Getting in to Kazakhstan

The aim when going across a border is to do so early in the morning, but we got off to a slow start and didn't get to the Russian/Kazakhstan border until around noon, which was only 50 miles from Astrakhan.
Getting out of Russia was relatively painless. Although we went to the front of the queue, we still seemed to end up waiting around in the heat for the best part of an hour. We chatted with some of the Kazakhstan locals (neither of us understanding very much, but plenty of pointing and hand waving). We noticed that a number of them had rows of gold teeth, although it would be some time before we understood why as we didn't consider it to be something that would be opted for.
When we finally got to the beginning of the Russian exit process, a couple of questions, some tap tapping on the computer and then the delightful sound of the stamp in the passports and we were off through no man's land to Kazakhstan. We followed a trail, along a gravel road for around 4-5 miles until we reached a river with a queue of cars and trucks waiting to cross. There was a platform being pushed by a barge to ferry people across, so another wait (despite more queue jumping) and we were at the gates of Kazakhstan. Evidently, the Russians had kept us waiting as there was a big queue and something of a wait at the Kazakhstan side and they hadn't wanted things backed up any more. Two coaches were in front of us, so we knew we were in for a long wait as each of the 50-odd passengers had to be processed.
Finally, around 2 hours later, we were invited to begin the process. It started with immigration form filling, then after a bit of a wait, we got to the passport desk, which was easy enough for us, but plenty of questions and paperwork required for the bikes. Three quarters of an hour later and we were told to go to the 'red building'. On our way, we were told to go to the white one first! So, off we went, and after 45 minutes each of our hand written customs forms being typed up and then printed out, we were asked for $20 each. This didn't seem normal. It seemed that we were being charged for a form filling service, so we left the white building and after a smirk from the customs official, filled out the forms ourselves, took them to the red building and 5 minutes later, all was done and we were on our way. We had almost fallen for one of their scams, but foiled it at the final hurdle!
It was now around 5pm (or so we thought) and we still had 300km to ride to our evening stop at Atyrau. Another late arrival.
As we cleared the Kazakhstan side of the border, we rode all of 1km before being stopped by a policeman who wanted to see our paperwork. Obviously, the fact that we'd just been through scrutinisation at the border should have indicated that all was in order and that we were legitimate, but still, he wanted to take some details for his little notebook. More delays and we were finally on our way.
The roads were not as good as the Ukraine and Russia, but good enough. A few small pot holes, but at least we didn't get stopped again.
A couple of hours later, we rolled into Atyrau, our first Kazakhstan city. It was surprisingly clean and the locals that we asked for directions were all friendly.
It was quite an effort just to find a hotel, of which there only seemed to be a small handful, all of which were considerably more expensive than we'd expected. Kazakhstan is the third world, so paying over $50 certainly would not have been expected. Paying almost $100 seemed outrageous, but we were soon to find out that (apart from petrol at 40p a litre), it is not a cheap country to visit at all!

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.

The Ukraine

Finally having cleared the border at around 6pm and having bought some Hryvnia (the local currency), we aimed to get in one or two hundred kilometres to catch up on yet more lost time.
The Ukraine has great roads, well surfaced and the driving is good - much better than in Romania. The landscape, whilst being fairly flat is green and there is a fair bit of agriculture. Temperatures started to hot up a little, although we did have a couple of days of getting soaked. There must have been a fairly big storm as for the next 1500km, we saw large puddles and
flooding by the side of the road.
The people that we saw in towns all seemed friendly and non-confrontational. Most of the younger men seem to wear singlets whilst the girls wear - well, not a lot!
There was not a Kalashnikov in sight. No undercover agents following us. No agenda to make our trip difficult! We did have our first encounter with the police, but that was only to ask where we were going and to take a look at the bikes.
As we were catching up on time, almost 1000km in 3 days saw us through to Russia the Russian border. Getting out of the Ukraine was a breeze, with some paperwork checks, a half-hearted search of the bikes and some questions on whether we had any weapons or narcotics. We then we rode across 'no mans land' to the Russian border some 2-3 km later.

Let me out of Romania!

