We wanted an adventure, and we got one - Part 2

Having a car has been great - the flexibilty to spot, look and admire, to chat to people, to go where our fancy takes us has made me feel like less of a gawking tourist and more of a traveller. Having done the same in Australia we've now gotten into a familiar routine of cooking, cleaning etc. It's been a nice change from the "now that we've off the train we have to find a place to sleep / eat / shop" routine we had in Asia.



Even with all the well-meaning advice we've been given to get on the train, I think we've made the right decision. Some warnings have come true, such as unbelievably bad state of the roads (more on that later). But the dire warnings about the ethics of the road police have so far been unfounded. We've been stopped 7 times now, but each time they were just doing their job and let us go after checking our documents. It might be different in the European part of Russia, guess we'll have to wait and see.

One of the best parts of our trip so far has been picking up a pair of hitchhikers - Lesha and Lena, who stayed with us for 5 days. They've hitched their way across Russia, through Kazahstan, into China, and were now on the return leg of their journey. Since we have very similiar interests, such as travelling and camping out, it was cool having them along. Plus they were extremely useful when the car wouldn't start and required a helpful push every morning (more on that later). They showed us how to pick berries and mushrooms, but now that they are gone I can't find any berries and I am afraid to eat the mushrooms I find (in case I die :)









Having a car has been a freedom, but it has also been a resposibility. Out of the last 14 days on the road, about 10 of them we've had to stop at an auto-service or a tire place. Fist we hit a big rock (hidden in a rut on the road) and broke in half a metal rod that is part of our suspension. A helpful villager welded it together for us so we could get to an auto-service and get it replaced. Then we had to replace the starter motor, because we thought it was the reason the car wouldn't start. It took a few more visits to various mechanics to find the source of the problem - it was in the ignition. So we got that fixed. After that we had to replace the tube on our back right wheel - 3 times! Then our left mirror got broken (more on that later). Then two bolts holding our wheel fell out, and we barely made it to town, constantly fearing that one of the remaining two bolts would go and our wheel would fall off. Then Tim accidentally knocked out the tail light out... don't know what's going to happen next. Hopefully nothing.

As frustrating it this all has been, and even with the time and money we've had to spend, we still have no regrets. We are still driving, the car is fine now, and most of our problems have been caused by extremely bad roads (and in some cases no roads), the worst of which are hopefully behind us. Every time I look out the window and see a view like this, I still think it was all worth it.









The most unpleasant part of our experience however has been the night of Thursday 14th. We parked the car on the edge of the village, as we've always done so far, to get water from the well and food from the shop. Went to sleep as always. At about 2am, we were woken by drunken voices outside the car, knocking on our windows and shouting for us to come out. What followed was a fairly long converstion, lasting most of the night, but I will summarise here. Basically, it was a group of 5 teenagers, who, full of druken bravado and in a gang mentality decided to shake us down for some money. Their line of argument was that: "you are on our territory, come out of the car and give us some money, or we will puncture your tires, bash out your windows, drag you out and get the money anyway". My line of argument was that: "I have a flashlight, I will take photos of you (which I did), take them to the police tomorrow, and tell them that you attacked and robbed foreign citizens". The worst thing was that it was at that time the car wouldn't start, and we couldn't just drive away!



As you might imagine, it was quite scary at first, but once I saw that they were kids and not some criminal gang, I didn't think our lives were in danger, but we never came out of the car as we thought our odds of 5 to 2 were not good. Eventually, I talked them into leaving. But not before the drunkest of them broke our mirror. Now, we drive into the forest and camp there for the night.