RUSSIA

By landmass, Russia is the largest country in the world. Top ten in population. We spent a whopping day and a half there. Broken up into equal parts driving, sleeping, and drinking vodka. Alright, mostly driving and sleeping. We barely tickled the toe of Mother Russia - but it was a good introduction.

After a lovely afternoon drive through pastoral Russia, we arrived in Barnaul and scarfed down some dinner at America's number-one fast food chain, Subway. Man alive did that taste good. They had free wifi, so we got online and found the only hostel in town. On the way there we were intercepted by some enthusiastic young Russians. They pulled up next to us on a two-lane street and rolled down their windows. Hello! Where are you from?! Please pull over! They seemed harmless, so we stopped to chat. Talk about a warm reception, all they wanted to do was help us, and insisted that they guide us to our accommodation.

The hostel was lively. The parking lot held a few rally cars, and we were greeted outside by a handful of drunken ralliers. There aren't that many options for crossing into Mongolia by land from the west, so no matter the route from England, most Mongol Rally teams end up funneling through the same few border crossings. It was the beginning of the bottleneck, with all roads leading to Ulaanbaatar. Our Russian guides were excited to meet more foreigners, but after helping us check-in and tweeting a group picture, they took off. We spent the rest of the evening partying with the mish-mash of people in the hotel bar, and swapping stories with the other teams. We'd had our fair share of hold-ups along the way, but it was becoming more apparent that out of the 300-plus cars in the rally, we were towards the back of the pack. Thirty-five days on the road, and it had all seemed to go by so fast, yet we were still lagging. 

I was up early the next day, and spent a good chunk of the morning listening to a drunk Russian girl named Olga have a one-sided conversation with me. I really didn't know what to say, especially since we coudn't actually communicate. But it was 8AM and she was wasted, so that was interesting. 

We were on the road by 10. The landscape beautified after lunch, providing us with an exciting and dramatic build towards our final country. This is how I had imagined Mongolia, and the excitement grew with the light at the end of the tunnel. We drove through mountains and paralleled a river for most of the afternoon. The roads were smooth and traffic was light. Evening approached, and a warm sunset chased us through a narrow canyon into a chilly twilight. Ominous clouds hung above the earth ahead, and snowcapped mountains loomed on the horizon. The oncoming storm looked menacing, so we pushed on, hesitant to stop and set up camp under dark skies. We drove into the night, somehow avoiding the front, stopped for food in a one-street town, and continued on to look for a place to pitch the tent.

Then we hit the border. It snuck up on us sooner than we anticipated. And suddenly we were staring out into the darkness towards Mongolia. We'd made it! Well, almost. We still had hundreds of miles to go, on some of the roughest roads (or lack thereof) that we would encounter throughout the entire journey.

The border wasn't open, but a few semi-trucks had already started to line up, so we joined the queue, and slept in the car. The next day we would enter our last and twentieth country of the Mongol Rally... Mongolia!

KAZAKHSTAN

Dusk had settled over a drab terrain and nightfall brought with it a windy chill. We'd pulled off the road in a sweep of rolling hills, not a tree in sight, the greyish-brown grass crunched under our tires as we searched for a place to camp. We found some level ground tucked away from the road, and ate our measly dinner as we set up the tent. 

What is that? A silhouette topped the hill. Just one at first. And then more followed. At least twenty men, side by side, spread out in a staggered line across the ridge. We froze. Are they coming for us? Is this when we get in the car and drive like hell? It was like a scene from an old western film, when a menacing band of American Indians rises up over a hilltop above a convoy of innocent settlers. Or a zombie apocalypse, trapped in a deserted wasteland, besieged by a lifeless horde.

And then they stopped. And started urinating. Watering the hopelessly dead grass. Peeing in our general direction. It was nothing but an evening pitstop, the bus parked out of sight over the hill.

And that was the most excitement we had in Kazakhstan. 

