking and toasting commenced (all of which it is impossible and extremely impolite to refuse). One hour and a bottle of vodka later Aslan-Bek walked through the door unusually merry. It was at that point that it emerged that he had not been at work all this time as we had been told, but had instead been at a public banya with his friends and while there had worked his way through a couple of bottles of vodka with a few bites of bliny. The evening proceeded as before but this time with Aslan-Bek providing entertaining company and as the empty bottles mounted we were allowed to play with his hunting guns and inspect the fur of the bears he had shot up in the Altay Mountains. All of this time Shinara was painstakingly translating between all the parties.

At two in the morning Aslan-Bek felt that it was now time for Peter to try a Kazakh tradition and to drink the blood of a mountain goat. In order to find the aforesaid blood we all piled into his car and somewhat unsteadily drove across town to the house of a more junior policeman that Aslan-Bek worked with. After waking the unfortunate guy and his family up we all sat in his kitchen until nearly four drinking more vodka and eating the food his wife kindly prepared for us while in the middle of the table was a smaller bottle filled with a mysterious red looking liquid.

Drinks with Aslan Bek, Shinara and her sister and then late night food, vodka and goat's blood in Semey
Maybe it was the amount that was drunk by Aslan-Bek, but we were released at four and dropped back at the hotel without the bottle of red stuff ever having been opened and so to this day Peter has no idea whether he had a lucky escape from drinking goats blood or whether he was the subject of a practical joke – the blood just being tomato juice mixed, no doubt, with vodka.

We have never known anything quite like the hospitality and generousity of Shinara and her family and it was this in the forefront of our minds that we made the three day ride from Semey to Almaty, staying along the way in the towns of Ayakoz (a pretty frightening place) and Taldy-Korghan. Before we left, as if everything that had been done for us was not enough, we were also given a bottle of Chinese vodka and Aslan-Bek's business card to use if we had any police trouble along the road. We will no doubt be analyising the reasons for this accident and trying to learn from it for some time to come, but if it hadn't have happened we would not have met the people that we met and had the very unforgetable experience that we had with them. Hopefully we will see Shinara again in the UK and if Aslan-Bek and family are ever in London we would love to see them too.

Written by Peter and Tom (incorporating extracts of the insurance claim we are making!)

Pavlodar, Kazakhstan - 6933 miles from London (GMT + 6 hours)

There's a problem. Russian customs notice that the import documents aren't in order and make phone calls.
We were running a couple of minutes late, not good if were had been taking part competitively in the Siberian International Marathon, but as we were merely observers, all it meant was that we heard, but did not see, the start of the race. We were however in time to watch the crowds of runners go through the start point and the start of a number of side races between groups of young school children, Hari Christnas and other unlikely candidates.

We then wondered around the flower market, which had special anniversary celebration flower displays, stopped to watch a man selling small snakes and to then buy a bust of Lenin (what trip to Russia would be complete without one - in fact this is only one of two physical souvenirs that I have from the country), dropped in to the Museum of Writing to find it was a building site and instead paid a visit to a military museum which was very boring and we ended up just sitting and watching Russians posing in front of military hardware for family photographs. It was a very hot Siberian day, not good for the runners, but a good excuse to go to a bar by the River Irtysh. This is where we met a Russian couple who barely spoke English, but still insisted on buying us beer and food all evening, having numerous pictures taken with us and then, as we were leaving, signing bank notes and presenting one to each of us at the end of the evening to remember them by (this incidentally was how I got my second physical souvenir). These were the last civilians we were to interact with in Russia and, partly because of the alcohol, but mostly because of the hospitality that two strangers, completely unprompted and without the desire for anything in return, showed us, this left me with a warm feeling about the country and its people. We had come across this type of behavior throughout Russia and a reminder of it on the last evening seemed very apt.

