Russia

In my trips after Brasil I decided not to film as it needs a plenty of space and later also a lot  of work to make them "presentable" in an enjoyable way.
The road between Oral and the Russian border that I previously mentioned was so bad and the ride outside the road so pleasant, that I decided to give another try, please enjoy.

I arrived at the Russian border shortly after noon, this was one of the important milestones to overcome to be able to reach "Europe" it took me around two and a half hours to get through but I made it. The immigration officer was quit picky with my passport, don't know what he was trying to see but he used one of those magnifying loops like the ones from watch makers and kept looking around on the passport for almost 15 minutes. Then finally stamped both passport and immigration card. It was very windy and I had to show the passport again at the gate, to get out of the border, while waiting for my time I looked for the immigration card in my passport and when I found it, the wind blow it away, I quickly jumped from the motorcycle and run after it, was lucky enough that it got stucked in the mesh fence, I'm sure it would't had been fun if it went trough.
The road after on the Russian side was unfortunately not better and there was no possible escape from it. Stopped at a bus stop to have a snack before continuing to Saratov.

I looked at the clock on the GPS and it was still early but I made a terrible mistake, when I crossed the border the GPS automatically changed the timezone to Moscow, which has 3 hours difference to Kazakhstan, meaning that I was expecting sunset 3 hours later than it actually was. Shortly before arriving in Saratov, I saw yet again a huge Thunderstorm forming and there was no way I could avoid it. I stopped at a gas station trying to protect and put my rain cloths on.

A couple of km later I had the chance to take this picture of the pollution above Saratov.

Saratov is huge and in Russia they don't seam to have beltways, meaning I had to drive through. The roads were covered with deep and dirty water from the storm and the cars dancing around trying not to get too wet I suppose. It took me a while to get out of the city and by the time I got to my accommodation place it was already dark. After parking the bike I saw that the Russian road from the border had vibrated the electric connectors from my engine switch workaround. The next morning started with an electric workshop to get the bike running again.

There's not much to take pictures of along py path at this time.

The Volga is very impressive but I did not get a good spot to take picture that shows it. This is not a see, it's a river.

Made a short stop in Volgograd to visit the tallest statue of a women in the world, The Motherland Calls.

Next stop in Elista where I met two other travelers living my dream, one since 3 years on the road and other since 18 months.