Chasing Clouds

Matt's perspective on Kazakhstan...

Russia dissolves behind us like the morning after the annual Christmas office party.

Imagine if you will...the office you work for is full of people you don't really like. They talk in numbers. In forms. In facts and figures. You sit in a cubicle that's numbered in an office that is also named after a number. Everything you do has to be stamped. Twice. You're referred to by your surname. It's incredibely depressing.

The office party is an annual event. It's got a free bar full of cheap alcohol. People who, in their everyday life ignore you, stare at you and mutter underneath their breath - these people are suddenly unleashed. Around you, and quickly, you see reasonable looking accountants and paperworkders descend into drunken, potentially confrontational, idiots. they shout at you louder when you tell them you can't understand their sluggish words spoken almost in another language. They get aggressive. Some try to pick a fight.

They decide to drive home. It's raining, almost constantly, and they're not kind drivers. They treat the road like a broken home. The tarmac looks like it's got itself into far too many fights. It's broken in far too many places, some shards of road jut into the road like broken teeth looking to tear apart gums. Rubbish lines the roadside.

Russia can be hard. We're pleased to be beyond it. And desperate to get out of its reach.

Leaving Russia we enter into what we honestly expect Kazakhstan to be. The middle of the epicentere of nowhere. The road to the border reads like a poem entitled, 'The Loneliness of Wilderness'. there's nothing but electricity hanging in the air by threads the size of your entire form. On the border, the Russian soldiers, bored, cackling, always feeling slightly dangerous, especially when smiling are all loose official dome. The pressed uniforms look like they don't need ironing. They have elastic waists. Each of them wear cowboy boots instead of military boots. Each looks like they are taking stuff on the side.

We cross through seemlessly . Like we're sailing. We always seem to.

The no man's land between the borders isn't long. Perhaps a kilometer. But the difference between the two is marked in different centuries. The Russian is a mass of obsolete concrete. Uniform. Sturctures spread across each of its borders as if it was mass produced and packaged in a Soviet hanger ready to be shipped to each corner of the third of the world they used to control. In massive contrast, the Kazak side is a litter of shacks. Three of them. The Kazaks look different. We are in Asia. Their eyes seem much kinder, their smiles feel genuine. It feels like the haze of alcohol has lifted and you can suddenly trust the reflection. We joke with the officials like first time travelers, we don't have to enforce caution or faux experience. We giggle, almost delirious.

We expect so little here. We expect the desert and just miles upon hundreds of thousands of miles of nothingness. And for the first forty miles the country does nothing to conflict or contradict this presumption. It's late when we cross over. We've lost yet another hour that digs again into our lack of sleep. It's dark when Si battles the road again. But we all know what actually lies beyond the reach of our full beams. It's nothing.

When we finally round the corner to Kazakhstan's first city we descend into Uralsk. We descend almost like a blind man finally able to see. We descend into the full realization that any preconceptions of this country are incredibly flawed. Fractured. Each should be reversed. This isn't Borat country, a film set here but filmed in reality in Romania. Kazakhstan is modern. It's chic. The perfect point of where the West and East meet - where White and Asian faces merge seemlessly and each, or better said, everyone seems to shack off the controlling Mother of Russia that has battered it in over protective, nuclear testing, 'love'.

We make friends instantly rolling cigarettes. We're led to a beautiful hotel. The biggest one we've stayed within at one of the cheapest prices (outside of camping). There's internet on tap and good food around the corner. Someone near always speaks a little English and even when they don't, they understand the international language of not understanding one another or enough.

In Russia, like in England, if you don't understand my language you just speak it slower and louder until it just becomes impossible for the native to even consider it worth prolonging the time or effort. Here, everyone needs to communicate, wants to, despite the difficulty of our slightly overwhelming ignorance or naivety.

And we are welcomed. By everyone. In restaurants, on roads, in garages. People beep at us, wave, smile from ear to ear. They announce themselves and welcome us. They want everyone to know about what is happening here. Everyone wants to help. Everyone wants to know the story. In contrast to Russia, whose brows still seem furrowed, slightly suspicious, aggressive, the Kazaks are at ease. They are all joy.

Out on the roads the story is just as pretty. It's just as beautiful as the people and it's city. It's insanely beautiful.

We spend the next four days chasing clouds. Scattering birds that collect themselves on the roadside (sadly one met its end when it got caught in between our basket and the car roof. RIP little crow). We drive nearly 3,000 miles in the same country. We wave at the villagers and they wave back. There are horses. Eagles. Marmets. Kass and Meghan finish two books each. Camping becomes very easy. We're pros of the road. We're beginning to strike a routine of driving the 800 kms everyday that will get us across the country, back into Russia, and onto the monolith of Mongolia. The final battle ground is upon us.