Potholes, Leaf Springs and Cafe Discos

We continue our Kazakhstanian Odessey..

Camped in a field near to the main road through Kazakhstan the night after leaving the last city..  celebrated Oli Lewis' 22nd Birthday bonanza with an improv beef stroganoff and some rural star gazing. We'd had a word and put on some shooting stars for the occassion. Oli really enjoyed his presents: balloons, a foil dog picture and pack of antibiotics. 

We noticed there were fires on the horizon when we went to sleep but thought little of it. At 3am we were then rudely awoken by the sound of a large tractor heading stright for our tent.. We had to 'Bug Out' for fear of being run over and were greeted by a police officer and some croonies. At first we thought something dodgy was up but then realised they were trying to explain something about the fires to us. We thought he wanted to warn us and get us to move but eventually he just mimed us to go back to sleep which we did. In the morning we hit the road again..

After weeks of not seeing any other rally teams we encountered 4 or 5 in a couple of days as teams are beginning to converge towards Mongolia. We met team 'Chapeau Nouveau' in a supermarket in Kostanay, Kazakhstan (where we also found some amazing KAZAKHSTAN adidas tracksuits which make us look like the kazakh olympic volleyball team). It was good to catch up with another team and find out how everyone else had been doing. They were in search for some new wheel bearings and wheel struts after knackering them in the Ukraine. We went our seperate ways out of town and started heading towards Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. The roads which had been a bit hit and miss up to this point took a turn for the worst again but we decided to carry on driving to make up some ground after quite a slow day the say before. With Josh at the helm we managed to successfully dodge the huge potholes for a good hour or two but then disaster struck.. We were probably driving a tad too quick and hit a pot hole a tad too hard and one of the rear leaf springs which had had a tad too many shocks sheared clean in half with a loud bang. We got out in the dark to check the damage and were dismayed to see that the ambulance was looking worryingly wonky. Shortly after Team 'Chapeau Nouveau' appeared out of the darkness (travelling at their temporary top speed of 40mph). They decided in true rally spirit to stick with us and convoy at a new combined speed of 5mph, providing some much needed moral support and keeping us entertained on the CB Radio. (A big thank you to Gaz, Tom, Neil and Dan !) 

The ambulance now had a ground clearance of about 3cm and would scrape horribly over the rough road so we crawled on for a bit and camped together a few miles down the road. Some instant noodles, a few nature poos and several hours later we awoke to find anther team that was passing had stopped to say hi. They stuck around briefly and we got more news about other teams fortunes before we hit the road again. We limped onwards with Chapeau Nouveau to the next town (quite a small one) about 30km away. We were hopeful that there would be someone in the town that could fix out spring but I was very doubtful as it was a sunday and the town was no more than a collection of houses really. Add to this the fact that Renault parts do not exist east of France and you can begin to see our predicament...

We asked around at a petrol station and within 10 minutes had found a bloke working on a lorry down the road who looked like some sort of mechanic. We showed him the ambulance and at first he pointed us down the street but then decided to get a friend of his to come look at it. Luckily for us this other bloke (whois name is now written on the side of our ambulance but i cannot recall right now) turns out to be the most resourceful mechanic in all of Kazakhstan ! He took off the wheel and spring using nothing but the worlds biggest hammer and then drove off.. After a few nervous minutes he returned with a leaf spring which was completely the wrong size but after realising this he went at it with a hammer and blow torch and completely remade it to the right length. More use of the giant hammer, two bowls of Borschsk and 5 hours later we had a new Leaf Spring! HERO.

 

 

Two other team also drove past us at this point and we had a road side game of volleyball which was a good laugh. We hit the road again and resumed a 40mph convoy with Chapeau Nouveau. The beginning of a pretty special night..

 

We decided to pull over and grab something to eat. It was about midnight in the middle of nowhere and we found what seemed to be another typical cafe. As soon as we opened the door we realised how wrong we were as this happened to be kazakhstans number one cafe disco karaoke nightclub! The dance floor was packed with a bizarre assortment of people getting their groove on to some of the best karaoke I've ever heard. The main vocal artist was a Borat look-a-like with a great handlebar mustache.. George decided it would be a good idea to let the head chef order food for us since none of us could read the kazakh menu.. Not such a good idea as he definately had invested interests and believing us to be high rollers due to our being english he brought us two of EVERYTHING on the menu. A banquet of epic proportions which cost us about 40,000 tenge (20 pounds sterling each, which is ALOT for a road side cafe in Kazakhstan). We then got our own groove on with the locals who were going crazy for us. Being foreign in Kazakhstan is like being a major celebrity in any other country (It might also help that Neil of Chapeau Noveau forgot he was wearing a fancy dress cow outfit when he walked into the cafe. All the locals had their photos taken with us and the ambulance and some even took pictures of us just sitting at our table eating our ridiculous buffet. When we left the cafe disco and hit the road again a whole crowd of locals waved us off. It was brilliant..

  

 

We did a long drive into the night and the road got a lot better to our relief.. We kipped in a field at the side of the road into Astana and got a few hours sleep with Chapeau Nouveau, awaking to find ourselves amongst a herd of cows.

Yesterday we finally got to Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan enabling Team Chapeau Nouveau to find some new bearings and wheel struts (driving a globally recognised VW Polo has its advantages!). We managed to find ourselves a new tyre but still cannot find ANY actual Renault parts.. which means that our bodge-job suspension and limited supply of ONE spare wheel will have to do (Not ideal as the suspension isnt thick enough and is already visibly bending under the weight of all 6 of us and the junk in our trunk). So our journey through the hazardous non-roads of Kazakhstan will literally be on a wing and a prayer (Keep the Raiki coming Gran ! I think We'll need it !)

We had a big night out in Astana last night. Ridiculously large cocktails at TGI Fridays. Some serious shapes in a local night club making use of the pole in the middle of the dance floor. Some incompetent bouncers and paramedics (Luckily none if us involved).


And went to the Aqua park today.. which the lonely planet guide describes as 'gleamingly modern'. Turns out the guys at Lonely Planet have a warped sense of humor but it was still a good laugh. Mini-Kazakh-Josh had us going down the water slide time and time again.

  

Right ! Run out of time.

Ciao for now ! SMWS. XXX