The next day wasn't so pleasant. On the Russian side of the Russian / Kazakhstan border we lined up with the truck drivers at the numerous porta-cabins to have our documents inspected. As we thought would happen, at the customs cabin they had immediately and correctly spotted that our import permits for the bikes had expired two weeks earlier. Phone calls were made and the word "problem" used a lot and then we were questioned about why we hadn't taken the bikes out of the country earlier. With gestures, a few words of Russian and some photographs we told a well rehearsed story about the problem with the tire that Peter had in Perm. The problem was acknowledged, but 14 days was pronounced to be an excessive time to sort it out. One of the border guards was then sent outside with us to inspect the bikes. He looked at Peter's old tire, which had been patched up and he was carrying as a spare and an invoice from BMW in Perm, which for some unknown reason referred to the wrong frame number for the bike. This caused confusion which passed about five minutes later and Peter was told that he could go, but that I must stay behind in Russia. This was totally illogical and we realised immediately that this was some sort of game which we knew we had to play. We therefore objected hard to the proposed cause of action and the border guard predictably said that he might be able to help if we were prepared to pay an unofficial fine. We knew it was to be an "unofficial" fine because he put his finger to his lips and said "shhhh". He asked us to make him an offer. We had been prepared for this too and we made our lowest opening offer, 1000 Roubles each (about 40 pounds in total). To our surprise this was accepted which was great news for us, because the actual official cost of extending the permits was considerably more than this. So the import permit saga which had caused us to spend four days in and out of various government offices, to return from Moscow to St Petersburg on a night train and then to race through European Russia had ended in a 40 pound bribe to a Russian border guard! As we have come to learn on this trip, that is the way it goes…

After the one hour closure for lunch, the border reopened and with the correctly stamped Russian paperwork stuffed in our tank bags, we proceeded to the Kazakh side. It immediately felt like we were entering a different country as the border guards were Mongol or Chinese looking.

The Kazakh side of the border
The Kazakh officials took great interest in us and we became a curiosity for a few hours, during which time we were made to unpack the bikes in front of all the other motorists who were proceeding uneventfully through the border. We had to repeatedly answer the same questions in Russian about, among other things, where we were from, where we were going, how much the bikes were worth, how big the engines are and how fast they went. These were questions that, since entering Russia, we had been used to answering up to a dozen times a day when we were on the road. It was all pretty good natured, if not a little humiliating. At one point totally out of the blue I was given a tape of Kazakh music which was a nice surprise. The whole fiasco seemed to come to a sudden end when I was asked what my profession was. When I said that my friend and I were both lawyers, we were told to repack the bikes and one of the Kazakh guards said the words I had been waiting for: "Tom, go Kazakhstan". And I did.

Peter reading The Lonely Planet in Pavlodar
Pavlodar was described in the Lonely Planet as being heavily a industrial town, but we found it to be surprisingly pleasant with a good vibe. The hospitality continued the evening we arrived in a riverside beer tent when a man slammed down a beer and, without making eye contact with either of us, said in English "for you", and walked off. Before leaving town we visited the photography museum dedicated to the work of D.P Bagaev, a local photographer who had lived on the site, but unfortunately much of the museum seemed to have burnt down in a fire caused by a malfunctioning central heating system and as a result we weren't charged for entry. We also conducted an interview for a local newspaper which was set up after a journalist had noticed the bikes outside the hotel. Leaving Pavloldar, we headed east bound for Semey, a place we had been concerned about during the planning stage of the trip due to 467 nuclear tests carried out by the Russians just outside the town in an area known as the Polygon between 1949 and 1991. Lake Balapan within the Polygon is a 400m wide, 800m deep crater left by a 130 kiloton nuclear explosion and since filled with water. Radiation in the lake is meant to be 200 times the national average. Apparently Semey’s local hospitals still struggle to cope with local residents who still suffer as a result of these tests.
Written by Tom

