Kazakhstan - Escape from Almaty
- 4 hours ago
- 10 min read
On the Monday morning, Kamaz were removing the 4 injectors, but after two hours said that two of them were totally seized up and they didn't want to carry on forcing them in case they broke something. Colin discussed it with Michael, and the consensus was that we didn't have any other choice as there was no point just testing two of the injectors. Kamaz applied some easing fluid which worked for one of the injectors, but on the final injector what they had feared happened. The bolt sheared off and was stuck in the engine. The injectors were taken over to the Bosch Service centre for testing, while Michael had to find a mechanic that could remove the snapped bolt and re tap a bolt fixing on the engine. He eventually found some ex-Iveco mechanics who said they could do it, but they wanted Lolly to go to their workshop which meant putting her on a low loader (again...). Things couldn't be more stressful. The transporter company asked how heavy Lolly was, and they didn't believe Colin when he said she is 5.5T. So when they loaded her on the first lorry they sent, the lorry's front wheels were coming off the ground! They then had to send out for a larger one, but then had the problem she was too high to fit under the gas pipes and had to take all the air out of her tyres.
Thankfully Drive China were being very understanding about our delay, but we started making a Plan B for a situation where Lolly wouldn't be ready to go for another week. This would reduce the time we had in Mongolia too much, so we looked at flights into Ulaanbaatar and picking up a tour from here for 7 to 10 days.
Tuesday brought slightly more promising news. The injectors had been tested and 3 of the 4 were found to be sound, with the 4th needing a new spray nozzle. Colin's view was we should have all 4 spray nozzles renewed, so all injectors were operating at the same strength, but after some debate, Bosch said the 3 original sprays were perfectly OK, and the damage on the 4th was likely caused by dirty diesel rather than wear and tear.
In the meantime, the workshop doing the engine repairs said the Iveco engine has spare bolt holes for the injectors, so they did not need to do repairs on the broken one (we're not sure why no-one else knew that at Kamaz). So they would re-fix the injectors on the following day. We dared to think that we had a solution that may enable us to set off to China before the end of the week.
We had another nice meet up with Colin and Teresa at the English pub in the city who were flying back to Germany for 2 weeks for a reset before continuing East. We wondered where our paths might cross again.
Because travelling around SE Asia is looking so restricted, particularly for us - after Laos and Cambodia, foreign vehicles (including motorbikes) are not allowed into Vietnam, Myanmar is not safe, and Thailand have banned campervans over 3.5T. This makes getting to Malaysia to ship to Australia impossible (other than maybe transporting Lolly on a low loader again). So we are now considering going back into China and putting Lolly on a ferry to South Korea, then after time there, putting her on another ferry to Japan. From Japan it should be possible to ship direct to the USA. It may be easier for us to do a separate trip to Australia in the future and buy a vehicle out there, as there are strict bio-security rules for bringing in vehicles. We'd certainly need a new catalytic converter too. All just ideas spinning round our heads at the moment - lets see if we make it into China first....
On the Wednesday Colin and Michael took the injectors to the other mechanics who promised to re-fix them by early Thursday morning. It was a much cooler overcast day in Almaty, so late afternoon we jumped in a taxi to visit the botanical gardens. We hit rush hour, so it took over an hour to reach the gardens. The mountains looked lovely in the late afternoon light, but by the time we reached the gardens they were covered in low clouds and it was drizzling. The ticket office had issues with their till, so we had to wait 15 minutes while they fixed it, by which time it was pouring with rain with thunder and lightning. We are starting to feel things are meant to try us. We waited in the very busy cafe for half an hour as people already in the park came rushing in to escape the rain. In the end we set off as the rain lightened. The gardens are a pleasant escape from the congested city, but they weren't very special and we were actually cold for the first time since reaching Almaty. There was a very upmarket shopping area over the road from the gardens where we had a juice and a snack before returning to our depressing hotel.
We're pretty sure we were the only people staying at our hotel and we're sure no-one has ever stayed there as long as us. There were three ladies who seemed to rotate on reception, two of them were pleasant, but one barely looked up from her phone to acknowledge us. We were given a voucher to have breakfast in their restaurant nearby. The restaurant says it's 24 hours, but as we found out on the first day it doesn't open until 8am (if you're lucky). We were told we can pick anything on the menu, but we couldn't have coffee unless we paid extra, or even green tea - only Turkish tea was allowed. They were late opening one morning when Colin was in a rush to meet the mechanic, and when he asked for something they said it wasn't available as the cooks hadn't turned up yet. Then another morning when Colin asked for an omelet, they said omelet was off the menu, but they could do fried eggs! - who were we to ask? To top it all, I asked for 2 fried eggs with some bread one day, which on the menu only came with a platter of meats and vegetables. I got my request one time, but the next time I asked for this, the waiter said it wasn't included on our voucher and tried to charge us for it. We tried to explain that Colin had 3 eggs in his shakshuka (eggs in a spicy pepper sauce), so why should we pay for 2 eggs when we had not had anything else with them. He just couldn't understand our point. Eventually another customer asked if he could help. He was a Kazakh who lives in the US, home visiting his parents. He explained our point to the waiter who still didn't look convinced, but one of the other waitresses stepped in and said we were good to go.
We had two resident pigeons that sat on our hotel windowsill - Percy and Patricia. They're very nosy so we always felt like we were being watched.
Colin had fed back to the solar panel company that he was pleased they had got the job done successfully, but was frustrated at their poor communication and the fact he had wasted 5 hours waiting for them when they didn't turn up three times or have the courtesy to let him know they weren't coming. The next day the guy responded more or less saying 'what's your problem? - we did the job', then followed up by asking Colin to leave a glowing review for them. You can imagine how far that got them....
