Thursday, 15 October 2026

 

Start: Atyrau (KZ) 7:45

Arrival: Astrakhan (RU) 16:30

 

Total: 385 km

 

 

We're back in Russia! Lying on the bed in Astrakhan, I'm heaving a sigh of relief. This day was a tiny bit more exhausting than expected.

 

The day didn't start too great. When we came down from our room at dawn, a "set plate" covered with plastic film was waiting for us downstairs at the breakfast table. Two slices of untoasted toast, a hardboiled egg, some cold cuts and a sugary yoghurt-like thing. Altogether not very appetizing. I put away the boiled egg for later and headed to the coffee machine. The inn keeper came over. "Cappuccino?" she asked. No, plain black. Nope, cappuccino was all they had. How can a coffee machine not have americano or espresso, and yet be able to produce a cappuccino? I sighed. "Let's just hit the road."

 

 

The town of Atyrau proved a desolate affair. Shack-like houses, dust and chaotic traffic. I played at don't-let-the-line-cutters-in. Something fun to pass the time. The annoyed honking kept me awake too.

 

Atyrau has one thing - and one thing only - in common with Istanbul: it stretches over two continents, Europe and Asia. When we crossed the Ural River, Sonia snapped a pic. Yay, we were in Europe again! Technically, at least. The landscape still screamed "Central Asia". Dusty cement plumes rising over the endless steppe, construction works forcing us for miles at a stretch over uneven, stony terrain. A challenge for both our tires and undercarriage. But our car took it like a pro.

 

 

Sonia tried to immortalize the interesting driving conditions through a photograph, but most of them turned out blurry or undescript. One has to experience it firsthand. In any case, I don't see how the Pamir Highway could be any more challenging. At least there you don't have to manoeuvre around heavy machinery, trucks and impatient SUVs.

 

The road to the border took longer than expected. AI had led us to believe that the highway to the border was smooth riding all the way, but it really wasn't. One particularly treacherous thing were the looks-like-a-dual-carriageway parts. The two lanes for the oncoming traffic were mostly closed, so approaching cars had to use our passing lane. As traffic was often sparse between towns, and they had not put up any signs warning us that there might be oncoming traffic, we were more than once suddenly surprised by a car approaching in our lane. If you were unlucky, there were even two cars, one passing the other.

 

 

We shared the road with trucks, tractors, the odd pedestrian running across and even one intrepid cyclist. Poor guy! The headwind was no joke. Northern Kazakhstan has a lot of livestock, so camels and horses crossing the road all by themselves at a leisurely pace are nothing special either. Rather more special was a car making a left turn at a crossing, about fifty metres in front of me. I was prepared for him getting in in front of me, but no: the driver chose to drive on the left gravel shoulder instead, inches from the oncoming cars. Sonia and I laughed. Funny guy, maybe a Brit? After half a minute or so, we had almost reached his position. At that moment, a truck thundered by in the other lane and the ghost-driver made a sharp right, cutting just before the truck into my lane. I swerved right and pushed the pedal down. Luckily, my car accelerated promptly and we avoided a collision. Was he nuts? He must have seen me on the otherwise flat and empty road. If this was a horror movie, I'd say he had meant to slam into me. Shaking my head, I drove on. Soon the crazy bloke passed our car. I made a note of the licence plate and what he looked like. You never know.

 

At its closest, the Caspian Sea lies only about ten kilometres from the road, but we never saw a hint of water. The steppe however undulated into something like sand dunes. One might have thought this was the Curian Spit.

 

 

 

Around 1 pm, we reached the border. Only four cars in front of us. I breezed through the Kazakh border formalities, they didn't even want to see the luggage. Then I waited ten minutes for Sonia to cross on foot, and once we were reunited, we drove on. And on. Where was the Russian border? After about five minutes, we began to hope they might have a Schengen-like agreement with this part of Kazakhstan, but no: soon we saw the line of trucks, got behind a car in a make-shift car-lane, and then came a very unpleasant two hours. The only highlight were two French trucks passing by us. They looked pleasantly surprised when they recognized our Luxembourgish licence plate and waved at us. They probably wondered why two Luxembourgish women were driving around this part of the world, just as much as we wondered the same about their trucks.

 

The border officials made all the cars wait for half an hour in the baking heat, and when we were finally allowed into the customs area, our car was waved to the side. Passport control, then again a "short" interview inside a crammed little booth. This time, Sonia was not allowed to wait in the car. I found the questions harmless enough, if somewhat annoying. How on Earth do you answer something like: "Do you have friends in other countries than Luxembourg?" I was tempted to say: "I don't have friends, I prefer books", but I was worried to come across as an unhinged loner. The interviewer, a young guy who was actually rather polite I thought, wanted to see my phone. Be my guest. "Why don't you have a password on it?" he asked. How to explain in Russian that I once forgot my password, got annoyed about it and am glued to my phone anyway? That I keep anything that the world is not allowed to see in my head and not on my phone? I shrugged. He scrolled through my pics, clearly not expecting a more elaborate answer. Then Sonia's phone. "Why is hers turned off?" he asked. His mum must have loved him when he was a kid. Champion of never-would-have-thought-of-that question. "She never uses it", I explained. "What an unpleasant situation", Sonia complained in Luxembourgish to me. I shrugged. I was pretty sure he was more annoyed by my gratingly bad Russian than I by his questions. "Why did you learn Russian?" he asked. I set out on a long-winded tale of my love for complicated grammar and an old school book I had found by chance. "But why do you want to visit Russia?" he cut in. Mate, because I'm a contrarian by nature and everybody gangs up on your country, so I try not too? I put it a lot more diplomatically than that, though he was rather exasperating. I wanted to say: Great art and literature, cultured people, chic cafés, great food, beautiful buildings - why would we not want to visit? But he was already handing me back the phones. "Please wait in the car."

 

"I want my passport back", Sonia complained to me while we waited. "And why are we not allowed to leave?" Because the world is at war, my dear. Russia had given us a tourist visa, no questions asked. Now they wanted to make sure that we were no threat to anybody before they let us freely roam their land. Easy enough to understand.

 

After fifteen minutes - just enough time for their guys to call our guys? - a border guard appeared, took all of ten seconds to scrutinize the innards of our car, handed us back the stamped passports and wished us a pleasant trip. Welcome back to Russia!

 

 

 

 

The landscape changed with the border. Trees and grassland replaced the dusty steppe. "My eyes were longing for some trees", Sonia sighed happily. We were driving through the large Volga delta, the endpoint of the most iconic of Russian rivers, which we had last seen almost two months ago in Kazan. The sky was overcast, threatening rain. We couldn't have been happier. Yes, NOW we were truly back in Europe. Not in the Southern Mediterranean part with its sun and beaches, but among the more northern windswept copses that felt like home. The interviewer had asked why we wanted to visit Russia. This last month, I had rather asked myself why I had wanted to visit Central Asia. This was so much more to my liking.

 

 

We crossed many small rivers. Bridges galore, nothing to write home about. We were eagerly anticipating the one crossing that stood out: The pontoon bridge over the Buzan river at Krasny Yar, one of Europe's few pontoon bridges for vehicles. I had a blast driving over it! Sonia filmed the entire two minutes it took us to cross. The pontoons undulated on the fast-flowing river, we had such fun! Mr Interview Man, THIS is one of the many reasons I want to visit Russia, again and again!

 

We rolled into Astrakhan. This was unmistakably a Russian city, large sidewalks, beautiful buildings, the kremlin and several elegant Orthodox churches forming a pretty skyline from our hotel rising high above the Volga. Tomorrow, we will visit the town. Looking forward to it.