Mayan Prophecy Countdown

3rd August, not a great deal happened, I spent all day in the café downstairs with the laptop, and finally, as you know, worked a way around the network censoring issue here in Kazakhstan. I did have it working in Uralsk via a program called TOR, which uses a multiple chain of proxies so it looks like I am not here in Kaz, but somewhere else in a different country. For some reason it was not working today and it was frustrating me no end. I had planned on this day for catch up and relax and do some research. But, I have contacts and a small group of Homeless people have designed a workaround. It was not intended for this purpose but something totally different, but when I checked and logged in, I am online and can get into the admin account again 🙂

So, that was late afternoon and I had been doing some research as well and in between writing some blog stuff ready for upload. So, with some well deserved success I managed to post something of my travels during Russia, only a week back. But I also had contact with some other people online with regards the south or north route. Basically the south is rough, but a chap(who claims he is mad) did it on a soft tail HD with a small tank, but camped many times. The other thing with that road is that there is nothing to really do and the Aral Sea area is still a bit dodgy. It seems when the lake was used up by irrigation, the lake shore receded over 100km, so the fishermen now try to survive in other ways. They have recently blocked a channel into the sea and now it has come back 40km to where it used to be. The two Italians I spoke to said they rode that track and it was bad corrugations and sand for 75km to get to see the ships graveyard with quite a few falls along the way.

The northern route as indicated by Craig is the safer option all around. He is riding with his wife as pillion and so they went north after hearing about the bad south route. I will not make a decision until tomorrow, I was staying another night, but I still have a long way to go to get home, so am leaning towards the safer option.

Tonight was a repeat of last night, upstairs to the rooftop bar where they know me and already had my beer ready and pointed to the picture of food I had last night, why change it if it ain’t broke 🙂 So, another late night with another nice sunset

The 4th August was the same as yesterday, down in the café, in the aircon with the only difference was the lunchtime meal, I saw a picture of what looked like sausages and chips and went for it, well it was but I have a feeling I was eating Dobbin, yep horse snags. They were served up on a horse looking hot metal plate as well, which gave the game away. They were very gristly and fatty, the taste was OK, but they need a finer mincing machine 🙂

The evening was a repeat of last night but a very early bed time, but because Gennardi and Anastasia rocked in late afternoon, we worked out with the lady at the desk about an early breakfast for 6am, as I had during the day decided that I may be a wuss, but I am taking the northern route. It is a longer route but more trafficked so if there are issues I should be able to sort them out. Travelling solo I do get a tad nervous at times, but if I can limit the unforseen problems to the minimum, then I should be right. The major issue I have is my bike, it is low with not much ground clearance, so if I can limit the deep sand sections or cut them out altogether, then I am happier, it is a heavy bike to pick up and in these temperatures, I would be knackered after about three attempts.

Cheers from, Aktobe
TravellingStrom