Our destination for the day was Astrakhan in Russia!!
It was a very long road heading in one direction. This combined with an extremely strong wind coming from the Caspian sea (dragging up plumes of hot dust with it) meant that we spent most of the day banked over to one's side fighti ng the wind. It was a tiring and constant battle of neck muscle V's wind.
On the journey we passed lots of old fashioned oil fields, pumping away and lots of camels. for lunch we fired up the petrol stove any had pot noodles next to a herd of camels. Andy's turned out to be a pot of chicken flavoured mashed potato and mine had a large hole in the bottom, so all of the liquid leaked out.
During the journey the bike had developed a death rattle coming from the chain area not helped by the lack of a functioning shock aborder. Andy discovered that the front sprocket nut had worked loose. Unfortunately the correct spanner no longer seemed to be in the toolkit (possibly never was). We ended up stopping at the roadside 4 times to try to tighten it with pliers before a friendly local stopped in his car to offer to help. He produced an ancient wooden box of rusty tools, but by pure luck had a spanner that fitted perfectly.
The boarder crossing in to Russia was surprisingly easy.
Crossing in to Russia was the biggest change in culture yet. Astrakhan was just like any other western city. We amused ourselves by going into a massive supermarket. In the supermarket we found horse in a jar 😵 and a whole isle dedicated to vodka😀. I resisted the urge to buy all sorts of special 'gifts' for our friends and family at home.
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