Whereas Kyrgyzstan was a sensory overload, Kazakhstan was underwhelming. But we were OK with the lack of distractions. We’d been on the road for over a month, and were starting to feel the pressure of time. It was the middle of August, and our last semester of grad school was starting after Labor Day. We’d put a bookend to our journey and purchased our plane tickets home while we were in Bishkek, and our flights out of Ulaanbaatar gave us motivation to pick up the pace.

After that first night of camping, having barely escaped the piddling zombies, we put in a smooth twelve-hour day of driving. The roads were easy, the landscape was bland. I'm sure there’s a lot of beauty in Kazakhstan, but we seemed to bypass all of it. We camped by a river on our second night, and put ourselves within half a day of our second-to-last country, Russia.

KYRGYZSTAN

In 1999 I went to the movies to watch The Matrix with my friend Robbie. I walked into the theater with no expectations, having not heard a thing about the film. And it blew me away. The opening scene was spectacular -- the bullet-time slow-mo and the action-packed chase scene when Trinity lays waste to a room full of cops and then eludes the agents on a dash across the rooftops. I had never seen anything like it.

Entering Kyrgyzstan was a similar experience. I knew almost nothing about where we were going, let alone how to pronounce the name (it's Keer-ghiz-staan), but soon after crossing into our seventeenth country, the landscape transformed dramatically... and it blew me away. Luckily I was in a car and and not a theater, so I could yell out 'holy shit, this is awesome!' as loud as I wanted. And I did that a lot, throughout the entire country. I had no idea what to expect, and Kyrgyzstan was a wonderful surprise.

It was midday by the time we made it through the border crossing, and within thirty minutes of leaving Uzbekistan we ascended into a mountainous landscape. Our first stop was an emerald lake. The water looked fake, as though Mother Nature had dialed up the saturation in photoshop, and the opposing bank rose quickly into a craggy range. We had to go for a swim. The lakeshore was pebbly, and we joined a scattered handful of people down by the water. After our dip we were approached by some friendly and curious teens. They weren't used to seeing foreigners, and came over to ask if they could take a picture with us. First impressions of Kyrgyzstan - extremely beautiful and relatively untouched by the western world - so far so good.

We decided to head for Lake Toktogul and find a place to camp for the night, and the drive only got better. We left the emerald lake and followed its tributary through a windy and precipitous canyon, the river was a bold turquoise, and we cruised along through what seemed a perpetual magic hour. After stopping for food in a small town at the base of a mountain, we carried on, up and over a windy pass, until we descended upon Lake Toktogul.

We spotted some cars parked by the lakeside, and pulled off the highway onto a bumpy gravel road towards the water, then turned onto a track that paralleled the shore to look for a place to camp. We found the perfect patch of grass in a field of knee-high weeds (of what appeared to be some strain of cannabis), and set up the tent as the sun fell towards the mountainous horizon across the lake. We walked down to the rocky beach for a sunset swim, while the rest of the folks packed up their cars for the day. Another curious local came over to chat. Her name was Sagida, and like so many people we’d met in Central Asia, she was kind and curious, excited to meet some foreigners, and happy to get the chance to practice her English. After she left, we had the place to ourselves. 

Sagida came back the next morning, bright and early. She wanted to catch us before we left and tried to convince us to stay and hang out at the lake for the day. The invitation was tempting, but we were aiming to get to Bishkek that night to meet up with Miles. I’d been put in touch with Miles through my friend Gülce (who we met up with in Istanbul) and my sister. Miles did Peace Corps in Kyrgyzstan and had been living in Bishkek for a few years. So after a morning swim with Sagida, we took off for the capital.

I wasn’t sure we’d be able to top our introduction to Kyrgyzstan, but the second day was even more beautiful than the first. The road around Lake Toktogul clung to rolling hills that tumbled into turquoise, every bend providing a view across the water and a panorama of mountains upon mountains. From blue-green lakes to jagged ranges, through sweeping green meadows backed by snow-capped peaks, the day was broken up into geological chapters, and every few hours we entered a new story in the saga of the Kyrgyz landscape. Yurts dotted the terrain and bands of horses grazed in the expanse. It was the best day of driving to date, and I was giddy the entire time.

