Day 24 0 km (7520 km total)
Not a lot to say today really, my last day in Russia, before hitting the 'Stan's' and another world!
A planned rest day in Astrakhan, not for sight seeing but to allow for any bike work prior to embarkimg across the bleak lands of southern Kazakhstan & through Uzbekistan.
In particular we had both ordered fresh tyres from a dealer in Moscow to be delivered to a bike shop in Astrakhan, the plan being either to fit them here or carry them through to Almaty, depending on wear rates of the current set.
Luckily the bike shop was less than a mile away , so this morning it was just a question of retrieving our bikes from the lock up & riding around a couple of corners to the street the shop was on. A good little place if you are ever un town, specialises in ATV's and various sport or cruiser bikes.
We compared tread depths & discussed what lay ahead. I decided to carry both of mine to Almaty as I still had plenty of tread left on the Mitas E07's and, more importantly, there were still 8000 miles to go, much of it on rough roads, so tread conservation seemed sensible.
Russ's front was quite worn & so he decided to change that but to carry the rear. After we had sorted his tyre change out we took the remaining tyres back to the motel, where the landlady gave me a quizzical look as I carried my two new tyres upstairs to my room.
I then had to contemplate how to carry the tyres and everything else on the bike. So there then followed acomplete re-packing excercise, including throwing away any items that I thought I would never use - which probably means I will need them over the next week of course!
One thought was to take the spare inner tubes (quite bulky) out of my panniers and loosley fit them inside the new tyres to free up space in the panniers for other things. This worked treat & before long I had a new packing regime - yet to be tested on the road I hasten to add.
As the next week or may include quite a lot of desert scrub riding, I thought it wise to cover the tyres to stop sand & grit from coating the inside of the tyres & the tubes themselves. So I went off round the local street shops in search of clingfilm.
Much fun was had trying to explain to non english speaking shop assistants what cling film was, not sure my miming helped either really. Seems its not used over here, as all I could fimd was non clinging sellophane. No worries, that will do, I can stick it down with some insulation tape in my spares kit.
And so my gift wrapped tyres and the new packing regime was now complete, I'm sure it will all fit just as neatly in the bike in the morning!
Whilst I had been putting my Blue Peter art & craft skills to good use, Russ had been for a hair cut, so we regrouped & debated whether to go out and see what Astrkhan had to offer or not.
Neither of us was particularly interested, preferring instead to make the most of an air conditioned room & decent shower whilst we could, so we just chilled until it was time to eat.
Tomorrow we head into Kazakhstan. It's one hour to the border, the border crossing is said to take 3 hours, then once we have crossed we lose a further 2 hours due to the time zone change & then we have 5 hours to ride to our planned stop at Atyrau.
So an early start is called for, its going to be a long day.
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