The Russian Federation

There was something of a queue getting into Russia, but being on bikes, we always got sent to the front of the queue. A man with a big hat greeted us and we went through a series of steps from immigration forms to customs to motorcycle registration to Green Card (insurance) to changing money and then onto a final stage, which we still don't know what was but involved giving over all of the paperwork obtained so far and having it plugged into a computer by a 'two-finger' typist. All in all, the process seemed to move along, but in total it took around 3 hours.
Still catching up on time, we moved through Russia in 3 days, covering another 1000km. Much the same as the Ukraine, the roads and driving were excellent, although we were now being stopped by the police more and more frequently.
We were getting familiar with the procedure now:
1) They wave their baton at us to stop and as we are pulling up they get on their mobile phones.
2) We pull over, take off our helmet and gloves (carefully placing gloves over the GPS so as not to attract attention).
3) They say something to us in Russian.
4) We make out that we don't understand (which we don't) and say England.
5) They ask for paperwork for us and the bikes.
6) They use the international sign for 'want to give us some money' which is rubbing the thumb and forefingers against eachother.
7) We make out that we don't understand and ask for directions as a distraction.
8) By this time, their friends that they phoned in '1' above have turned up.
9) They have a closer look and out come the camera phones.
10) After the photo session, we say OK and wave and get on our bikes.
11) The police use one of 2 internationally known gestures to say 'go faster' or 'do a wheelie'.
12) Off we go for the next 20 minutes until we are next pulled over and have to play the game all over again! All very friendly, but it does waste a lot of time.

The standard of hotels in Russia was pretty poor and the prices were quite high at around USD 90 per night. Some of the places that we stopped were quite vibrant in the evenings, again with scantily clad girls everywhere and the men offering us Russian Brides! And, no, we were not in the red light district. The food wasn't up to much either, but that could have something to do with language.
As we headed eastwards across Russia, we arrived in a small city called Elista. Here, everything looked different. The faces were Asian, there was oriental architecture and plenty of 'hooting' from the cars. It seemed that we had arrived in Asia and it was totally unexpected at this point. There seemed to be a lot of interest and enthusiasm among the locals for us and our bikes, with people coming up to us to shake our hands. Now it really felt like we had gone far. The landscape hadn't changed but we were obviously somewhere different. The locals that we spoke to still seemed proud of the Russian Federation. It would have been interesting to have found out if the people were migrants from Kazakhstan, but the language barrier prevented us from finding out. Our final destination in Russia was a border town called Astrakhan. It took us 3 hours to find a hotel as we just couldn't identify what was a hotel from the outside. That, combined with the fact that there only appeared to be 3 hotels in town made it very hard work. The first was almost $200. The second was the one that we settled on, although it still wasn't exactly cheap and the rooms were very poor. The third, we never found! It also seems to be hard to work out where the centre of these towns is as there are no signs and everybody that you ask seem to think that where they are is the centre of things!
Following our long day we had an al fresco dinner, watching the locals chatting and dancing, and then called it a day in anticipation of our entry to Kazakhstan.