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After driving through Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, we were confronted with a choice: try and drive through Turkmenistan and catch a ferry across the Caspian Sea to Baku, Azerbaijan or drive across the desert, back into Kazakhstan and catch a ferry across the Caspian Sea. After talking with some fellow travelers, overlanders and the guys from Trabant Trek, we decided that it was going to be a major pain to try and get through Turkmenistan. However, the problem with driving back through Kazakhstan and catching the ferry at Aktau is that not too many people have taken that route, so we had no information on road conditions and the ferry from Aktau, according to several sources, was far less reliable than its counterpart from Turkmenistan. Luckily for us, the day we arrived in Aktau was the day before the ferry left… the next one sailed in a week. After five hours of scrambling to get all kinds of different stamps for paperwork that we could not even read, we boarded the ferry but not before spending another six hours waiting to clear immigration. A couple of “security” bribes later and a few shots of confiscated Georgian hootch with the Kazakh border guards and we were on our way to Baku. It turned out to be an interesting yet extremely trying experience, and even when everything that could have gone right did, was still the longest three days of the expedition.

It has now been over 2 months since we were in Kazakhstan, and we are sincerely sorry for the delay in getting caught up on photos. Now that we have had this few days on the Hurtigruten, we will be releasing the latest photo galleries over this week. Today we have Kazakhstan.

Since we were robbed while we were in Kazakhstan, not a whole lot of pictures were taken. From the radioactive wastelands in the North to the Kyrgyz border we only spent a total of about a week in Kazakhstan. The people were not all that friendly to us and after we were robbed we decided it was time to move on, but there are some funny photos and some cool mountains to take a look at. Up next is Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkey and more…by the end of the week we will be caught up all the way through here in Norway!!! Finally.

Around Almaty

 This album is taken on our second trip into Kazakhstan to transit to Aktau and get on the boat across the Caspian Sea.

As most of you are all aware, someone broke into the Sequoia in Kazakhstan and robbed us and in the process of the robbery, the rear passenger window was completely shattered. Since the break-in, we have been using a blue plastic tarp as a make-shift window and have been dealing with the added cold, noise and inconvenience of discovering new, tiny shards of glass pretty much on a daily basis. Having a tarp for a window also poses a little bit of a security concern and it has definitely contributed to some added stress levels from time to time. We have tried unsuccessfully on a couple occasions to get the window replaced but we did not have our hopes up too high knowing that finding replacement parts for a vehicle that is not sold or manufactured anywhere near where we were was going to be a long shot. We came close to finding a new window surprisingly enough in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, but alas it did not pan out. We tried again at the main Toyota dealership in Istanbul but again, most people at the dealership had not even heard of a Sequoia let alone seen one. Another option was to get a replacement window shipped out from the states, but since we are pretty much on the move all the time, we were finding it difficult to coordinate just exactly where to ship the window, who to ship it to and how to do it without spending a fortune.

Finally, two months after Little Pepe’s window was smashed out we were able to get it replaced. Our friend Lori laid the groundwork for us at a Toyota dealership in Prague, Czech Republic and when we arrived three days before Christmas, the boys at the dealership were waiting with a brand new, rear passenger window that even had the same color tint. It was quite an event at the dealership because according to the manager, they only see about two Sequoias per year and this was the first that was in the middle of an around the world expedition. The staff at the dealership were very helpful and within a few hours everything was fixed and fixed for a lot less than we had anticipated. So, many thanks to Robert and everyone else at Toyota in Prague… having a new window is a relief and now Swinger has an entourage.

Toyota said they could help with the window but the mess and the smell is our problem

You guys want this tarp back?

Swinger’s new Toyota posse

Group photo at Toyota Prague

Man, they were everywhere. I have never seen so many cops in my entire life, most of whom seemed to be doing nothing of real significance aside from creating problems instead of solving them. Where pray tell might I be talking about? Well, I am talking about Russia and the former Soviet republics. You would think that with the number of police they have milling about in the cities and hiding behind buildings and bushes in the countryside in these countries that crime would be virtually nonexistent. Unfortunately, many of the cops are not there to protect and serve but instead are there to profit and make things unpleasant. You know something is not right when a traffic cop is driving a Benz to work from his mansion on the hill. 

I can’t say we weren’t prepared for a few encounters with cops on the take, but I definitely was not expecting to see as many as I did. Fortunately for us, we managed to make it through the minefield of questionable cops relatively unscathed. Overall, you can not really predict what types of cops you are going to encounter. Travel blogs are full of verbiage about "police on the prowl" and getting fleeced for simply having a pulse. Unfortunately very few sites offer any real information on what to expect and how much, probably because everyone has a different experience when driving through these areas.