Here's where things started to go awry!
After a 30 minute exit border from Romania, the Moldavians didn't want to
let us in with an Australian passport without a visa, so a further half hour
later, we were sent back to Romania, where we had to wait for an hour to be
allowed back in. So, that was 2 hours wasted. All that we had wanted to do
was to ride 1km through Moldavia to the Ukraine border but that was
obviously too simple.
We were told that we could pick up a visa further north at a border crossing
called Oancea, so we headed straight up.
On the way up to Oancea, the fuel pump broke on one of the bikes, so we
managed to find a flat-bed truck to pick us up and take us to a garage. This
turned out to be a car repair shop, but fortunately, there was a mechanic
there who knew his bikes. After a spot of luck, it turned out that they
actually had a part that we needed in stock from a car and it fitted. We
looked at the part numbers and it looked the same, so we had it fitted. Two
hours later, we were back on the road, in search of visas!
To cut a long story short, when we got to Oancea, we left through the
Romanian border but Moldavia said that they didn't issue visas but we could
go 600km round trip to Bucharest. Another 2 hours later, we were back in
Romania yet again.
We decided to give Moldavia a miss and take something of a detour and head
north directly into the Ukraine.
When we finally got up to this border at Siret, we exited Romania (a process
with which we were both now familiar), but Ukraine also decided that
Australian passports needed a visa. This did not align to what we had been
told by the Ukraine embassy in London, but we had no choice but to make an
80km round trip back to Suceava to get the visa.
Upon arrival at the Ukraine consulate, we were told that they would be
closed. For 5 days! For the weekend and bank holidays. After a lot of
pleading and suggestion of us paying a special fee, we got the visa and
headed for the Ukraine border yet again. Next, the border guards told us
that we needed a green card, but they could not sell us one. The green card
companies in Romania would not issue one as our vehicles were UK registered,
so we were in a pickle!
We met a young Romanian who spoke English and combined with a Ukrainian who
spoke Romanian, our double interpreters managed to sort out a green card for
us. Phew! We had thought that our trip was over. There was no way that we
could have got a green card for the Ukraine issued for us from London.
After 5 hours that day at the borders, we were in the Ukraine, waiting to
see Kalashnikovs and corrupt police.

Romania - from the Red Lake to the Black Sea

The border crossing into Romania was a relatively simple affair and we
headed across to Hunedoara for the first night.
Immediately, there had been a deterioration in the standard of driving, the
quality of the road surface and in the number of fairly big accidents.
Whilst this was initially of concern, we just rode more defensively. Use of
the horse and cart in Romania is still common with the gipsies, who
frequently lined the streets selling honey or fruit. There were certainly a
number of villages that we rode through in which we would NOT have wanted to
have broken down in! The countryside was very green and lush.
As we pressed on the next day, we stopped in a town called Sibiu, where it
turned out that there were two major events on - the 'Romaniacs' off-road
motorcycling tour and a heavy metal goth gathering. This was an interesting
combination, so we had a look around before heading up to Transylvannia, to
a town called Gheorghieni.
Along the way (where driving had improved, albeit only slightly), we noticed
that whilst the surface of the main road was potholed but OK, the side roads
in the towns were all dirt tracks, even though there were brick houses along
them. This is still a poor country in places, yet there were plenty of
expensive cars on the roads, so I expect that there are extremes of wealth.
We could never really work out what the country's main industry was.
We got soaked in Transylvannia as it rained non-stop, which meant that we
didn't get to see as much. There was little apparent in the way of castles,
although the gorges at Lacu Rossu were impressive (but touristy on a
Sunday!).
Our next stop was to zig zag down to the Black Sea to see the coast line as
neither of us had been to an inland sea before. We stayed in a town called
Saturn (the sea-side towns are all called after planets here). It was
unusual in that the sea was dead calm. The beaches were packed and pretty
tacky, but interesting to see.
We headed north again to the Danube Delta, which was a stunning area to ride
around, but there was little opportunity to stop and look around. After an
afternoon chilling out by a hotel pool, we targeted Moldavia to get to the
Ukraine.

