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Day 9 - Hello Russia

Following on from yesterdays blog…

We drove, and we drove, and we drove. We were desperate to reach Rostov, the border city in Russia that is one of the major crossing points from the Ukraine. We were days behind schedule, and so continued our constant driving, shifting positions when one got tired.
The problems with the car were definitely not all over, but they were better. After we'd gone all psycho on the arches with a large hammer, no more rubbing could be heard. This picked us up, and probably gave us the desire and drive to push on as much as we did. There were, however, still some alarming rattles - more a loose exhaust than anything else, and most definitely fixable.

We drove throughout the night, watching the sun set, and after both feeling like a second and a year, watching it rise again. Driving through these dark times isn't too bad, with the roads being very empty, but is dependant on the road conditions. If you aren't awarded road markings, something we very much take for granted, then concentration needed to stay on the road and not in a ditch is doubled - making out the hard shoulder, which usually comprises of rough gravel separated by a sharp ending of the road tarmac, needs you to stay continually alert. Which, in turn, simply tires you out even further.  Ukraine does have it stretches of good road - road which you're happy to reach say 60mph on, but the large majority is not this good. Constant pot holes, some stretching half the length of the lane resulting in you swerving to miss (oncoming traffic dependant), means it's more of a 40mph country.

Still, onwards we pushed, keeping it sensible by ensuring the driver was fit to do so, rotating when not. We had all previously agreed to not risk anything by trying to gain an extra hour here and there - after all, it's not a race, it's a challenge.

About 6am though, I was driving and about to join a large dual carriage way from a smaller road. Both directions were completely empty - not a car to be seen as far as the eyes would let you. I pulled out, and followed the road line as best I could - although it's becoming second nature to us now, driving on the right (aka. wrong) side of the road, I still like road markings to follow. These though, had faded in the consistently scorching sun, and apparently I might have crossed the corners of two of them. Nothing too bad, we're talking a foot or two, and certainly no risk when the only other car in the viewable radius was us…

But maybe a risk when there's a police car behind the central reservation.

I heard a blast of a whistle (they're so old school here) and the white baton they point to where they want you to stop - a baton we're beginning to fear. I pulled over, not knowing what i'd done at that point, and waited for PC Ukraine to come over and talk. We've got to the stage where we all run off a little list of legal checkpoints in our head if we're pulled over.. Have we got our passports? Anything in the car that shouldn't be? Were we speeding? Are we all drunk? (I'm joking about the last one Mum, Mum and Mum).

As always with the police procedures, they'll ask for your passports as well as car info - i.e. V5 certificate and green card (insurance). We had everything apart from the green card - although we got given one as we entered the Ukraine, the guard manning the exit gate took it off us as we passed. Very strange, but he seemed to accept the Moldovan one after a quick glance.

Quietly confident we were stood well within the area of the law, he asked me to accompany him to his car. Ah, I thought, another bribe attempt. After my expensive tutorial at the border, I shall not fall for this one again, and make my country proud by standing up to these tyrants!

Or not, as the case may be. He showed me where i'd cross, and I indeed had nipped the corner of two white lines. Only after standing directly on them, examining the road surface for 30 seconds (such a time frame impossible as you cross them, even at 10mph), you began to make out the lines.

But, this was a nice corrupt cop, or as nice as they went. Just 200 Griva (about £14) and he'd let me off. Deal!
We stopped off for the last of our Ukrainian fuel, and pulled into a red service station (the company name of which escapes me, but it's a big brand). When filling up, we noticed the place had wifi. Which was the best thing we'd seen in a long time - petrol station with a little cafe, and free wifi. Fantastic.

Back in the car and we approached the Russian border - something we were dreading after the hearsay and rumours we'd been fed about the extortionate demands from the Ruskis. Renowned for their corruption and high bribes, I began to once again hide our large denomination bills from their greedy fingers, possibly learning from our Moldovan border incident and keeping a small amount out.
Leaving the Ukraine was a simple affair - we purchased our car insurance for Russia, which was more expensive than first thought, as it had to last a month. We approached Ukrainian passport control, who never once raised a smile or changed the sombre/furious look upon her face, even with us trying to chat her up a bit. For no reason what so ever other than to crack a smile - she looked like a Russian shot putter. 

