Mongol Rally Week 4-ish

Day 27 (Tbilisi - Shaori Lake - Racha Range)

Went and tried to source a spare wheel unsuccessfully (the guy was at work) so we headed out to an area that looked to have a nice lake and some pretty awesome vistas in the south west of Georgia.

Also forgot to mention but Georgia is clearly fence optional. You always face the prospect of rounding a bend (even on a major road) and running into a herd of cattle chilling on the road. Can be pigs, horses, sheep too, but cows are the most common. Probably why half the cars on Georgia appear to be missing their front bumper bar. It's that or the crazy Georgian driving.

Typical Georgian car missing front (or back, or both) bumper

We also visited the bridal veil falls which were nice.

After the lake and falls, we climbed the Racha Range and started looking for a camp spot. Found a beauty that included a huge stone table and seats ready made for us.

Cloud dropped on us in the evening to make for a surreal and beautiful spot.

Day 28 (Racha Range - Tbilisi)

A beautiful drive to start the day soon made for a punishing day.

Jason had noticed that the front left tyre looked like we needed air so we kept stopping in to servos (and anywhere that looked like they sold spare wheels) to look for air. Unfortunately they are are not at most servos so it is a luck of the draw thing. After a number of attempts we finally found one that had a paid for compressor. Unfortunately the compressor didn't work and our tyre had flattened further from trying to fill it. This meant a change to the space saver tyre was required - not ideal to be using on Georgian roads.

We stopped in at the next town, again looking for air for our tyre (unsuccessfully) but we're directed to a tyre shop next door. The guy couldn't help is with a wheel but he did properly repair our tyre (which had a this bit of metal stuck in it and a slow leak) and refill it, as well as giving Alyssa and Sage ice creams, all for the princely sum of 15 GEL (about $9).

We motored away happily only to arrive back into the slow moving traffic jams of Tbilisi and 36° heat and chose this moment to go visit another wrecker and try and find a spare wheel for our car. There short version is that we again had no luck, so we retreated to accomodation and air con before re-emerging to look for cool drinks and some of the traditional Georgian food we had not tried yet.

This meal (and the 'mixed citrus lemonade') was extremely delicious.

Day 29 (Tblisi - Stepantsminda)

Spent the morning looking for a place to get rubles from for the Russian mission. Got sorted and then waited for out friend from team Coullion to receive his new ignition before setting off to the Russian border. Arrived about to Stepantsminda, about half hour away from the border, with plan to tackle early tomorrow morning (and hopefully beat the lengthy queues). The drive was crazy good.

Team Coullion and Kermit at Zhinvali Resorvoir

The drive was amongst the best so far.

Tomorrow, "From Russia with Love"

Day 30 (Stepantsminda - Russian border - Vladikafkaz)

What a day. Not in a good way. We got up at 5 in an attempt to beat the border queues but to no avail. 11hrs and 35 punishing minutes later we got through. The customs people had Jason fill out a 3 page form from scratch 5 times due to unknown errors (they told him what his errors were in Russian). Finally got the form right only to be told we would need to have the car x-rayed. Went there only to be told x-ray machine was stopped for the day.

The road to Russia is paved with the carcasses of those that didn't make it

Finally allowed to escape the horror.

Had a beautiful drive down to Vladikafkaz, which is a beautiful town not far from the border. There was a noticeable difference between Russia and Georgia - the town was a lot nicer than most of what we had seen in Georgia and the people are super friendly. We stopped to get our bearings at one point only to have a family that had been following do a U-turn and come back to make sure we were ok. GPS doesn't work in Russia around major population centres (something to do with preventing attacks we presume) so you cant use Google maps to direct you - have to do it old school.

Mountains in Russia near the border were speccy

Anyway, went out in Vladikafkaz and had a great time in a great city wkth super friendly people. City was full of people on our way home.

Day 31 (Vladikafkaz - Grozny - Astrakhan)

While we were sleeping a team of Kiwis arrived at our hotel. They are driving an old Ford Fairlane limo and we woke up to this pic on the group chat.

Went and grabbed a coffee (best for a long while) and got on the road. Grozny is the capital of Chechnya, a notably Muslim and rebellious part of Russia. Teams had reported being screamed at or having guns waved at them for not having long pants on (men included). We stopped in Grozny for some homemade lunch but there didn't seem much else to stop there for.

We drove on to Astrakhan through Dagestan, which was very flat but beautiful and interesting nonetheless.

Dagestan

More pics of Dagestan and our convoy.

The plan had been to try get to Astrakhan early and spend some time out in the city. Unfortunately we didnt arrive till 10 pm and it then took us 2 hours to find a place that would take us. At 1 am we headed out for a single beer before everything closed...

Day 32 (Astrakhan - Atyrau)

We got going early the next day because we had the Kazakhstan border to cross. We had been told 2 hours. It took us 6. People in Georgia (particularly) and Russia love to push in. So people would just drive up on the wrong side of the road till they got near the front of the queue and then wait for someone to be too slow to move forward and they would nudge in. Absolute debacle. We did have a nice bonnet impromptu lunch waiting in the queue. Manged to buy some frozen dumplings from a store on side of the border queue and cooked up with some salami and mustard.

Finally across the border and into Kazakhstan, where we were pretty much instantly greeted by herds of what appeared to be (but probably weren't) herds of wild horses and Bactrian camels!!

We made it to Atyrau just in to meet the rest of our teams that had flown to Atyrau from Tbilisi. To celebrate they had booked a yurt style restaurant with some local specialties, a horse pie, a lamb rack pie, and a goat head - all really delicious.

Atyrau is full of large new restaurants and bars that are also mostly empty. In spite of their emptiness, the oil wealth of Kazakhstan is clearly going into making its cities full of modern amenities.

Horse pie and Lamb pie

Day 33 (Atyrau - Aktobe)

This was a pretty uneventful drive, except for dodging the occasional massive potholes. Lot of camels and horses, lots of flat arid land. We left our kiwi friends behind as well as they wanted to spend an extra day in Atyrau.

Aktobe was another desert city full of large (no shortage of space) and modern buildings.

We went out with a few teams (including Coullions and Invictus, a team of Catalans) and most of us had the horse T-bones which were actually amazing.

We went back to the hotel where Jason and Charly played pool with larger than normal balls and smaller than normal pockets. It didn't go well.