You can't always trust first impressions.

I'm sure you get the picture now, we all freaking loved Kazakhstan. We planned on staying another night, but had to book it to the border before our 5 day grace period was up. What lies in between Kazakhstan and Mongolia is Russia, and more specifically, Siberia. Our last Russian experience wasn't worth writing home about and I'd say out of the four of us I liked it the least. I wasn't looking forward to what was ahead and though, well, I'll just read a book and get through it.

Because of our mad dash to the border we didn't end up getting out of the Kazakhstan/Russia border until around 10pm. It was dark, we didn't have a map, cash, much petrol or any idea of where to go. The plan was to camp as soon as we saw a nice hidden bit off the side of the highway (Kazak style) so we could get some rest and wake up refreshed for another long drive. We passed through the first little village and with our Russian still being quite bad it took us about an hour and a half to get some petrol and some cash. Around 11pm we finally started heading east. About 30 minutes outside of the village we saw some tracks that led behind some trees and though we scored a prime location for a good night's sleep. Instead we instantly found a bunch of people parked up drinking near their cars...instant thought...get the hell out of here. Now we know, they could have been some country bumpkins who come to their hangout every other night to drinks some beers and shoot the shit, on the other hand they could have been devising up a plan to rob a group of naive travellers...we'll never know as we took off pretty quickly. We then made a group decision to keep on driving until we found a hotel or a better place to camp. The unfortunate circumstance was that we were tired and almost literally in the middle of nowhere. After hours of waking up gas station attendants to play the charades game of 'can we pitch a tent behind your building' and trying desperately to find a clearing for our tent, we soon realized we weren't in Kazakhstan anymore. People weren't willing to help us. We though we were going to have to drive throughout the night, but our trusty little Ka-put thought differently and was making chirping noises and acting tired. At 3am we miraculously found the perfect clearing behind some trees and pitched our tent in the dark to get some sleep and start anew int he morning.

Simon and I woke up first and we were blown away by how beautiful our surroundings were. Other than hearing cars and trucks zoom past the motorway every 15 minutes or so, we were the only people for miles, tall trees and open spaces surrounded us. We put the stove on, brewed up some tea and watched the sunrise above us. Russia was starting to look better. Meghan and Matt woke up not too much later and we had a laugh about the misreable night before. As Meghan had said (only 6 hours before when the team was not really talking and we were all slightly pissed with our situation and life in general) 'Guys, one day we'll laugh at this' and we did.

We packed up little Ka-put in no time flat and hit the road. The scenery around was beautiful, we drove through quaint little villages and passed by amazing lakes and forests. We were headed for Barnaul so we could make a quick left to jump on the M-52 to drive through the Altay Mountains of Siberia.

We entered the Altay Mountains and were all blown away by its beauty. A gorgeous river followed us on our right and the mountains were all around us. We made it to Manzherok, which is a village surrounded by pine woods and booked a nights stay that sat right next to the river. Quoted by all, this was our favorite nights stay yet.

Right before we were about to go into the very small village to grab a bite to eat Meghan thought it was wise to read this passage from the guidebook:

'As with Tuvans, alcohol has a disastrous effect on Altay people, whose gentle smiles can turn to unpredictable violence within a bottle, being from Aktash (over 30km away!) and thus himself a foreigner, was very reluctant to ask directions. 'They might be drunk,' he hissed with a throat-slitting gesticulation. I laughed. But he took the extrordinary precaution of going to the village office to find a sober local to escort us to visit the church. The fellow who came along appeared to find the request quite normal. I started to get paranoid but then we chanced upon a ludicrously optimistic lone hitchhiker from Belarus. He loved the place, hitched everywhere and made it all the way to Balykcha - astounding, as there's barely even a jeep track. He was very positive. 'The place is quite safe if you're careful', 'So no trouble with drunks?' 'Oh that's different,' he counseled excitedly. 'Don't drink with the Altay people. Last night my friend got drunk and needed more vodka money. I wanted to sleep. I said, 'Go to bed', But his rapidly drawn gun said, VODKA NOW!'

Sure enough, we walked into this bar/restaurant and every table had a group of locals surrounding a bottle of vodka and wearing the Russian gruff frown. We played menu roulette by pointing at four things on the Russian menu, grabbed some beers and sat down for our meal. Ten minutes into our meal a few locals came and sat next to us. They were all extremely friendly, smiled loads and tried communicating in Russian while we stuck to trying to communicate in English. The only recognizable words were Vodka and 'I need you, I want you, I love you' (directed towards Meghan). Even though we weren't communicating very well we sat with them and laughed for about a half hour, they brought over the vodka and we graciously declined. We were about to leave when one of the locals brought over a bag of tea as a present. It looked a lot less like tea and more like something we plan on not crossing the border with:-) We said goodby and went back to our hotel for a much needed nights sleep...

We woke up in pure gorgeousness this morning and walked along the river before we had to get back on the road. We've been driving through the Altay Mountains for the last 5 hours and we couldn't be happier. Right now we are sitting at a mechanics so they can give our care a look over and hopefully fix the chirping noise before we get to the long awaited Mongolia. We're in a very small village, but nontheless about 10 people (none of them are employees of the garage) have come over to help us out. Once again, we're all lost in translation, but the local people are trying their best to help us out. I never thought I'd say it but I'm going to miss Russia. It's fantastic here.