Russia (Krasnodar to Uralsk)

After having trouble at the Georgian-Russian border, we go back to Turkey and find cheap flights to Krasnodar. We wait for Ramadan month in Turkey and eat lots of Baklava before we leave Turkey.

So my Russian experince starts with Krasnodar. As we don’t need visa for Russia, it’s easy to get in. We just fill immigration card at the airport and our passport is stamped.  First night we camp somewhere near the airport, then next day we start hitchhiking to Krasnodar center. Then we meet German biker Heinz Stücke. He is travelling for 47 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_St%C3%BCcke

Hitchhiking isn’t quite easy, but we stop a car. But one thing we don’t know every car can be a taxi in Russia. After reaching Krasnodar center, our driver is asking for money. We say “we are hitchhiking, we don’t have money”. These are a few words we learned in Russian. We give our driver some turkish coins as we won’t need in our journey. Andrey is going to host us in Krasnodar.

After staying a few days in Krasnodar we are ready to leave, but Andrey says local TV will interview us. We are famous in Russia now, at least in Krasnodar.
Here is the interview:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7pnUFVRiKU&context=C3360ac3ADOEgsToPDskKd4qYym2c3w8rda8rITufG

After the interview we start hitchhiking in the center which is a big mistake. We are walking out of the city and hitchhiking.  That is the first thing we learned in Russia about hitchhiking: “don’t hitchhike in the center! take the bus out of the city near highways!” So that’s what we do… We go out of Krasnodar by bus and find a good place to hitchhike, but we wait hours and hours. It is almost dark, I’m already looking a place to camp while waiting with my thump up. At last one truck stops. He goes to Maykop, it’s not really on our way. But it’s our first car stopped for us, we are not gonna say ‘no’. So we go to Maykop with this huge american truck. Our driver is russian and he is quite nice. We are hoping he invites us to his place, but no… He shows us a place to camp. At least we are out of the city and camp on a field next to the road.

Next morning we wake up and pack our backpack. Some polices come and ask ‘what we are doing here’, we say ‘we are hitchhiking to Tokyo, Japan’. They smile and go. Russian police is not so bad. This time hitchhiking works better, but it’s still not so good. We arrive Elsta after 14 hours hitchhiking with 9 cars. We are thankful to our last driver from Karachav-Cherkessia, he gaves us long ride and also he speaks turkish.
We are in Elista, the capital of Kalmykia. Our Kalmyk host Lev pick us up with his car. We are staying with his Kalmyk family. They feed us quite well and they are interested about our culture and our journey. We are also interested about theirs. As we have not heard about Kalmyk people before.

Kalmyk people are related to Mongols and Kalmykia  is the Europe’s only Buddhist government . Next day we visit the Buddhist temple which is quite interesting. I wasn’t expecting to see any Buddhist temple until China. But here we are in the temple and looking to big statue of Buddha. When we leave the temple we are not turning our back to Buddha as to show our respect before we leave his temple.

Chess is quite important in Kalmykia, they even have a Chess City which has hosted the Chess Olympiad in 1998.

 

 

We are ready to leave Elista next day. We are greatful to our host Lev and his family for their hospitality. We are hitchhiking to Astrakhan now trough the steps of Kalmykia which gets boring after a while. After 9 hours of hitchhiking we are in Astrakhan and meet out host Elena, also the Volga river for the first time. Elena shows us around with her friends. Astrakhan seems nice. But we stay only one night.

We decide to go Kazakhstan to try hitchhiking over there. We can’t say we were enjoying hitchhiking in Russia, but it’s early be judgmental. Russian-Kazakh border is 70 km away and it take us 2 hours to reach there. Russian officer stamps our passport and ask for a cigarette which we don’t have, he lets us go. We are in Kazakhstan after 10km ride. Probably Kazakh officers have not seen turkish hitchhikers before. We don’t need visa for Kazakhstan, but they don’t know that. After asking a few people then she stamps our passport. Now we should find a ride. Actually we don’t know where we are going, but there is only one way to go until Atyrau.

It’s dark when we reach Atyrau. Hitchhiking seems a bit easier than Russia, but some people ask for money. It’s raining and we don’t know where to sleep.  We find a construction where we put our tent. We couldn’t eat a meal, just some junk foods our driver gave. Because we don’t have the Kazakh money (Tenge). We wake up next morning, it’s still raining a little and seems like it’s gonna rain for a few days. We have to decide which way we go. We have two options; north to Russia or east in Kazakhstan. Because of rain Russia sounds better, because we can find some hosts in couchsurfing.org, in Kazakhstan there are not so many of them.

I had already found a host in Samara, Russia. So that’s where we decide to go. We hitch 500km in 7 hours, so we couldn’t make Samara that day.  We are in Uralsk next to the Ural river which divides Europe and Asia. Our last driver is quite nice, he drives us to a big market where we can use our credit card. At least we have somethings to eat.

It rains more in Uralsk, we don’t know where to sleep. We want to go on hitchhiking, but we don’t know which road goes to Samara. We are asking people but they don’t understand us or they don’t know. So we follow our instinct and start to walk one direction. It’s already dark and we are quite wet. We would camp somewhere if it wasn’t raining. It’s quite muddy everywhere.  Then miracle happens; a nice BMW  stops, there is a couple in it. They are talking to us in english. They wonder what we are doing here. We explain that we are hitchhiking to east, maybe to Japan. They drive us to the road where we can hitchhike to Samara. But they still hesitate. It’s dark and raining. They say ‘they will come back in 1 hour and if we are still there, they will take us back’.

We see a construction after they left. Instead of hitchhiking we want to camp there, but security don’t let us in. 10 minutes later BMW comes back. They will take us to dinner and put us in a hotel. We are quite thankful for it. I give them my e-mail address. I hope they will come to Turkey one day.

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