Episode 7A few observations to begin this episode.On all our previous visits to Russia my lot have noticed that the wearing of helmets on motorbikes was a thing that rarely happened amongst the local population. If we saw a rider wearing a helmut and leathers too, then it was almost certainly a foreign visitors. This year however, it seemed that the majority of riders were wearing helmets and some even good boots and leathers. Most of those not wearing helmets were in the smaller villages or out in the countryside. So perhaps there has been some new regulations or just some enforcement of existing regulations. No helmets for cyclists though, but that is only law in Australia as far as my lot know. We see cyclists all over Europe wearing helmets but it only a few of the more dedicated ones.It also seems this year that by far the majority of cars travel with daylight running lights the same as most of Europe. This may be more accident than law as most of the cars are European or Japanese/Korean and the daylight running lights come as a standard feature in most brands.We’ve got some more observations when L remembers what they were, I told her to write them down but no, she relies on me to remember them for her and I’m just not into that. She’s the secretary, that’s what I’ve got her for.The rubbish situation hasn’t improved, it remains a major feature of all roadside rest areas and lay-bys and much of the countryside.The road workers now have high-vis jackets, bright orange traffic cones, and even some mobile traffic lights at roadworks. The stop/go men, when they are there still have only this tiny baton with a red bullseye to hold up.Oh yes! L has remembered something else, it’s the pedestrian crossings. Motorists seem to be observing them 99% of the time, the pedestrians though are not at all convinced so are cautious and whisk swiftly across once traffic has stopped. Not near so many jumping red lights either, cars and humans.A great many traffic police out and about with radar in a fixed location on revenue raising exercises just like home. In Russia though it is extremely difficult to see all the speed limit signs, they are very easily missed as they can be behind trees or not exist at all, you are just supposed to know somehow. It is sheer luck if you get through without being fined, we managed it this year so far, but as we still have to come back after Central Asia we shall once again have to run the gauntlet of all those traffic police. The DPS as they are called there.After leaving the park we made our way westward toward Ufa on the main road. Considering this is one of the main East/West arterial roads it isn’t well maintained and does not appear to be getting upgrading as are many of the lessor roads. In fact, when we turned south towards Sterlitamak and Orenburg on a much lessor road we found ourselves on an almost new 4 lane divided highway with a fraction of the traffic of the narrow 2 lane road we had just left. The ring road around Ufa was 6 lanes in many places so you can image the jam when 6 lanes converged into 2 lanes. Perhaps it’s best not to try:Beyond Sterlitamak we turned east again and went back into the Urals into another park or reserve. This time however although we were in a park and saw one or two signs we didn’t come to any places where we had to pay fees. We passed through a few small villages and saw plenty of dairy cattle and cereal crops but nothing that looked to us like National Park. We had some big electrical storms too. Lots of thunder and lightning and when the rain tumbled down it was full of sleet, so that cooled things down nicely. Didn’t do much for the dirt roads though, needless to say they quickly turned to mud. It was quite pretty scenery and we enjoyed the trip.Back out on the plains (steppe) we started to see sunflower crops and sheep. The villages continue to look more prosperous that those we’d seen earlier in the trip and majority seem to be Moslem with a tiny mosque in most of them.With less than a week until we had to be out, we began to make our way towards Astrakhan via Samara, then crossing the Volga and heading south along the western side.Well, the best laid plans of men and mice and all that, yes, well, things went belly up as they say. In a big way. Several things within a couple of days.We were motoring along quite nicely not breaking any speed limits but cruising along when going uphill on a long steady pull the car started making a funny noise and David lost most of his acceleration. He quickly realised that the turbo had died. It was a Friday evening. Even in Russia that’s not the best time to have things go wrong.We pulled up and he spent a few hours in the evening sun then the fading daylight taking it out for a look, all to no avail. So we found a place to camp.Next morning we went into the nearest big town and found a big spares place “Exist.ru” they will find spares from all over the country. David said the fellow put a great deal of effort into trying to find a replacement for us, he could have got one from Moscow for us but not in our limited time frame. So we had to leave it and carry on as best we could.Seeing we had reduced capacity to cover any distance we changed our plans and returned to Samara. It was then only a further 200k’s to the Kazakh border