Pushed through again to Ukrainian Customs Control - making sure you don't take anything illegal OUT of the country, which I don't quite understand, but the guard was quite funny. Probably possessing 20 words of English made the who experience enjoyable - we threw keywords around; driving, Mongolia, shitty Citroen, UK etc, and he got the gist of the story. On opening the boot, and being confronted with a veritable mountain of clothes and junk, he shut it again, laughed and pointed us towards the great Soviet state.
We were in no man's land - the stretch of land between two countries. I don't know the laws of this area, perhaps there are none. Would they object to me claiming an acre, and setting up a sovereign state of my own? Then the thought of those crazy Russian guards, now visible on the horizon carrying guns and looking equally vexed with themselves and everyone, quickly put the idea out.
Will inched his way up to the first Russian check point, the passport control. We waited a while, but these were returned to us relatively quick. No bribes needed. Perhaps they were saving the financial raping until the customs point, which has been true of our last country border negotiation.

As suspected, the white baton so dearly loved outside of Europe came out, and pointed to the customs search area. Our friends, Ed & Emma from Team Mongol Mongrels, had a 4 hour wait here. We had enough water to last, but it was already hotting up so early in the morning, and the thought of a similar amount of time at the hands of the guard's patience was a sharp contrast to our early high spirits.

A guard walked over, and did the usual speech… documents, V5, passports, green card etc etc.. He then casually glanced in the back, him too being greeted with a mess like no other. We resigned ourselves to the fate that lay before us - unpacking, explaining, bargaining. He asked Will to follow him to his guard station, alone, where Mackey and I were convinced he'd be sat at a metal table with a lamp shone in his face, cigarette smoke filling the darkened room where two Russians might play good cop/bad cop. 

Much to our surprise though, Will came strolling out of there just 5 minutes later, not looking overly distraught at the thousands we'd have to pay out to continue our journey. Instead, by the time Will had returned to the impounded Saxo, he had a smirk on his face. Turns out, the guard had agreed to sign the customs declaration sheet, authorising our leave and taking responsibility for us not having any guns, ammunition, knives or drugs, and let us go straight away - all for 20 US Dollars.

£15 to save ourselves 4 hours in 33 degree heat, drinking bath water temperature liquids, bored and slowly roasting, having to unpack and repack the car? Ab-so-lutely.

Could it really be that easy? He told us to hurry up and speed through the gates, for if any other guard stopped us, we'd be liable for more "presents" as they like to call it. Will inched out of the stoppage area, and headed for freedom (or as much as you  can hope to find in a Communist country), but was accosted at the gate by a group of other guards. Damn, we thought in unison - so close. An older guard approached the  window and started saying "money, money" - our £15 escape really was too good to be true. Instead though, his younger apprentice simply explained he wanted some UK money to add to his foreign collection. Mackey scrambled through the door compartments, and handed him the exact sum of £2.17. We waited for his reaction - was he insulted we'd try to fob him off with such a petty amount? No, in fact, he was delighted, and gave us our last wave as we finally said goodbye to the Ukraine, and hello to Russia.
Russia started pretty damn good - the border, at about 30 mins from start to finish, was by far the quickest and the friendliest. The roads immediately improved - a handful of small potholes every few kilometres, and relatively smooth roads. Things like the expansion plates they put in when building bridges - that let the roads expand and contract in the opposite weather conditions. Ukraine never invented these, and as a result large mountain ranges of tarmac form in the roads, a hazard to all (our sump guard has even visited a few).

The scenery too was good, every changing as we pushed on, from hills and valleys to the flattest land you've ever seen - stretching to the horizon is every direction imaginable.  It did get hotter though - my preconception of Russia was of a Moscow winter, all wearing Richard Barber hats, skating on ice and watching Lada's skid on the snow. But somehow, approaching our city of Rostov, it got hotter. Our thermometer read 38 degrees C. Ok, it might not be the most accurate of instruments, but this was confirmed by an overheard motorway LED board - 37.5 degrees centigrade. I can't remember the last time the UK felt that temperature, if ever. 
Buying a car without air-conditioning added to our list of mistakes, as having the windows down does nothing. Russia seems to be a windy place, and having 38 degree air blown in your face while trying is just incredible. Not the good incredible, just the crazy incredible, like standing in front of a hair dryer for hours on end. 

Pete the Saxo though happily drove through the heat, no doubt due to the preparation from our wonder mechanic Mr Shiles, and we hit the city borders of Rostov sometime in the evening. We thought we'd treat ourselves to a hostel of some sorts - just a bed, larger than the coffin tents we'd else sleep in, as we saved so much potential money from the hands of corruption. 

Some hotels to like to advertise as "HOTEL" or "MOTEL", but many stick to their Cyrillic heritage, and consequently finding one was very hard. The few we did spot, seemed to be a step backwards from the comparative advancement of the Ukraine. Language barrier was as big as it would ever be in this city - and Google Translate, which has saved our skin a few times, was on the internet. And these hotels don't seem to have the internet, let alone wifi. It took 10 minutes to ascertain whether they accepted Visa, or maybe Dollars (as so many do), and that was with pointing to a Visa card and some dollars. Trying to then enquire whether they had 3 rooms, 2 rooms, 1 room or even a storage shed we could rest our weary heads, was an actual impossibility.

