28.04.09 Astrakhan

I left the White Lotus Hotel in downtown Elista about Midday, for the ride to Astrakhan. First stop was to pop into Elista Lada and say thanks to Zhenya, the Kalmyk Biker for all his help and to wish him luck for his ride down to Pyatigorsk on the weekend. There is a big biker meet there for all of southern Russia and the Caucasus and apparently hundreds of bikers will be converging on Pyatigorsk, including all the boys form Elista.

Zhenya took time off work and decided to ride with me to the edge of town. At the edge of town he spotted that a small oil leak that I had since eastern europe, was getting worse, immediately identified the problem as probably beieng a loose engine bolt, and zoomed back to his workshop to get a couple more tools. I had suspected it was a dodgy gasket, and had been preparing to order a new gasket to collect and fit in Tashkent or Almaty from a BMW dealer, but here at the side of the dusty highway, on Elista’s outskirts, Zhenya fixed the problem with some silicon gasket goop, some serviettes from a nearby cafe and an star head allen key. Once done he assured me it was not a problem, just vibrations had made the bolt loose and thats why oil was seeping out before patting me on the back and sending me on my way.

The road from Elista to Astrakhan can only be described as featureless. I dont know what was more featureless, the grassy treeless Kalmyk Steppe or the endless cloudless blue sky. The view for most of the afternoon was of just two colours, the sheet of green on the bottom half and the sheet of blue above. There were two or three towns on the way but only the first one, Yashkul,  seemed to have any life. The others barely had petrol, let alone any somewhere too eat. I pressed on towards Astrakhan. I had a little off road detour planned and was happy enough to eat up the miles till then.

That is except for my little detour …  todays “special stage”  … while planning back in London I had spotted what looked like a good 40 km detour off the main road that wound its way through the dunes, lakes and waterways of the Volga delta, only 50-60 km from Astrakhan.

Back on the highway I spotted the start of the detour (an unmarked pair of wheel ruts off to the right across the dunes). The first 6 km was a simple run into that looked like an abandoned Soviet village. There were a few abandoned industrial building and the houses all seemd to have the windows smashed out. Tumbleweeds blew down the dusty rutted dirt streets, yet there was astrange feeling that this village (marked as Prikaspiysky on one of my maps) was not actually abaondoned. Sure enough I did see a couple of old Lada Niva 4wds parked around town, but I couldnt imagine what the owners of them did there.

7km further on down a sealed road was a more normal town, Buruny, where I had to find another unmarked turn off into the dunes. This track from Buruny back to the highway at Kurchenko village was a great track (sandy in places and rocky in others) and worthy of my road highlights. All the dunes and waterways were pretty much east west, and the first part of the tracks was onto of a 20km long dune, with a finger lake on either side. It was a fun track and an interesting landscape. When the dune and the lake on the left ended, the the track wound its way northeast around smaller lakes and a few small (high speed) salt pans before eventually rejoining the highway.

I was now only 40 km from Astrakhan and Nogai hospitality comes into the story again here. Shamil, the guy I stayed with in Terekli Mekteb, had a sister Sofia in Astrakhan who works in TV news. She was planning to meet me on my arrival in Astrakhan with a TV crew. All I had to do was call when I was 30 mins away … which was now. But alas, my phone battery was dead. I tried charging it on the bike with my cigarette lighter to USB adapter I had bought before leaving and had used once in Austria when faced with the same problem – but it seemed the charger had not survived a month of severe vibrations in my baggage. I had no way to contact Sofia (who’s number was also in my dead phone) and so I rode into Astrakhan out of contact and privately kind of relieved that there would not be a TV welcome and the hassle of interviews.

I found a mobile phone shop in the centre of town and charged my phone. As soon as it had power, I tried calling, but as it happens I also had no balance left on my Russian pay as you go sim card. And I had no cash with which to top it up – until I got to a bankomat. I called with my UK number and Sofia and friend picked me up and took me to her friends place – a Kazakh grandmother with 10 grandchildren, many of whom seemed to live in her enormous new house near the centre of town. As you could by now expect, I was fed more and more and more food. The first 3 weeks of this trip had seen me lose weight and gradually take on a decent fit shape, but the weeks I have been in Russia have put an end to all that. I am almost back to my departure size.