We successfully entered into Asia via the Russian-Kaza border near Astrakan. As is our fashion, it was not without incident. There were three sketchy river crossings, first on top of a rickety floating metal contraption, then on a tiny little barge, and finally over a bombfield of an asphalt covering.

The border crossing was less eventful than previous crossings but not without its moments. Dominic was sent through the mother of all bureaucratic messes, basically walking back and forth from the insurance salesman to the customs official trying to get all the entries to match. I gave the drug sniffing German Shephard, “OneOne”, a wiffle ball and instantly became fast friends with his owner, a border guard whose name I couldn’t pronounce and can’t remember. He invited me to sit with him through his break. We traded stories about our families, work, and life in general. This included him telling me that the customs guys are real assholes and just bitch bitch bitch. Of course this happened while the customs guy was sitting on the other side of me trying to get a souvenir. (Cliche Time) Its amazing, I am sitting at a border crossing in Western Kaza and there is not any great difference between the guard and myself. He even liked hip hop music.

Once across, we drove for awhile and found a typically sketchy campsite. As expected, we were confronted by drunk, techno playing Kazak teenagers around 1 in the morning. It took quite a bit to get the little jerks to leave us alone. The best part was that after blaring techno from their crap Lada, the battery was dead and they had to push start to leave. Everyone gets a bit spooked by these incidents, unfortunately we attract a bit of attention everywhere we go. From now on, we will put a bit more thought into our camping spots as the chance of bandit incidents will rise.

Seth

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