13/8/2016

The idea is to quickly make breakfast, load the bikes and go, but remains an idea.
Accomplices numerous passages in the bathroom by Sabrina and movements slowed because of the heat, we say bye to Aral just past noon.
600 km of smooth asphalt and we arrive in to Aqtobe in the evening.
The only thing of the day worth telling is the newly bought drink: Top Russian Lemonade.
When I see the two coming out from the store laughing with the bottle in their hand, I enter the door and I go out a minute later with my usual iced tea: shortly after they hide from me, while spilling to the ground their purchase and drinking mine...













14/8/2016

"Direct road to Atyrau is very very bad, if you go to Uralsk and then Atyrau is good"

The first 100-150 km is not bad either, then it descends suddenly and ceases to be a road.
The side tracks by side, in the steppe, are undoubtedly easier and even fun.
The drink of the day is called frizz something, but I pretend not to notice that they have bought it otherwise this time I should force them to drink it all... of course when I hear Roberto say "but it is sparkling!" it's hard to ignore it

15/8/2016

We wake up early in Sagiz, but no one cares about our presence in the place where we slept, as if we didn't exist. With breakfast, make Roberto and Sabrina moving is a difficult task and time passes: I get angry.
The last two days were not the best, and today's program would be challenging: you can not lose hours like that, I think, and I bark on them all my tiredness and frustration.
Actually I feel a little responsibility for the effort that was made, the heat that has been taken, and perhaps I am also a bit worried about what lies ahead: to do this we need to be charged and motivated.
Roberto gets on the bike and comes back after half an hour with 10 liters of water and a canister for gasoline, I still grumble a bit, but finally we decided to leave.
But first we must buy gasoline and fussy attendant refuses to pour it into the canister, which is actually a 10-liter plastic tank for coolant liquid.
The only solution is to make a transfer biketank-canister and then put gasoline again at the gas station in the bike tank.
In the operation, perhaps to make up for the lack of breakfast, Roberto drinks a good cup of 92 octane.

The detour is a few kilometers away, in Mukur, then by a disastrous and little-used road we enter a even more disastrous and even less popular one: the craters here are huge and very deep and the side tracks are the only option.
We find a small village, four houses and eight camels, and we check if we can find a few more liters of gasoline.
"How much do you need?" asks the ambulance driver (even today I wonder why there is an ambulance there: in case of need, where will it ever bring you?)
"7 liters in total" I reply
he points out the tank of his vehicle and says that we can take it from there: the guy is nice and he even doesn't overcharge us..















Not long after comes the crossroad: when we see the road turn right and bitumen lake on the left, we know we need to get out at all from the road and follow the tracks.
Going a bit up we see it from a distance, our goal, the Aktolagai Plateau







The view is already a great feeling, but we need to get there: the tracks are good initially, then decrease a bit. It's clear that other exist, more recently created, but we don't know where they lead and then we follow those registered in open street maps. The problem is not the bottom or the track itself, but the vegetation which has recovered his space, and then for kilometers we ride pulling up everything: grass, shrubs, small trees ...
"Dominator, in the best gardening shops!"
We make it, and arrived at the foot of the limestone formations we go in search of the pyramid we had seen in photographs at home before leaving.
I smell something burning and see smoke coming from the bike: all the stuff pulled up, in contact with hot engine, is starting to fire up and my bike is going to end up like that of Goncalves in Dakar a couple of years ago.
Fortunately I realized in time and turn off the everything is easy, but it is a clear sign of the fact that we will search for the pyramid the next day and it's time to set up the tent ..