Kazakhstan - we almost turned back...

As the the title suspects our attempt to enter Kazakhstan turned out to be one of the toughest border crossings so far.... Bureaucracy is right up there with Iran but they are by far not as friendly and helpful as the Iranians...

We were at the Koray border crossing North of Bishkek by 10.30h and although at the entry the Kyrgyz officials hinted we were better to go to another border 40 km away they let us through and we exited Kyrgyzstan. The entry into the Kazakh part started with a demand for a bribe which I just ignored and we got in anyway...meaning in to start the process... We were indicated to go to customs/drug inspection... who let us wait for more than an hour before they started anything... By that time it was midday and about 42 degrees... ( we apparently chose the hottest day so far to x the border... ). Once the inspection was done we went through immigration and got our arrival stamp. Filling in the customs declaration form was last and the lady in charge was ranting that our truck was to big for this border.... while all the big Sprinter vans and even full size buses were passing next to us... I tried to insist that the Unimog is a camper van/private vehicle and no cargo truck as apparently this border is for "passengers" only. They sort of understood but did not want to let us through anyway until the big boss made a decision... unfortunately lunch time for big bosses lasts till 15:00h here....so we had to wait... After he apparently arrived we had to go up the chain through several levels of important behaving guys (but who did not decide anything) until the big boss who never even had a look at us finally decided we needed to go back to Kyrgyzstan... Even the Kyrgyz exit and Kazakh entry stamp we had already in our passport did not change his mind... So they annulled our entry and by 16:30h we were back at the Kyrgyz side. Although less bureaucratic they still hesitated as the truck "was too big for this border" and we saw ourselves getting stranded like Tom Hanks in the no-mans transit zone...

Their own exit stamp a few hours earlier convinced them though and we finally entered back into the country. I got about 200m into the country before the traffic police stopped me though and started something about "straf" because of my warning lights on the truck... Not allowed here etc...The trick here is that when they do an official report they threaten to keep your driving license...else pay anything between 50 and 100 Dollars and you are free to go... corrupt bastards... I negotiated hard as by that time I was fed up and exhausted and wanted just to get to the other border to get out of here.... I got away with 20 Dollars... Well another 20 km down the same road there was waiting another even worse corrupt cop that stopped me again.... this time for not having switched on the driving lights which so far never was an issue here (almost 4 weeks driving around in Kyrgyzstan).... apparently though that was a known local stretch of road for this scam as most locals had their headlight switched on... This guy was really a bad ass and I was fuming but had no real other option than to pay to be able to make it to the border in time... I negotiated it down to 50 dollars but I had nightmares the following night with all sorts of cruelties I would do to this guy...

We eventually made it to the Kara Suu border about 40 km further East and had to go through an entire process again...stamps in 5 different places, x-ray inspection of the entire truck, hand inspection on top of it and running around for another 2.5 hours...

by 20.15h we finally entered Kazakhstan... You can imagine Rachael's mood not having had any lunch or proper food and sweltering away in the heat during the day....she was very quiet...

We arrived in Almaty the evening of the next day after a drive on a good road but with loads of cops checking speed etc. I was pretty paranoid by now and especially since I did not have a mandatory insurance yet.... a reason to be victim of random fines again... We made it unchallenged though.

Almaty has changed a lot since the 10 years I had been here last... its huge and traffic likewise... Very modern, very much like any other western city by almost all standards...

The good part is though that there are nice restaurants too :-).

Turns out we need to stay 4 days here to wait for Rachael's Mongolian visa...guess what is on the plan.... restaurants, cafe's etc..:-)

helps to recover from the border trauma...