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Meeting Mother Russia


Ants and Jo

Taxi for two from Bangkok to Brighton? Ants Bolingbroke-Kent and Jo Huxter aim to cross 12 countries by tuk-tuk, and raise £50,000 for Mind.
Entry: 15
Date: 24/07/2006

Can the girls sneak into the country with an outdated visa and a bright pink tuk tuk? Keeping a low profile is not going to be easy.

Troitsk, Russia
Ants writes...

On Monday morning, after a rocky drive through North West Kazakhstan, we tukked up to the Russian border. We had every reason to be a little nervous since our Kazakh visa had expired four days previously. Earthquakes, mechanical problems and bad roads meant that we'd been unable to keep to the tight two week visa issued to us three months ago in the UK. Remember, it's almost impossible to extend tourist visas in Kazakhstan. So we were just going to have to smile angelically and hope the guards were in a good mood.

Things started well. In the shadow of three colossal factory chimneys belching black smoke across the plains, we pulled up at the back of a small queue of (mainly) Ladas. Jo insisted we behaved well and didn't do our usual habit of queue-barging since, as she said, we didn't want to draw any attention to ourselves. Considering the nature of our vehicle, I thought this was fairly impossible, but complied anyway. With a fistful of documents in hand, I walked into the small wooden hut by the barrier. There, a woman with scarily-dyed red hair was stamping documents and a man was snoring noisily in the corner. A faint whiff of vodka hung in the air. Ten minutes later I was gone, clutching more documents and feeling very relieved that she hadn't noticed the little problem of our invalid visa. It seemed that all we had to do know was wait until, car by car, we were let through the barrier to passport control.

Three hours later we were through to the next stage, where Jo and TT waited while I went to meet our fate at passport control. A surly looking man said 'zdrasvitzye' through the small window and took our passports, while I gave him my most winning smile. It didn't work. Within a nanosecond the window was abruptly slammed shut and the man disappeared into another building across the road. We were in trouble. Two minutes later he and another guard reappeared and summoned me into a small, dreary room where a number of officials came in and questioned me about why we were late leaving the country. I gulped as one of them told me glumly that we had a 'bolshoi problem' and would have to go back to Astana to validate our visas. Considering it had taken us over two days of hellish driving to get from the capital, this was a most unappealing option.

"A DJ appeared out of nowhere and put on hideous, ear-splittingly loud euro techno."

Yet once again the Gods were on our side. No one it seems can resist the charms of Ting Tong and I was soon told that we could go... not even a fine. Unbelievable. Here we were in Kazakhstan, a country notorious for corrupt officials dying to extract dollars from all and sundry, we had every reason to be fined and beaten, and we were about to sail through to Russia without even a telling off. As we were leaving the hut we saw the other side of the coin however. Three Turkish men were engaged in heated conversation with the same group of officials who had been so lenient with us. The youngest of the Turks came and spoke to us, furious that they were being forced to pay money for no reason. They'd driven all the way from Ankara, and nowhere else had they experienced problems. I guess we were very, very lucky indeed.

In Troitsk, 30 km from the border, we drew up outside a grandiose hotel in the early stages of decrepitude. The receptionist shook her head, they were full. Yeah right, I thought, a huge hotel like this; full on a Monday night. We'd heard that some Russian hotels can be unwilling to take foreigners, a hangover from the Soviet era, and I am sure it was this unwillingness rather than a genuine lack of rooms that was the reason we were turned away. When the same thing happened at the second hotel, Jo and I started to wonder if we might have to pitch our tent on the pavement. But thank goodness hotel number three, the 'Gostiniza Kaspi' said yes, they had one room left. Phew!

At 11.45 pm, tired, grubby and much in need of tipple and tiffin, we sat down for supper in the hotel restaurant. Our only fellow diners were three very drunk men in one corner, and a pair of heavily made-up, fairly drunk 30 something women in another corner. It wasn't long before we were spotted by the former, and subsequently accosted, whilst a DJ appeared out of nowhere and put on hideous, ear-splittingly loud euro techno. Having successfully used supper as an excuse not to join our prospective paramours - Mikhail, Dimitri and Alexei - they retreated to the dance floor and began throwing some serious shapes and blowing kisses in our direction. Very funny. They soon returned however, to propose that they be our boyfriends in Russia - despite the fact they all had wedding rings on and Jo and I both said we were married. We've been warned this might happen a bit here.


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