Day 49: Kazakhstan Border

August 29th, 2009

We weren't too worried about this border, it's the main one going into this part of Kazakhstan so it should be fairly straight forward. We arrived at about 9:00 am, where, after waiting at the gate for 15 minutes, the guard finally strolled over to tell us the border wouldn't open "again" until 10:00.


 Ok, so we laid in the dirt for 45 minutes, till 10:00 where we were ushered in for the now familiar process of:
















1. Go to this room, show passport, get paper
2. Fill out paper. Make error. Start over.
3. Present paper to "Passport Control" Get scrutinized, stamp: pass
4. Customs contol. Present paper, stamp, stamp, stamp: Pass
5. Back outside, Vehicle inspection, stamp: pass
6. Final gate. Show them paper, more stamps: pass, now Free from Russia

7. Present passport to Kazakhstan side
8. Fill out paper. Make error. Start over.
9. stamp, paper, stamps, show passport etc. etc. etc.

You get the idea.















When we get asked a question or it looks like they are about to ask something, we shrug our shoulders and look dumb. It's not hard when you don't understand what they are saying. This usually results in them thinking that whatever they were going to ask us isn't likely that important to try, so they just let us go. We learned this one early in our trip. Look dumb, say ":I don't understand" in Russian, and they let you move on.

So after our fastest border crossing yet (1.5 hours, not including the 45 minutes waiting in the dirt), we were through and officially in Kazakhstan!

I've stopped repoting when we get rain, because all the blogs would look the same.

1. Saw cool stuff
2. Got rained on
3. Saw more cool stuff
4. Got rained on.

So, it rained on us again, but this time, we got a nice picture out of it.















We drove a bit more KM's to Semipalatinsk (Semi for short), where we booked into a fairly decent hotel. Cory and Petar worked on Petars bike, which has been having some major cooling issues. I went to bed.

183 km Today