April 21 Aktobe - Aralsk (KZ)

The ride from Aktobe to Aralsk went very smooth for the first 300km. A brand new highway as flat as a billiards table. When we left from Aktobe the weather was very cold and wet. Desperately looking for a hot cup of coffee we tried to take a short-cut through the heavy mud, with the following result.


Carl's eerste "buiklanding", gelukkig zonder veel erg. Een barst in de linker zijkoffer, maar met "duc tape" komt dat wel in orde.



Op zoek naar een warme kop koffie kwamen we in "Qandyaghash" terecht.

Luckily nothing serious, so we could quickly taste the local delicacies. From the three of us, Johan is the only one who can speak a bit of Russian. Seeing he only knows the word 'chicken' in Russian, we have been eating chicken for the past week. Not to bad, the only down side is that we start walking a bit funny flapping our arm uncontrollably.



 Twee gangen menu ergens onderweg. Heerlijke "borsjt" soep, gevolgd door kip met puree.





Korte rustpauze na een heerlijke maaltijd.

Back on the road we came to the ... desert. The weather immediately turned to warm and dry.
Riding through the desert had a kind of mystic feeling. Vast emptiness except 3 idiots on bikes.

ROADKILL

Lange eindeloze wegen, met af en toe wat koeien, paarden of kamelen.

Ideal time to compare the power of the bikes. Yamaha vs BMW. Acceleration is similar, but Peter on his BMW was a bit faster when it came to top speed. His bike however is not so heavily loaded, which might be an explanation. A big difference however is fuel consumption and the range with 1 gasoline tank. Peter can take 33L compared to 23L for the Yamaha's. A difference of around 350km. Luckily Johan and Carl brought a small jerry-can for some additional fuel because there are no gas stations available.

Bijtanken in het midden van de woestijn. De 23L benzine tank i soms niet voldoende om de afstand tussen 2 "dorpen" te overbruggen.

Onderweg werden we getracteerd op een beker kamelen melk. De man en zijn familie waren heel vriendelijk en blij ons te ontmoeten.

Kazakhstan is connecting it's main cities with new roads, but parts are not finalised yet. So we came to the last 100km riding through some very rough conditions. We decided to flip a coin and let faith decide if we should continue riding or camp along the road

Ook Johan belande voor de eerste keer in het zand bij het nemen van de vele hindernissen.

Finally we made it to Aralsk to book into the local Hilton. This is the last time we rely on faith to determine where we sleep.



Let op de banzaisticker

Het hotel in Aralsk was aan renovatie toe, vooral de badkamers.