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Published: August 16th 2013
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From Almaty its a 900km dash north across the steppes to the Russian border. The landscape is identical to that 2500km to the west that we were riding through several weeks ago; long straight roads through the flat steppe, lined by stumpy trees with enormous eagles perching in them. The eagles aren't actually that big its just that the trees are so small and the eagles look really comical perching on the tiniest of branches.
We do get the occasional change in scenery as we are skirting round the foothills of the Altai Mountains to the east and sometimes we have to leave the flat plains and go up and over. But somehow this just emphasis how flat the land actually is – as you reach the crest of the pass the flat steppe land stretches out below you as far as the eye can see. There's also quite a few lakes often difficult to spot – a flat lake against the flat steppe, somehow you just 'see' the change in texture, a shimmer in the corner of your eye.
There's lots of cows around and they are rather partial to the lakes, most of the lakes have cows
paddling in them. All except Lake Kapchagay created when a hydroelectric dam was built in the 60s. Its full of day-trippers and week-enders from Almaty paddling and whizzing round in their speed boats.
As ever the cemeteries make an impression. I think its just the the tombs are tall and the land is flat so we see them coming up from miles away, just like a little village on the horizon. And they are often in the middle of nowhere with no settlement nearby so you always stand and wonder where the inhabitants came from. And we get a lot of time to stand and wonder – the bumpy gravelly road has disturbed the seal on the, recently fitted, front knobbly tyre. So when we get it wrong and catch a pothole or bump the front tyre rapidly deflates. Luckily Edwin is carrying a pump so we don't have to limp to a petrol station, just stand at the side of the road taking it all in to the sound of the pump re-inflating the tyre.
Up near the Russian border we arrive at the town of Semey – a place that make you stop, stand still and
contemplate in the same way that the Aral Sea (or lack of it) does. It used to be called Semipalatinsk and in the vast area of steppe land to the west over 450 atomic bombs were tested by the USSR. The local villagers looked on & watched – the UN believe that over 1 million inhabitants were affected by the tests and even today parts are still too 'hot' to enter. Testing stopped in 1991 and in 2006 it was the site that Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan & Uzbekistan chose for the signing of the Central Asian Nuclear Weapon Free Zone.
Its all remembered in the simple but powerful Stronger then Death Memorial: above a mother covering her child billows a mushroom cloud etched into a 30m high black tombstone.
On the far side of Semey we set up our last camp in Kazakhstan. Tomorrow we cross the border and head back into Russia where we'll leave the steppes behind and enter the tiaga forests that will accompany us for the rest of our 7000km ride across Russia,
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