Overland with Kids

It was dawning on us that other than a Kazakhstan map in Russian that we’d bought on our way out of Moscow, we had no further information except a tiny bit of text cobbled together quickly from the internet. We didn’t have much to help us with the next part of our journey and would be heading into Kazakhstan a bit blind.

We arrived to Troitsk city (Chelyabinsk Oblast) at about 5pm Russian local time and low on money, we hit the cashpoint before heading to the Russian-Kazakhstan border. Troitsk wasn’t anything to write home about - a large city of the old Russian ilk - more like we had been incorrectly expecting before visiting the country. We looked in the local mini-supermarket to stock up on food but apart from bread, ham and a huge queue, we changed our minds about buying anything and headed straight out again. There are plentiful small magasins (mini supermarkets/shops) throughout Russia but many without than those we have found with, selling fresh fruit and vegetables - else they have been sold out.

We drove down a long road, sign-posted for Kostanai airport. It was a longish road out to the border from the city, about 15 minutes drive and we arrived about 5.30pm. We got our ticket for the queue (small hut, left hand side, just inside the barrier) and it wasn’t long before we were greeted with a “well!, well!, well!” from a very friendly Russian border official who proceeded to help us through the border control process. After a chat about our travels and what we were up to, he told us we were in fact the second English transit of the day (Iain the biker had been the first transit during the morning). We told the guard we’d shared a lake with Iain and the accompanying mosquitos the night before. On this note, he said hello to the children, told us that in Russia there is a saying that ‘children are the flowers of life’, went off and then came back again with a can of mosquito spray as a gift for us. He told us to make sure that we used the spray on our skin, said good-bye and wished us a good journey - he was a nice man.

From the Russian side of the border, we had no issues and just followed the herd through the process. At 6.45pm we reached the Kazakhstan entry point which was just spitting distance away. Again we had to register ourselves and our vehicle in the queue (small hut left hand side right by the inside of the barrier), then obtain car insurance (to the right - inside the toilet block which is outside of the barrier - there is a small office called CARS inside the toilet cubicle on the right). We couldn’t understand a word the insurance lady was saying and had a great game trying to describe our requirements but we got there in the end. Cost: approx 20 Euros for 6 weeks cover. Thankfully, the lady who sold us the insurance was very calm, helpful and patient with us.

We had a bit of wait on the Kazakhstan side before being pushed through, we think they’d gone to lunch as there was no-one to be seen for a while. All was going well until customs, the last stage of the process before getting our queue ticket stamped for exit, when - we suddenly got stung for our first ever bribe. To get our final exit stamp on our queue ticket, we were told we would need to pay what looked like 20 being crossed out and changed to 50 Euros. Realising too late what was happening, we gasped and explained that we didn’t have the money, at the same time realising we shouldn’t be talking money as all other vehicles were just whizzing straight past us - but we’d missed the boat and our escape route - we’d already taken money out in the confusion thinking it was a legitimate cost initially. We managed to get away with paying 500 Russian Rubles (12.50 Euros), waving the note around and saying it was all we had (we wished we’d picked another smaller note in the rush - or even better, nothing at all - else, a fake foreign note would have been nice to give and have got the last laugh). In a bid to salvage ourselves, we asked for a receipt but the officers just sat back and looked at us, slipping the note inbetween the leaves of their book, as if to say - you must be joking! We learned later that Iain hadn’t paid anything but they’d tried to haggle with him - he’d claimed ignorance and got away. We already knew ourselves we shouldn’t have succumbed - we knew it had been our fault completely and been caught out. So far, we’d managed to escape any such payments throughout our trip. We finally entered Kazakhstan around 9pm feeling very disappointed with ourselves.

Diary (Blog)