We kept circling the city, and then decided to do a bit of our favourite activity, wifi stealing. As expected, the number of wifi networks around a city have been slowly decreasing - nothing too bad though, wifi is an established technology, affordable by all. Even the Ukraine had ample networks for us to try and poach. Rostov though, did not follow the trend. In a 30 minute drive around the residential areas, we picked up two. To put this in relation to, say, Budapest, we were finding 5 or 6 constantly wherever we drove. The possibility of using Google Maps to find a hotel soon disappeared. 

Russia seems to be the first place where a LOT of people are taking notice of the car - everyone now turns and looks, albeit looking miserable in their communist lives. We made the decision to cover up the head of David Reis, a sponsor sticker on the back of the car, due to him displaying his religion. Probably the best decision we've made after some of the areas we've ended up in.

Continuing our hunt for lodgings for the night, we continued our blind circumnavigation of the city, ending up on a motorway. Cruising along at a very legal speed, we heard that horrible sound - a whistle, and in our side mirrors, a shiny white baton being pointed directly at us. Mackey pulled over, we once again went through the mental checklists - as far as we could see, we were shiny legal. The policeman walked over, requested documents, and also driving license - a first for us since we started this trip. Mackey obeyed, as you would when confronted with an angry Russian with a sidearm, and waited to find out what bogus law we'd broken this time.
It seems Mackey had followed my lead, and cut across a white line. Ever so slightly, and just one compared to my criminal two, but Russian cop wanted to see him inside the Police hut they have in the middle of the motorway. So weird to see - a police station, about the size of a Cobblers, in the middle of the motorway - those angry police just wandering across all four lanes to talk to a pulled over driver, expecting the authority-fearing motorists to avoid them. Which they did. Mackey wandered over, still a bit bemused by strolling across a motorway, and entered the hut. Will and I couldn't work out what he did - as far as we could see, he was in the right. But, once again now we'd stopped and had time to examine the rubbish road markings, there was a white line.

Mackey came back looking even crazed than angry Russian cop. His first words as he jogged across the 4 lanes of oncoming traffic back to the car was "Do you reckon I could take all 4 of them out and get away with it". A quick explanation yielded this: Angry Russian Cop had his driving license etc, and wasn't giving it back unless he paid up $300 - an extortionate price from an extortionate police force. Mackey and his arguing got them down to $150, but they were going no lower. As he handed over his actual driving license, rather than the semi-disposable International Driving Permit, he needed it back. We had no choice to pay, both financially and in team spirit, and Mackey headed off down the motorway. By this time though, he was fuming - for the first time on the rally, he was literally red in the face. Loudly declaring we were getting the hell out of this city right now, he accelerated from the closest city exit he could find.
Will & I, no all three of us, were tired. We'd been driving for countless hours, and were desperate for sleep - driving out of the city, especially Mackey having a slight case of the red mist clouding his judgement, wouldn't have worked. We told Mackey this, and his response was to sharply cut across three lanes of a luckily empty roundabout, come skidding to a halt and getting out the car. He knows he was a bit of a knob and won't be doing that again.

Will took the helm, and continued the vain hope of finding a hotel. Since our last failed discussion with a receptionist, we'd withdrew some roubles. How much, we had no idea, but we were willing to pay any amount for a bed. At least with roubles, we could point and do the universal "sleep" sign. We continued this drive for an hour, taking random turnings and random junctions, ending up in Soviet neighbourhoods that probably still hold a great hatred from the Cold War - driving around in Pete the Saxo felt quite surreal.

We tried, and tried, and tried - we couldn't find anything. Taxi drivers didn't want to know if we couldn't speak Russian, and cops certainly didn't help us. We had no choice but to find a makeshift campsite for the night and get our heads down. Will headed out of the city limits for 10 minutes, and took the first gravelly path he could find away from the main road. Russia is big, and everything about it is big. The fields, for example, are the size of Tresco, stretching to the horizon. We followed a path along a field, and soon came to a small clearing in the light gathering of trees that lay down one side. Car was parked, tents were out, and our trespassing home for the night was done. 

Team moral was low - Rostov was the worst introduction to Russia, especially after our easy border crossing. The lack of hotels, the hostility of the locals, the Mackey police incident with huge fine, the now cramped camping on some random field trying to set up in the dark, and the fact we had not seen another Mongol Rally team in about 5 days. You can tell when spirits are down in the car - it's just quiet, nothing but some non-chosen music and the constant buffering of the 38 degree air to listen to. Fingers crossed, the next day we'd be reaching Volgograd and see the long awaited Mother Russia……..