Serbia (...almost)

We left from Pecs in Southern Hungary for Serbia early in the morning. The border crossing to Croatia was a quick and friendly affair.
Whilst we were simply transferring through Croatia, it was an interesting place in itself - lush, and quite flat with quite good infrastructure.
...but 2 hours later, we were exiting it to go to Serbia. Serbia was a last minute idea for a place to visit. We left Croatia's border and crossed over to Serbia, where our passports were promptly stamped in, however the officials then advised us that our green cards (insurance) did not cover Serbia and that we would need to purchase it from them for €80 for a month. When we explained that only 2 days was required, they said that a month was the minimum. We decided to give Serbia a miss as it just wasn't worth it for that amount for just 2 days.
So, back we headed to Hungary to continue our journey via Romania.
We stayed in a town called Szeged, which again impressed us. So far, Hungary has been one of the most beautiful, welcoming and interesting places.

Pecs in Southern Hungary

Whilst I had a swelteringly hot ride down to Pecs, my riding buddy got
drenched on his way up from Croatia. We initially met up in a town called
Mohacs after a week or so off at various weddings.
The first target was to service the bikes and we found a place to change the
tyres fairly easily and also bought some oil as the first change was now
due. We completed the service ourselves and checked that everything was in
order, which, fortunately, it was.
In the evening, we wandered around the walled town, which was bustling with
a local concert.

Budapest

After a gentle rise the next morning, it was only a short 25 mile ride into Budapest. As expected, I got well and truly lost on the way in, but eventually found the street of the friend with whom I was staying, right in the centre, in the VI district. I parked the bike safely in a garage, where it was to stay for the week. Using bikes to get around in big cities that you don't know tends to mean a lot of getting lost and you don't get to see as much, so I went for the 'on-foot' option.
Budapest is essentially divided into two halves - Buda and Pest, with Buda being the hilly and green Western section and Pest being the Eastern city centre.
My first visit was in Buda to an area called Var. This was a series of castles and traditional architecture buildings on the top of a hill and in additional to being beautiful and peaceful in itself, offered a superb view over Pest and the impressive Parliament buildings. After wandering around this area, I descended the hill and walked across the Danube River via the Chain Bridge to the Pest side.
On the Pest side, I visited a number of museums, with the most interesting being the Ethnographic Museum (folk) and the Museums of Terror. I also was shown around the Parliament buildings, both inside and out. These are truly impressive. The Central Synagogue in the VII district (Jewish) was fascinating, both for the buildings themselves and for their history. In the gardens to the synagogue was a metal tree sculpture, with each leaf on the tree bearing the name of a lost life from during the Holocaust.
The final area to be visited was the XIV district (Varosliget), where there was a peaceful, shady park, the Hosoktere square and monument and the Szechenyi Baths (some local and very popular natural spa baths).
Budapest was a very easy place to get around as you can pretty much walk everywhere on foot. The people are pretty friendly (the girls are stunning) and it is pretty developed, so there are plenty of restaurants of shops to buy anything.
After a brief weekend visit back to London for a wedding, I was ready to press on and to continue the journey into further flung parts of the world.

I wanted breakfast, but they wanted beer!

My B&B in Holloko turned out to be just B&C (bed and coffee), so I left in search of something to eat. At 8.30am on a Sunday morning, I wasn't expecting this to be easy, but as I wandered around the village, the two pubs already had quite a gathering. The drink(s) of choice were a shot of some type and a pint of beer. These didn't look to be people that had been up all night. This was breakfast!
I set on my way to the next village on my journey down towards the Danube River and at each village found the same - only pubs were open and everyone was already on the bottle! Breakfast for me consisted of a biscuit bar and a Mars bar.
On I rode through some superb roads, mostly empty and with varying surface quality. A couple of hours later, I found myself at the river, waiting for a small ferry to take me across the river. I sat on my bike chatting to a Hungarian scooter rider who looked the part on his Vespa with a scarf wrapped around him. Neither of us understood too much of what the other said, but there was plenty of pointing and hand waving, so we were both well entertained. At the other side, I headed up a small mountain to visit a castle before heading upstream to see a couple of villages/towns, only to be caught out in the rain. I stopped to put on my waterproof jacket, but
couldn't be bothered with the trousers. This, I later regretted as I saw the heaviest rain yet and was somewhat drenched by the time I reached my destination. I dried out over lunch before heading back downstream to Szentendre where I was to spend my last night before reaching Budapest.
This was so close to Budapest that it was a day break destination for the city folk and tourists. Extremely popular with bikers, so I chose to stay out of town and ride in for dinner and a drink and to watch the world go by.

