Mongol Rally, 2009

Believe me, this one is luxurious. And unlike the last one we stopped at, it didn't have an open sack of white asbestos dumped, blowing about in the wind behind it.

Really just dumped, not set up for the photograph. Not this one, anyway!

A poor old ZIL-130. Fear not, surviving examples are still pretty much ubiquitous on CIS countries' roads.

Weirdly, Kazakhstan is littered with brand spanking new petrol stations like the one in the background here. Not one of them is open. The rusty old places like we're actually in here are usually open and staffed, but they fairly seldom have any fuel. Or anything better than the 80 octane stuff that goes in old Soviet cars. We sought anything from 91-100 (yes, we saw 91, 92, 93, 95, 96, 98, and 100 during our trip!) but often there was none. On this occasion, the woman running the place had a few 20-litre plastic bottles in a shed, and allowed us 10-litres each of whatever was in those. The cars were pretty sluggish on 91, especially as we gained altitude later on in Kyrgystan. The Micra's emission control light came on more than once, although it had been doing that across Western Europe too, after I'd been running it on V-Power 97/98 for a while to get it cleaned out (and to give it fun extra oomph :) I still wonder why V-Power is 100 in some countries. Feel cheated back home!

Near Aral. We were here looking for the Aral Sea. It had gone.

Like everyone we met in Central Asia, with the exception of some of the police, the family at this petrol station were lovely. After the older children had fuelled us up, we came into the café where the host (see the next photo) took great pains – which seemed standard, not just for us – to make the tables pretty and prepare an excellent (no doubt) shashlik (kebab) along with some real coffee. Then one of his wives (!) arrived and one of the younger children. They too were ever so friendly and happy. And they wanted to remember us by means of messages on their shiny display fridge!

Like everyone we met in Central Asia, with the exception of some of the police, the family at this petrol station were lovely. After the older children had fuelled us up, we came into the café where the host (see the next photo) took great pains – which seemed standard, not just for us – to make the tables pretty and prepare an excellent (no doubt) shashlik (kebab) along with some real coffee. Then one of his wives (!) arrived and one of the younger children. They too were ever so friendly and happy. And they wanted to remember us by means of messages on their shiny display fridge!

This is a lovely open-air pleasure garden — so much more than just a park. It has little streams and oriental-style bridges, cafés and bars, ice skating and billiards, all lit in a magical forest style. It was full of life even pretty late at night when we found it.

I love just about anything with one of those stars on :)

It's really not the done thing to take pictures at borders. Thankfully these days most guards understand about digital cameras and the non-corrupt ones will, if they spot you, simply insist on your deleting any offending pics. This one, however, is worth a shot, as I was very proud of myself here for getting a bit of corruption fixed. Almost every border works the same way: there is a kind of gatekeeper who gives you a piece of paper to start you off, which must be stamped by each required stage of the process, and will be checked to let you out. He then shows you through the gates. Then there will be passport control by police-like people, followed by the various levels of customs procedure, usually involving filling in forms for the car, and having it searched. Finally you get out, and do it all over again for the next country (that was exit, now you're in nowhereland and have to do entry into the next one!) After all that there's usually a stop at a bank and insurance office too. Aaaaanyway, the police-uniformed gatekeeper guy exiting Kazak was a bit horrible, and demanded we empty our pockets. While "searching" my wallet, he helped himself to a note. Not a lot you can really do in that sort of a situation, since they have so much power over you. But it irked me particularly that he wasn't the type who considers it a "thank you" and then ushers you to the front of queues. No, we got nothing for our money. However, at the next stage, the soldier searching our car seemed much more professional. He was searching intensely, but not making a mess as some of them deliberately do, and also very clearly neither stealing nor asking for "presents" or "surprises". (Sometimes one feels like offering a nasty surprise!) But this guy seemed decent. And I *love* presuming people are, and treating them with respect until they prove unworthy of it; basically resetting the irritation and prejudice counter with every official. Also, this guy seemed to appreciate my pigeon Russian so we had a certain rapport. Eventually, he asked me if our passports were sorted, meaning had we done the previous stage, and were we ready to go? I took a chance and said "yes, passports... and money!" and mimed how it had gone from my wallet — just testing the water really. He could have just laughed. But no, he seemed very cross, and asked, "money?" I confirmed this and he wandered off. I thought he was disappointed in his team, but that would be all. However, not long afterwards he returned, and asked me to describe the guy who'd taken the money. I did so. He went around the corner and moments later – not long, so he'd clearly known full well who to expect it to have been – he marched the offending policeman out to me. "Is this the one?" he asked, and I confirmed yes. The policeman sloped off looking utterly bemused. The nice guard took me round a corner out of sight of everyone else... and handed me back my money! I said goodbye to him with a mighty handshake and used "tovarish" – comrade – rather than just calling him a friend. This, too, hit the spot, and for the first time he broke out a smile. :-)

Lots of Uzbek fuel stations aren't petrol stations because all they sell is what I presume is LPG... although it might be CNG. When you do find petrol, it's usually no more than 91 octane. Weird for this part of the world. We quickly noticed the unexpectedly different character of Uzbekistan from Kazakhstan. The border was very clearly US-trained and moneyed, as were the occasional stretches of good road or bridge, which were absolutely lethal because when they stopped abruptly one sometimes found one's team to be driving rather too fast, resulting in an explosive dust-storm as they hit the sand!