JP was driving on the outskirts of Bishkek when we got pulled over for breaking a mysterious traffic law. The station was right there, so they brought us in, and once again we ended up smiling our way out of a ticket. We also once again left with an afternoon snack, another melon. Our trunk was turning into a fruit stand.

We arrived in Bishkek late afternoon and found a nice cafe with wi-fi on a main thoroughfare. I got online and notified Miles that we’d arrived, and not long after ordering a round of beers, he showed up. We hung out at the cafe for a while before checking into a nearby hostel, and then went out on the town. Hanging out with Miles was awesome. It’s always best to see a city with someone who knows their way around, and Miles showed us a great time.

We got off to a late start the next day and made for the border. We’d only seen a fraction of Kyrgyzstan, and the short visit had me thirsty for more. But on to Kazakhstan...

SAMARKAND

I was going 77 in a 70 kilometer per hour zone - less than 5 mph over the speed limit. It was a speed trap, I was caught on camera, and they waved me over down the road. I pulled onto the shoulder, bounced out of the car, and waltzed back to face three policemen lounging around their car.

My California ID got me out of the speeding ticket. The Uzbek cops were psyched to meet a 'surfer dude.' I was sporting a shaggy mop-top ‘do with a dirty tan, and I acted the part - all jovial and buffoonish, bobbing my head. They laughed at me, and reciprocated my enthusiastic gestures as they passed around my ID. Yeeaaah, California! 

Our British friends, the B-Team and the Desert Spoons, blew by in their four-car caravan as I smiled my way out of the speeding ticket. We hadn’t seen them since Turkmenistan. They honked, pointed, laughed, and pulled over down the road to wait for us. We were a couple hours outside of Samarkand, and once again running on fumes, our engine still rattling from the last poisonous refill. We joined the convoy and swerved through traffic on a dusty highway, finally finding gas on the outskirts of town. Uzbekistan’s second largest city sat before us, an Islamic cultural hub, and one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world - a historic midway-point on the Silk Road.

We were fifteen deep, having cruised into town with our fellow ralliers, and after parking we set out to explore. I stuck close to Henry, one of the leaders of the Desert Spoons. He'd done the Mongol Rally before, and had passed through Samarkand a few years back. Henry was a respectful traveler, interested in the world, and culturally aware of his surroundings. I admired him for that. Especially since the rally at times felt like an insular party-on-wheels. Derick, JP, and I had been traveling sans guidebook, and it was great having Henry around that day.

At the heart of Samarkand is the Registan, the old public square. Three majestic madrasahs (Islamic schools) face the common, and the old-town grows from there. The timeworn architecture is beautiful, noted for its tiled mosaic walls and ornate facades. Sadly, the Registan was closed due to an upcoming event, so we wandered the perimeter and explored some of the surrounding monuments. The old-town was magical at dusk, the parks and public spaces filled with townspeople as the temperature cooled, with children playing in the streets, and a pink and orange sky hanging over the minarets of the ancient city. Our British friends continued down the road after dinner, but we decided to stay, and spent the evening on the rooftop deck of our hostel, drinking beers and enjoying the view.

Our little Hyundai didn't sound so good, and we spent a good chunk of the next day at the hostel trying to get to the bottom of it, but with no luck. Tashkent was only a few hours away, so we left for the capital city mid-afternoon in hopes of finding a trusty mechanic. An hour outside of Samarkand a cop waved us down at an intersection on a country road. But for what? All we did was drive by looking foreign and confused, as usual. Which way to Tashkent?  He pointed down the road, and then yelled over to a farmer in a nearby melon patch. A few minutes later he had two fresh cantaloups for us. No ticket, just an afternoon snack, and another slice of Uzbekistani hospitality.

We spent twenty-four hours in Tashkent, a pretty uneventful stay, except that we got the car fixed for cheap. We left at dusk with our newly flushed-out engine purring like a kitten, and drove into the night towards country number seventeen - Kyrgyzstan.