A big old place!

From Atyrau (in the West), we had around 9 days to get across to Almaty (in the East). This doesn't sound like a lot to cross most countries, but Kazakhstan is the 9th largest country in the world and the roads are not always that great. Combine it with the fact that in order to get from one side of it to the other, one has to zig zag up and down it and that there aren't too many towns to stop off at and all of a sudden, we had quite a number of big days to do to cover the 2200 miles to our destination.

On the first morning, we tried to visit the Caspian Sea, but the road was just so horrendous that it would have taken hours to cover the final 12km to the coast, so we headed back into town to prepare for the long road up to Aqtobe without any fuel stations or towns along the way. This was to be a 600km section, a large part of which was on unsurfaced and pot-holed roads. Our bikes have a fuel range of 450km, so we each bought jerry cans to carry extra fuel and large bottles of water to keep us hydrated.

The road to Aqtobe did not disappoint in terms of being unsurfaced! The pot-holes were massive and required us to zig-zag around them constantly until it got to the point where there was just no road at all, so we headed for the parallel sand roads that the cars and trucks took. Riding on sand isn't easy, so we were slowed right down to just 40km/h. Every 70km or so, there were roadside café/diners, so we still managed to eat well enough and get cold drinks every couple of hours.
Around halfway, we stopped for the evening near to a café in the middle of nowhere and camped. Within seconds of setting up camp, some locals had tracked us down and started looking around, pointing and asking questions (which we did not understand). They were out collecting animal dung to burn on fires and half an hour later, their brother turned up on a motorcycle with a side car to pick them up.
In the morning, after a relatively comfortable night's camp, we went to the café for breakfast and then headed on our way for another long, slow day. Riding off-road is very tiring, but there are no choices but to just continue on. Turning back only presents more bad roads, but eventually we got to Aqtobe, both exhausted, but glad to have seen the back of dirt roads for a while... ...or so we thought.
After the gruelling ride up to Aqtobe, we spent 2 nights there to refresh ourselves as, as far as we were concerned, we had a straight with 4-5 nights' stop offs for our run down to Almaty. Aqtobe was another expensive place to visit, but when you get into town late, it's getting dark and you're tired, it's easier just to give in and pay rather than hunt around for accommodation for hours on end.
So, well rested, we began our cruise down to Almaty, with the first day being a 600km ride down to Aral. By 11am, we had completed 300km and looked forward to arriving in Aral at 2pm, checking into a hotel, looking around...
...but no! Suddenly, the perfectly surfaced road, where we had been averaging over 100km/h ended! It did not become pot-holed like, but just turned to gravel, bumps and nothing. It was also a likely sign that there would not be fuel for some time, and, as we had not expected this, we were not carrying any extra. Some 150km and 4 hours later, it was still a very poorly surfaced track (the word road here would be inappropriate), there had been no towns to pick up food or cold drinks, the fuel reserve light had been on for over 100km and there were hardly any other cars/trucks in sight. Hmmm.
At this point, I went over a big bump as I was too tired to avoid it and two of the bolts on my rear sub-frame (basically, what holds the seat on!), sheared, and the seat slowly collapsed onto the rear wheel. I was only going 30km/h at the time, so ground to a halt to gather my thoughts. Jim, who was riding up ahead of me, came back to give me a hand and we had replaced the bolts with new, super strong ones within around half an hour and were back on the road.
Eventually, we stumbled across a farm, where we hoped that they may have had some fuel, but no such luck. But they did tell us that there was a fuel station 25km down the road. We rode, being as gentle as we could on the accelerator. Our odometers were reading 269 miles when we finally got there. As we'd been riding quite quickly on the silky smooth road earlier in the day, we hadn't expected to get more than 280 miles from a tank, so a refill was most welcome. The fuel station involved a man woken from his Sunday afternoon nap siphoning the log grade petrol out of a barrel into a jerry can which we then poured into our bikes. The cost was more than double anything else that we had paid in Kazakhstan, but at least we were back on the road. The bumpy road! The road kept catching us out. Just as we thought that it was surfaced again, the potholes returned, then went away and then back again.
Finally, after a further 150km of bumps, we hobbled into Aral at 9pm. The hotel was horrendous and overpriced. It was so bad that we didn't even go into the bathroom for fear of coming out dirtier than when we went in! Dinner was underwhelming, so we went to bed hungry and grumpy.
An early start saw us out of the hotel before the bugs could wake up and, today, the road was a fair bit better than the day before, although there were fairly frequent interludes of pot-holes. Jim realized that the shock absorber for the rear of his bike had gone and was feeling all of the bumps. Meanwhile, I noticed that one of the 4 sub-frame bolts had fallen out of my bike and another was loose! I had no spare, so made a temporary fix to the one that had fallen out and began a regular but tiresome and necessary routine of avoiding bumps and stopping every 50 miles to tighten the loose bolt. It was a rather uncomfortable feeling that out of 4 bolts, having 2 replacement ones, one missing and the other loose, but it worked out OK (and was more permanently fixed at the next big town).
At around half distance, we came across a roadside café, where we were delighted to find cold drinks and surprised to be greeted in English by a group of 3 French, American and British people being shown around by a young Kazakh girl. These were the first westerners that we had seen in a good couple of weeks. We exchanged stories and off they went, whilst we caught our breath from the tiring (but not yet finished) day.
Then, 10 minutes later, along come a German couple who were overlanding in a Toyota 4x4! They had travelled around Central Asia over the past 18 months and were almost home. We chatted with them for an hour or so, fascinated by their adventures and picking up plenty of recommendations along the way. Finally, we got back on the road(!), in, what must have been around 45 degree heat and we were back to dodging pot-holes and tightening my bolts every couple of miles.
Three to four days later, after some unremarkable towns (one of which whenever we told people that we were tourists, they looked at us surprised that tourists came to their town!), we were within sight of Almaty. The roads got better and better, as we skirted around Kyrgyzstan, through stunning mountain roads and into the city where psychotic Kazakh drivers take lunacy to a new level.