Barnaul, Russia
p87: we spent a good day and a half in Almaty to rest up, we snoozed the morning away and was needed. The next day we decided to drive to Semey in one day which was over 1000 km’s of rough roads, some roads were nice rolling hills in the mountains, some plain flat grasslands. We caught up with NAG Mongols and Pommes express. We had a small convoy with the NAG’s but only because they would not let us pass them :)…at that point it was starting to get late and decided to go to barnaul overnight. The road going in to semey at night was aweful… Lights on the truck are poor and was a dangerous experience due to no road markings and stupid dazzling lights passing cars. eventually got to the border at 2am and was out within 3 hours, they rushed us which was refreshing, but while filling out our declaration forms dan wrote a note on the office window for the nag team to see and to wind them up saying we were number one. At 5am we were through and we sat outside the border drinking coffee and were could see the NAG team still on the kazak side. We seemed to have a bit of luck with that border, even though dan upset the border guard by driving through the stop sign. We are now in barnaul and we have driven around 1000 miles almost, so we are a bit worked up. Tommorow we hit the mongolia border. Total stops: 16, 1 fine, 0 bribes, 1 souvenier and today we had 34 hours on the road inc border. Time for sleep!
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