and a further 50k’s into the town of Uralsk in Kazakhstan.We spend a couple of days in Samara where David tried again to find a replacement turbo and failed.Samara is quite a pleasant city that sits on the eastern bank of the Volga river. It has a fine esplanade along the river bank with a lovely sandy beach where on hot summer days such as when we visited a great deal of the population can be seen frying themselves in the sun and far fewer refreshing themselves with a dip in the river. L tested the water by paddling in it and estimated it was around 18C. The air temp was 33C and there were lots of sunburnt people heading home in the evening. The sun doesn’t set till around 10pm or even later. L will never get used to that, she says it’s not natural.In Soviet times the city had another name after a local hero who was some sort of revolutionary from a previous century. During that time it was also a closed city, no visitors allowed. It is where the rockets are built for the space program. From here it is still a dam long haul to the Baikonur region of Kazakhstan where the cosmodrome is situated. It’s name was changed back to Samara in 1991 at the end of the Soviet period.At that time it was also discovered that Stalin had had a secret bunker dug in the city. We got to visit the bunker one afternoon. It is 36m deep and had a primary access shaft and an emergency access shaft.It was dug in 1942 during the time that Nazi Germany was invading the western part of the country and held siege to St Petersburg. There are really only two rooms at the bottom, one that would have been Stalins office and accommodation and another that was meant to be a conference room. On the way down there are two small rooms at different levels that are now used for small photographic displays; some photos are obviously wartime ones while others are far more recent with people using 21st century rescue equipment. everything was in Russian so we have no idea what it was all about: The bunker was never used by Stalin though it is believed that he visited in once or twice before his death in 1953. The large building that is built over the top of the bunker was some sort of government building, but even the people working here didn’t know of the bunkers existence until 1991.We had planned to visit the Cosmos museum but then we found out that it closed at 3pm on a Sunday when most museums stay open late, and is closed on a Monday as most seem to be. Instead we just had a look at the rocket the stands outside.Similar to most Russian cities there is a metro and an extensive tram service along with the usual busses. Those trams are noisy as L can attest too after trying to hold a conversation with a travel guide we had met on exiting the bunker.Samara is also a port for the many cruise boats that ply the Volga. The Russian version of what we see advertised for the Rhine and Danube. Much less luxurious and somewhat smaller they are very popular for the Russian tourist. They would not suit most western tourists who demand far more luxury, but then these would be considerably cheaper too. We watched it pull into the dock, it was the only one there when it did, later in the day we came back and the first one was still there along with 4 more, two of which looked to be much superior. the name of the first one was ‘Cosmonaught Gargarin” named after the first man to go into space.We also had more problems with the car apart for the turbo. The air pump for the EAS had given up completely after weeks of giving trouble, and one of the airbags had a leak that we tried to seal with some of that stuff you use to repair punctures in tyre. The stuff that comes in an aerosol can and you spray in. It did slow the leak considerably. Still every two or 3 hours we would have to use the tyre compressor to pump it up again. A top radiator hose had burst too, but we had a replacement for that so it was no big problem.So with on these problems we headed off for the border and got there in reasonable time, and passed across without problem. the first town we came to in Kazakhstan was Uralsk and it is much larger than one really expects. We didn’t get into the centre at all, but we did spend a night here. It is much hotter than Samara.Then we plodded on through another big modern city Aktobe. This is a wealthy city by the looks of it and mostly new. We passed right through the centre fairly early in the day and it has lovely wide streets but still the same crazy Kazakh drivers. Another town not much further on has big mines on it’s eastern side, these look to be coal mines. The road continued long and fairly straight and traffic was mostly quite light through the middle of the day. There was some patches of tress and it was possible to find a bit of shade to pull into for a rest in this northern part of the country but once we turned south towards Aralsk the trees gave out completely and it is semi desert. It is green from several recent storms and one small village had dirt side streets that were big wet boggy holes. We had seems some very good beef cattle herds too in the north, better than we’d seen anywhere in Russia. Heading south though there was less cattle, these had been replaced by camels and horses. Just a few goats too near some villages.The car kept going and so we passed the town