Thank the lord that's over and done with...
The relief I feel at having that little episode behind me, thank god it's all over and I got anway with not following the rules!
I got my passport and Kazak visa back at about 6pm, after a painful couple of days at the embassy, and a stroke of extremely good luck.
I'm sure they've engineered a system there to make a relatively straight forward process as complex, slow, and painful as possible. There is no other way they could have implimented a system like the one they use.
Anyhoo, I headed to the border, and arrived as dusk was turning to night, and a friendly armed guard explained the the border crossing was for locals only, and they simply didn't have the capacity to process foreigners.
So I made the dangerous journey south to a place called Chinoz, then on to somewhere else, can't remember the name (I'll update when I have the bit of paper with it written on, maybe useful for someone).
Border had closed for the night, but amazingly, there was a very cheap, and excellent little 'hotel' a stones throw from the border. Spent the night there, and up at the crack of dawn for the crossing.
No mention at any point of any kind of registration, some problem with a missing certificate I should have been given on entry, stating how long I was entitled to have Honda in the country, but this was ignored eventually, and the English speaking guard assigned to me was more interested in football teams than certificates.
So that particular drama is over, and I'm so happy for it. I've been told that if exiting from the airport, they pratically open a detective case to ensure you've followed the registration process, often phoning the hotels you claim to have stayed at to confirm you were actually there when you said you were. I was also told of a Korean chap that was deported.
But in my case, on that day, at that crossing, I was all OK, no problems at all.
As a side note, West Kazakstan seems lovely, much more scenic and green than East. I was stopped for speeding yesterday, and shown a wonderful photo of Honda and I sweeping round a bend on a beautiful country road.
There was a brief mention of dollars, but as we chatted they talked themselves out of the fine, and sent me on my way with a flurry of smiles, good wishes and handshakes.
On even more of a tangent, I rode all day yesterday, was invited to a wedding, drank litres of extremely cheap string Russian vodka, danced, and made a microphone amplified speach in front of hundreds of guests that couldn't understand a single word of what I was saying. What fun.
I hope this post can be of some help to ease someones concerns if they find themselves in the situation I did.
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D&D, that post had me in stitches, great little story.
Be good to meet up again sometime..
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