Everyone we have talked to have told us about the extremely bad roads in Kazakhstan and the corrupted police. We could have chosen the ”official” road going 20 km/h wearing a kidney belt but instead we chose the off road track that allowed us to go 30 km/h without a kidney belt. Is it going to be like this all across Kazakhstan? Then it is going to be some very long 1 200 kilometers.

But going slow has its advantages too. It is like going on a safari. We have seen maybe 1 000 camels, and a few desert rats and other animals running across the ground.

We got waved down by a car and they jumped out all excited shouting; have come all the way from Sweden? Wow? One of them told us that his daughter had been studying in Sweden. Come here eat with us they said. And then they gave us lots of food too.

We parked for the night on a small road that it looked like there was not much traffic. The landscape was still completely flat and not a soul in sight. Within five minutes 3 cars had passed. One of them was this Russian built cutie with a camel mum and a new born camel in the back. The cameleer was very proud of his camel and we think he tried to sell the young camel to us.

To finish the evening off the police paid us a visit. Shit, we thought – now we probably are in trouble. But they were friendly and mostly just curious and after a while of not speaking Russian/English they left.

Now we are in the town Atyrau. The road in Kazakhstan is really not as bad as the reputation, only the first 100 kilometers from the border. We will stay in Atyrau for a couple of days to wait for our

The Ural River dived the town in two parts, the Asian side and the European side. We crossed the bridge on foot today to celebrate that we will soon be on European soil again. Then we went back to the Asian side again where we are staying.

Stayed at home and did laundry. To find a proper washing machine is like hitting the jackpot. At the hostel we are staying they have a really nice bathroom too. It looks more like SPA and it feels like big luxury to use this compared to a lot of the dirty, cold water ones we have used before on the trip.

At the restaurant where we had dinner we met some locals who invited us to their table. They did not speak a word of English, but we had a great conversation anyway.

One of the locals from yesterday took us to the spare part market today. We guess it was easier to take us there than to explain the way for us. We are still looking for rear lights for out Toppola. Camille, the restaurant owner’s daughter came with us to translate for us. But unfortunately we could not find any rear lights in the right shape and size.

This morning Catharina mentioned something about maybe getting a hearcut today. A few hours later we were approached by Marina, a hairdresser student looking for hair models. Great we thought and it was for free too.

Today we entered Europe again when we passed the bridge over the Ural River. Still we are far away, but in Europe after all. It actually feels kind of nice.

We drive very slowly towards the Russian border. Rumor has it that this part of the road is REALLY bad and we need plenty of time to cover the 300 kilometers to the border. We have no option, we just have to be at the order by tomorrow evening. Otherwise our Russian transit visa will expire before we reach Azerbaijan.

Kazakhstan has its own oilfields. This one is the Tenge filed. The very small part of the Tenge field we visited today had 80 pumps, and they take out 9 million ton of oil every year.

Found a great spot for camping by a very shallow lake with hundreds of horses roving around grassing.

This morning when we woke the car was rocking. Bert rushed out to see what was going on. It was just a cow was rubbing its neck against the car and licking the hood.

After a while two ice-cream eating policemen paid us a visit. They just wanted to check us out and see what we were doing there. Despite all the bad rumors we have not ran in to any problems with the police in the Stans. The only thing was the 6 US dollar we paid going in to Tajikistan, that was a scam and the customs going in to Uzbekistan it felt like they were trying to knick something and at a check point in Uzbekistan the asked for vodka, cigarettes and sun glasses – but they didn’t get any of it. Maybe we were just lucky or maybe they have bettered themselves.

In the afternoon we spent our last Kazakh money, filled up our car and went to the border. We exited Kasakhstan late in the evening. When we arrived at the Russian border it was 4,5 hour left to midnight. They finished all the paperwork but didn’t want to let us in to Russia until our transit visa was valid by midnight. We parked the car inside the border area and went to sleep.