of Baikonur. The Cosmodrome used by the Russians for the launch of the first Sputnik into space in 1957 and still used by them, is situated some way north of the city out in the desert. It is possible to get a tour of the site if you book some two or three months in advance and pay a considerable sum of money, all non refundable if for any reason you can’t make the tour.Now following the Syr Daraya river valley we stated crossing numerous canals and entered an area where rice is growing in small drained paddy fields. It’s all very green. This is the river, along with another that used to feed the Aral Sea. The Russian started daming it in the 1950’s and the inevitable result, the Aral sea started to shrink. So much so that it is now only 3 lakes. Environmentalists thought they had them stabalized during the early part of this century, however, L seems to remember reading somewhere that that is not the case any more. Some poor winter snow falls didn’t produce the runoff of previous years and so the lakes are again under threat. The town of Aralsk that used to be a fishing village now sits beside a very dusty and dried up seabed.The next big city we came to is Kyzylorda and as we entered the city the turbo started to make a high pitched whine sounding just like a police siren. It was the middle of the day and we tried to find some shade to park in but nowhere presented itself in the part of the city where we were. Coming across a shopping centre we parked in there and took refuge in the air-con comfort of its interior for a while, me included, I was looking fairly limp so L says. At this shopping centre they don’t encourage people to linger as there was no place to sit down at all. Outside the car didn’t cool off in the slightest in the 35C heat.Not really knowing what to do for the best we continued on but only got a few k’s outside town before the car suddenly started blowing huge clouds of black smoke. Had to go another kilometre or two before finding a place where we could pull off the road and absolutely no shade what-so-ever.D spent a good while seeing what he could do and decided to disconnect the turbo and whatever else he could to try and stop more damage to the engine. Then we returned to Kyzylorda and found a hotel, the first one we came to and pulled in there.Currently as L writes this, and I’ve had to take the whip to her again to get her to do this writing, the car is still sitting outside in the compound, in the blazing sum that has got hotter as the days passed. At about 4pm the sun starts to go over and by 5pm it’s in the shade for the rest of the day. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the long hours of sunlight here, the sun doesn’t set till about 9.30pm, so it does get a few hours shade. It rises again about 4am, perhaps earlier.My lot have been trying to get the parts sent out from England with DHL the courier people, but now that seems to have gone haywire too. They put in the order on Saturday morning as soon as the office opened but it didn’t get sent to England until Monday and the parts were not going to be picked up until Tuesday from Heather’s place in Arundel. David had ordered things from several different places and had them all sent to poor long suffering Heather who has done a wonderful job of repackaging them and having them ready for collection. Our heartfelt thanks go to Heather once again. She is truly a very great friend to have. However, when DHL phoned her about the pick-up they told her the parts wouldn’t be here until well into next week. We can’t wait that long. I can of course, being a stuffed toy I don’t have a passport and visa restrictions but my lot do, and their 15 day visa expires on Tuesday the 5th July. Not wanting to cause any problems with the Kazakhs we would all prefer to be out on time. We will head into Kyrgyzstan, to Bishkek.That leaves us with the problem of the car still. No parts, so no repair. A repairer in the city did look at the turbo but said it was past redemption. Now David has come up with an idea, so he had all the openings on the old turbo blocked off and will refit it this evening when the car is in shade. He has this theory that the car will be drivable and that we can possibly get it to Bishkek if we take it nice and steady which we can if we leave with a few days in hand. Bishkek it about 800k’s from here, or at least the border is. If we can just get it to there then we are back to the old problem of getting the parts. But we won’t get ahead of ourselves here, we shall just wait and see what happens.L doesn’t have many photos to add to this blog. We went out today in the blistering heat to take some but then ended up spending hours at the DHL office trying to get back the considerable sum of money my lot have paid to have the parts couriered out. It isn’t much less for a 9kg parcel than for one person on a return flight from Almaty to London, now work that out. Bit of difference between one static 9kg parcel and an 80kg human, plus 30k’s of baggage, and all the amenities needed to transport the modern air passenger, and the cost difference is marginal.We shall leave you pondering on the profitability of courier companies and L will post this blog if I keep whipping her. She keeps telling me I’m a grub again!© Lynette Regan 28th June 2016