16 Nov 06
After 227 miles we're at the border near Troitsk, a power station puffing noxious plumes to our left, a row of trucks to our right, which look to have been waiting a worryingly long time. One truck is a transporter full of 1980s and 1990s Mercs, mainly W124-series E-classes, all of them filthy from the flying road dirt.
It's an interesting economic auto-migration, for these are cars which have lived their first lives in western Europe, might have had a second life in Poland or Hungary, and will now live again in Asia, past the notional continental divide that is the Ural mountains.
The opening up of the east has changed western Europe's used-car market forever; the former Soviet Union's roads still rattle to the sound of Ladas and Moskviches and Volgas, often amazingly rust-free because the roads aren't salted in winter, but now they mingle with all sorts of metal more familiar to us.
Car and occupant details have been sent on ahead to the border guards, so I'm hoping we'll get through easily. Within an hour we're through to the no-man's land, ready to do it all again with the Kazakh officials and their ludicrously exaggerated peaked caps.
This may once all have been one empire, but I sense today's strong separation as soon as I see how oriental the indigenous, Islamic Kazakhs look after the Slavic Russians. There are smiles and politeness and good vibes here, and soon co-driver Dan Trent and I are on our way.
