When you look at the map it feels like we're just riding straight through Kazakhstan to get to Uzbekistan – almost like we wouldn't be going there if we didn't have to. But that's so not true – there are some really exciting places to see, well they're exciting to me! There's a brief stop to register our visas in Aktobe, a big city with a modern, clean, European feel to it – partly due to the influx of Europeans to service the extensive oil & mining industries. Then its onto the 1st exciting stop – Aralsk, though exciting is not quite the right word. Once a booming town, with a prosperous fishing industry, on the shores of the Aral Sea. Now its a desolate, dusty, little village with abandoned fishing boats lying in what used
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