Kazahkstan calling; will you accept the charges?
We now both have Kazakh mobile numbers:
Tom: 0077 0576 67714;
Peter: 0077 0576 67712
The cost of calling the UK from these is extortionate and using my Orange SIM it is one pound seventy five a minute. If you want to call us, a service called Telediscount offer calls to Kazakh mobile numbers for 10 pence a minute. Just dial 0871 999 28 28 and then enter the mobile number. It is very simple. Their web-site explains more: www.telediscount.co.uk/index2.php

I have a Skype account but I don't yet understand how to use it.
My Skype address: tom_skype_phone

До Свидания Россия. Здравстуйте Казахстан! (Goodbye Russia. Hello Kazakhstan!) – Omsk 6664 miles from London

Beach volleyball in Siberia's searing heat

After five days in Perm the BMW garage, following a Herculean effort on their part, managed to track down somewhere in Moscow a replacement front tyre for my bike which they had shipped to us in Perm.

The guys at BMW, Perm who worked wonders with my tyre

In addition to doing this they repaired the old tyre with a repair which they guaranteed would make the tyre as good as new. While I do have a few doubts as to whether a repaired front tyre is going to be as good as that I was grateful for their efforts and we were able to enjoy the icon museum (which it turned out also boasted a UNESCO protected collection of religious statues called Perm sculptures) and the sites of Perm with a restful mind.

One of Perm's more unexpected sights!

We left Perm on the Sunday happy to be back on the road and without too many problems (our time in Russia has made us view being stopped by the police as a minor annoyance rather than a problem!) made the short ride to Yekaterinburg. After two days in Yekaterinburg we saw enough of the city to be slightly disappointed with the place (the guide book had said that Yekaterinburg was one of Russia’s must see cities, but we found the place unattractive and, although it had a nice feel, not terribly interesting) and left for Tyumen.

We stayed in Tyumen for only one night and left early the next morning for Omsk which we reached after a mammoth ride of over four hundred miles on, for the most part, pretty good roads.


An example of the wooden houses for which Tyumen is famous and of the road works for which Russia is famous

We arrived in Omsk to be greeted by the news that this weekend Omsk is gearing up for its two hundred and ninety year celebrations commemorating its founding in 1716. Coupled with the fact that the Siberian International Marathon was taking place in the city on Saturday meant that the weekend was likely to be quite some party. As we need a bit of time in Omsk to sort out replacement tyres for our bikes in Almaty we are going to stay until Sunday and on Sunday make a break for the Kazak border and the next leg of the trip.
In the time we have been in Russia we have travelled from the European city of St Petersburg with its palaces, canals and museums all the way into Asia to just short of where China and Mongolia border of Russia in the heart of the wilderness that is Siberia.


Siberian farmers transport logs in a manner which has not changed for generations

In that time we have had a whole range of experiences which have challenged the pre-conceived view we had of Russia when we arrived. With only a few exceptions the people here have been welcoming and friendly and although we speak next to no Russian from the businessmen on the train to St Petersburg who drank and talked with us until the early hours of the morning and then insisted that we pay for nothing, to the guys at the garage in Perm who went to so much effort to track down a tyre for my bike nearly everyone we have met have served to leave us with warm memories of Russia and the Russian people.
When we cross into Kazakhstan, only a few hundred miles from here, we will face a whole new set of challenges and as we leave behind us the still vaguely European feeling Russia and cross over into Central Asia we are acutely aware now of how far we have come since leaving London back in June. We have already started to see indications of how much things will change with mosques becoming more frequent an occurrence in the towns and villages we pass through and there being more people with Chinese and Mongolian features instead of the European and Slavic looking Russian peoples we have encountered so far.
While it will be a shame to leave Russia with so much that we have not yet seen we are worried about the lack of proper import documents for the bikes and although it is tempting to stay for a week or so longer and see places further east of here – in particular the Altay mountains and Tomsk – we don’t want to exacerbate the difficulties with the border guards we are almost certain to face when we leave and so are reluctantly going to take our leave of Mother Russia and head south into Central Asia.

Written by Peter