The Uzbek cops were just waiting to see who showed up at the flash Toyotas parked in Samarkand

If there is one rule to abide by: play dumb and ask a lot of questions. Cops on the take don’t like to do a lot of paperwork, so the more documents you shove in their face and the more receipts you ask for, the more likely they are to get annoyed with you and move onto the next sucker. Simply saying no and goodbye repeatedly in the local language was enough of a Jedi mind trick to avoid some unanticipated ATM withdrawals. If anything, hold out for as long as possible… the more you waste their time, the more retirement fund contributors drive by. Who knows, maybe if enough people hold out, they will be forced into doing some actual police work. In places like Yosemite and Yellowstone, they have signs that read, "Don’t feed the bears." If the bears learn that people will feed them, the more they will want to interact with them… the more people feed the corrupt cops, the more they will want to interact with them.

"If you want to give me a ‘ticket,’ you’ll have to fill out a lot of paperwork."

In sum, the shadiest cops we encountered were in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. Fortunately, the dumbest cops we encountered were also in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, so we were able to wiggle our way out of virtually all shakedown attempts. By the time the cops tried to levy a bogus charge in order to leave Azerbaijan, we had become veterans of the game and they didn’t know what hit them. Uzbekistan took the cake for the number of checkpoints as we encountered an average of about four per day during the week and a half we were there. We did have some good experiences of note… the cops in Almaty, Kazakhstan were genuinely interested in helping us when we got robbed and in Uzbekistan, even though they have more cops that actual citizens, the police we encountered were all very friendly, especially when greeted with an "assalam alaikum" handshake.

We started keeping track of the number of times we got pulled over and the number of checkpoints we had to clear, but after the ink went dry in the pen, realized we would get writers cramp trying to document all of our encounters. In the end, we spent a little over a month in Russia and former Soviet republics. In that time, we got pulled or waved over approximately a dozen times, completely ignored at least four more, drove through about 25 checkpoints and managed to get through it all for only a little over $40, most of which came from my speeding ticket in the last 10 kilometers of Azerbaijan. The speeding ticket technically should not count since the guy did have a radar gun, although it probably hasn’t been recalibrated in quite a while. 

Believe it or not, time seems to fly by pretty quickly on the World by Road. Even though we were hiking through the sweltering heat and humidity of the jungles of Endau Rompin Malaysia over five months ago, it basically seems like yesterday. The scenery did not change much and the temperature essentially remained the same throughout most of SE Asia and coupled with having to wait to get into China, it felt like we were in a time warp. When we reached higher elevations outside of Kunming, it was the first time in quite a while that we actually could and needed to wear long pants and shirts. According to the calendar in Mongolia, it was fall, but a lack of trees throughout most of the country still did not provide any visual indication of what time of year it was. Moving northwest into Russia, the leaves on the trees were starting to change, but the sub zero temperatures we experienced nearly every night in Mongolia gave way to milder ones as we lost elevation. In Kazakhstan, the vibrant orange, yellow and red leaves suddenly reminded us that we were getting late into fall, but it was still shorts and t-shirt weather there, so it still felt like we were in a bit of a time warp.

It really did not start to hit us that winter was approaching until crossing into Kyrgyzstan, and hit us it did… literally. About 10 kilometers from the Kyrgyz border, it started to snow and it was obvious that the rain we had experienced in Kazakhstan the previous night had been a full-fledged blizzard just across the border. It was difficult to follow the road in spots and for some people, even more difficult to stay on it. At the border, not much was going on and a few of the guards seemed more concerned about the snowman they were constructing than what was in our trucks. Clearing customs in Kyrgyzstan was a snap, but I was worried they were not going to let us in because of the amount of snow on the road ahead of us. In fact, there were at least two or three cars that had gone off the road at the border itself. Luckily for us, and some other stranded motorists, we had our Toyotas. Whether we used manpower or horsepower, we helped quite a few people who had gotten stuck in the snow. We actually managed to get stuck once ourselves… trying in vain to assist a car that had skidded down an embankment. Fortunately, with the aid of some helpful Kyrgyz locals and border guards with assault rifles still slung over their shoulders, we were not stuck for long. Once we got back on the road, I reminisced about getting stuck in the mud in Cambodia and how it did not seem that long ago. In the grand scheme of things, I guess driving down that Cambodian road was not that long ago. However, once I looked out the window, the hot, steamy jungles of Cambodia could not have been any farther away. 

The remote Kyrgyz border outside of Kegen

The snow was no problem for the Thundra

Don’t blame the Toyota… it was user error

Soon though, everyone was all smiles