We were on the road by 7:45 am and travelled for two hours before finding a suitable café (kafe) for breakfast where the usual two eggs, sausages and bread was the standard serving. This was received with a degree of tolerance as the standard breakfast. Nestle iced green tea has become a favourite beverage and can be found in the café fridge next to the beer and vodka.

The traffic flows have increased, presumably as we are getting closer to

Moscow. The volume of truck traffic seemed to out number the cars. At one point while Greg was videoing we got run off the road by a “Kamaz” truck. Greg thought he had dropped the camera down as we took evasive action but this was not the case and it was all fully captured on film.

We endured multiple police stops which were no problem but as we head west they are becoming more demanding in seeing our licences and vehicle documentation. The novelty of these stops has now well worn off, especially when we get two within one kilometre as we move from one district to another. But we must continue to smile and speak lots of English which they don’t understand, to the point where we become too hard for them to deal with and they wave us on with a flick of their striped pogo sticks.

We arrived in

Kazan mid afternoon. We had received good instructions re the location of Hotel Regina where we were staying and drove straight there. We met up with the rest of the group here and they had only arrived a couple of hours before us. We also had a two hour time change (backwards) and were now on

Moscow time.

After a very welcome shower we got a taxi into the city to view the sights. The main attraction is

Kazan’s Kremlin, which is a Unesco world heritage site. It is also the Tatar head of state government. The Tatar people make up about 60 percent of the population of

Kazan.

Kazan is a strikingly beautiful and clean city with a very high security presence which made us feel very safe in walking around. The walking precinct of ul Baumana was buzzing with activity. The stunning architecture of the old buildings dominates the city and there is a lot of restoration underway.

We had an evening meal at one of the many restaurant bars and met a Danish chap, Kenneth, who works in

Kazan. He was able to interpret for us and joined us for dinner. It was very interesting listening to his perspective on Kazan and local life and politics.

We got a taxi back to the hotel about 10 pm after a very memorable and enlightening time in

Kazan. Shortly after walking into the hotel a spectacular thunder and lightening storm arrived, thank goodness we were not in our tents tonight.

Daryl and Greg.

We had planned a 7:00 am start but the lure of a hotel breakfast was too great so got on the road at 7:30 am and we had no issues departing the city as traffic was still relatively light at that time on a Saturday morning.

We had a lot of distance to cover today so progress was important. The roads were however proving to be not that good and combined with lots of traffic and some very rough patches of road our progress was slow.

As we moved into the

Ural Mountains we expected hills and terrain that would be quite defining but other than undulating road the driving was easy and not what we had expected. In actual fact it was quite an anti climax.

The mineral wealth of the area was quite evident today with small oil wells and drilling machinery dotting the country side. Many of the oil wells were surrounded by grazing dairy cows in lush green pasture.

By early evening we were following a lake which brought us to a small resort type town where lots of people appeared to be holidaying and having fun. We found a restaurant in the area that was abuzz with activity and stopped there for dinner. The staff made us feel extremely welcome and even though they spoke no English and the menu was in Russian we still managed to get nice meal. They insisted on photos and one young chap even did a good sales job in selling each of us a traditional Russian whistle for 120 roubles i.e. $6 NZ dollars.

We attempted to establish if there was a camp ground in the area but drew a blank. At one point we think that they thought we wanted to buy tents. Once back on the road two further enquiries for camp grounds proved to be fruitless. We also had another two police stops and it was approaching 10:30 pm by this time, but darkness was still at least an hour away.

We found a suitable camp site hidden away off the road about 11:30 pm and pitched our tents quickly as once again the mozzies saw us as their evening meal. We had covered 800 kms for the day and had been on the road for 16 hours so we were very glad to crawl into our sleeping bags.

Daryl and Greg

As there were no problems with the cars we had the opportunity to spend a day looking at the sights of Yekaterinburg.

The city has a population of around 1.3 million & dates back to the early 1700’s. It’s known as the economic & cultural capital of the Urals region.

However it’s best known for its bloody history. Most recently with high profile Mafia killings but more significantly what happened in 1918. At a spot near the city centre Tsar Nicholas ll & his family were executed.

The Bolsheviks murdered the Romanov family on the 16^th of July 1918. Not all of the bodies were recovered, leading to speculation that the youngest daughter Anastasia had somehow escaped. On this site there is now the massive Byzantine-style ‘Church of the Blood’.

The city became a major industrial centre during WW2 as hundreds of factories were transferred from vulnerable areas west of the Urals. It was closed to foreigners until 1990 because of its many defense plants.

So we spent the day walking about the central city visiting more than a few of the local bars & eateries. Like a lot of the Russian cities its ‘work in progress’, with much needed redevelopment taking place everywhere we looked.

The people we met were friendly & helpful. A stop at ‘Gordon’s Bar’ (a Scottish pub!) saw us meet up with an American who is overseeing the dismantling of old style Russian nuclear reactors.

Later that evening outside the hotel we met 3 guys riding from Vladivostok to

Germany on their motorbikes. Two were German & one from

Alaska. Like us they were having a great time in

Russia.

Then it was out to yet another restaurant/bar (tough life!) before returning to the hotel.

 

An early start for the next day’s long drive.

Dallas

  

To those that have been following our progress, our internet access in Russia has been challenging to say the least. Some of our recent postings have appeared incorrectly on the site (missing text and text under the wrong days) but hopefully we have fixed this. It may have been a “lost in translation” problem. Our use of Russian commands on the computer is improving. We are doing our utmost to update the site as often as is possible.

Thank you for following our progress. 

Daryl, Greg, Geoff and Dallas