I've been overtaken by a Skoda...

...but I wouldn't let the Lada past!
These boxy little cars are everywhere. They are apparently built in the Czech Republic, but are by far the most popular car in the region. Most of the morning was spent riding around the Bukk Hills, an area that had been recommended to me by a friend. The waypoints were to be a stately home in Lillafured and a popular town called Szilvasvarad. My route took me through forests in the hills and they certainly did not disappoint. The waypoints were exactly that. Not of particular interest, but an excuse to take in some great roads. I kept meeting a Hungarian couple, also on a motorcycle, along the way. Whilst I was searching for the road to Szilvasvarad, I found myself on a rapidly degrading road, with 2 foot wide potholes. I persevered until the road became a track, which was eventually barricaded off as a nature conservation zone. Full marks for effort, though!
Back to the winding forest roads, and there was one particular Lada who seemed to think that he was a rally driver and went roaring past me like a lunatic in the other direction. I didn't know that Lada's could do that.
I arrived in Holloko in the afternoon. Holloko is a very remote and ancient village with cobbled streets and centuries of tradition. Not too touristy. HOWEVER... ...there was a wedding on in town. Whilst this would appear to be a good thing, it's actually a bad thing when you're in a tiny town and there are more people than accommodation. Eventually, I found somewhere and checked in before musing around the lanes.

Eastern Slovak and on to Hungary

After a leisurely morning exploring Zilina, I pressed on to Levoca. This was described as 'old Slovak'. It was certainly different, to the extent that the people looked different (a fair bit darker skinned). I wouldn't have expected to see this by simply crossing a country on my motorcycle, but it will become more and more apparent as I continue towards and through Asia. In the south-east, the people are a lot darker and the roads are less well maintained. Along the tarmac roads, there are basically two grooves from all of the cars and lorries. Whenever you traverse them, the bike has a bit of a wobble, but you get used to them and, much the same of waterskiing, you just make a break for it to cross the wake! I tried to keep to the back roads as they were less dull. They were also less well surfaced, but I'd take them over boring autoroutes any day.
Levoca is a walled city in the Spis region with a fairly large square. It was only slightly touristy during the day and tranquil at night. There is even a cage of shame in the square where they would put out the 'bad' people to be displayed to all. Hotel wise, I had the usual fun and games. The only hotel with parking was full, but they kindly let me park there anyway and I stayed elsewhere. Not a pizza in sight, so double-yeah! Funnily enough, I seem to be able to eat much more of a variety here in Slovak.
This morning, I headed for the Spissky Hrad (the main castle in the area). I arrived at opening time, just ahead of the screaming children who invaded around 10 minutes after my arrival. Spissky Hrad is a real castle - large, a decent amount of rubble and a parapet. After wandering around, listening to my iPod for an hour or so (the only tunes I remember hearing were from Lionel Richie! Must remember to delete them from the iPod!).
Leaving the castle, I took the 'slow road' past a number of other smaller castles, churches and old towns and headed towards the border with Hungary. After good experiences at other small borders, I thought that this would again be interesting and it certainly was. The streets on the Slovak side degraded significantly and the people started to look much more ferrell. I even found a mountain/hill pass which was extremely remote. The views were superb, as was the peace and quiet.
After reaching the border, I branched off towards Eger, a medium sized city surrounded by hills and forests. Even whilst still sitting on the bike, I picked up a much more Mediterranean feel in Hungary. I spent most of the afternoon milling around the town of Eger and then, in the evening went to a natural thermal spring in a neighbouring town for a bit of a dip.
For dinner, I had a lamb goulash with something called 'noodlie' which is basically a type of pasta. Was excellent.
I just rode back to the hotel and whilst I am typing this, the waiter recommended a dessert called 'Egri Gombpalacsinta', which looked like an 'Oef en cocotte' but had a warm cake in the middle. It's quite fun to just leave it up to the waiter and see what you get! Anyway, they're closing the restaurant/bar now, so I'll leave this update here!