Colin sent him a draft of his review and said 'are you sure you want me to post this?' His response was 'have you been long in Kazakhstan?' meaning 'we don't do things the same as you do in Europe' we think. Every time Colin gets exasperated with things going on with Lolly's repairs, Michael's response is 'welcome to Kazakhstan'.
I hadn't mentioned in the last update that when we had been driving though Almaty, we were pulled over by a policeman. He had stopped us in the middle of a junction, so Colin asked if we could pull over to a safer place. As we were parking up, we heard a big bang and looked back to see 2 cars had collided in the exact spot he had flagged us down. Obviously the policeman had other things to distract him now, so after asking if we were tourists, he wished us a safe journey and waved us on.
We had been there so long by this point, I have made friends with the girl in the convenience store next to the hotel. She is working there as a summer job from University and is hoping to go to Hong Kong to study for two years later this month. She gave us chocolates last time we went in.
We were waiting on tenterhooks for news that the injectors had been refitted. It was mid afternoon on the Thursday by the time we got the call, so Colin went with Michael to pick Lolly up. The mechanics said they had checked everything and looked very pleased with themselves, and Colin said the engine was sounding sweet. As soon as he and Michael pulled out of the yard and Colin put his foot down, the engine warning lights were back on and Lolly was driving like a bag of spanners again. They returned to the yard and the mechanics were incredulous. Colin was sure Michael was shedding a tear as well. They all stood around scratching their heads.
Michael seemed at a bit at a loss what to do next. He was flying off to Astana, the capital, the next day and wouldn't be back until the weekend. He eventually said he'd organise for the original auto-electrician who'd looked at Lolly during her original service 2 weeks previously, was back from his holidays, so he'd ask him to plug Lolly in again and look for any other issues not yet identified. We weren't convinced this going to get us any further, seeing as the guy said he'd cleared all the faults last time which hadn't solved our problems. We arranged for him to come to our hotel car park, where Lolly was now parked, the following morning. Feeling cheesed off and dejected we took a taxi to the Asian restaurant we'd been with Michael the previous week.
The following morning, Dmitri, the auto-electrician turned up with an assistant and when Colin described how Lolly was running, said he thought he knew exactly what was causing it. He disconnected the fuel line and put a pressure meter on it, and found we only had 3 bar pressure instead of 4.5 which meant the fuel wasn't been pumped through fast enough. Tracing back along the pipelines, he found a blocked fuel filter off the main diesel tank - dirty diesel strikes again. He removed the filter and we took Lolly for a drive down the road and unbelievably she ran freely again. When we returned he went off to buy a new filter (plus a spare for us) and fitted the new one in a matter of minutes. We were so relieved we couldn't be cross about all the things we'd had replaced and repaired that weren't required (new fuel pump and new high pressure pump). We had got ourselves ready to check out of the hotel to go away for the weekend to a recreational lake north east of Almaty that Michael had recommended so we could test everything out on Lolly and in our living space, before we broke for the Chinese border. Before we set off I went into the convenience store to say goodbye to our new friend, who happened to have her mother and younger sister with her, so they all came round to have a look in Lolly.
It was about a 2 hour drive to the lake where we found a nice place to park up. There were other cars on the beach area where locals were having picnics and swimming, but most left as it went dark. We had been in touch with Drive China and agreed we'd be at the Chinese border on the Monday morning. They had warned us that Lolly would be subject to a mechanical inspection, so we must ensure all our lights and brakes were working. Of course Colin realised we had an electrical fault on our side lights, as changing the bulbs had made no difference. A call to Michael led to us booking another meet up with Dmitri on the Sunday morning back in Almaty, where we were seeing Michael and Lola one last time before we headed to the border. We stayed on a second night at the lake. It was scorching hot, so we had a swim in the shallow warm waters and took the Bromptons for a spin up the road from where we were, but there wasn't anything nice to see.
We drove back into Almaty for 10 am where we met up with Dmitri's assistant. He started checking the wiring, but was struggling to find the fault. In the end Dmitri appeared with some more testing kit, and soon discovered that when the diagnostics tests had been carried out the previous week, they had dislodged a connection box, which was a simple fix. Dmitri wouldn't take any money for coming out.
In the meantime, Michael and Lola had arrived. He had only flown in from Astana in the early hours. We went for a lunch at the hotel restaurant before bidding them fond farewells. Colin gave Lolly a much needed wash, then we were on our way our Almaty with a 4 hour drive to the border ahead of us. It was a long straight road, and the sun was low in the sky as we arrived at the Kazakhstan border town. We were amazed at the sight of endless car transporters everywhere that ferried Chinese cars into the country.
We had been recommended a spot a few kms from the border by Judith and Eric to park the night. It turned out to be further out in the countryside than we had expected, and it was dark when we arrived, so it was hard to know where we were parking. Although we felt like we were in the middle of no-where, there seemed to be a steady stream of vehicles coming past on the dirt tracks, all slowing to have a look at us. We were shattered so had an early night, but were woken at around midnight by a vehicle tooting it's horn at us. We stuck our head out, and explained we were going to the border early the next day and they just shrugged and drove off.
We were at the border before 8 a.m. the following morning, as we had been told it opened on the Kazakhstan side at 8.30. We were in a good position near the front of the queue. The customs checks were much more thorough than they had been on coming into the country, but we eventually found ourselves driving towards the Chinese border, feeling a little nervous, but excited about the next leg of our journey. We were being met by a Chinese guide, so we expected it to be trouble free. As always things didn't quite go to plan......
We had mixed feelings about leaving Central Asia behind where we have had the most incredible 3 1/2 months. It really is the perfect place to travel overland - freedom to park up anywhere, incredibly friendly kind people, very safe and amazing sites. Each of the five Stans we visited has a very unique feel about them, be it friendly people, incredible natural landscapes or stunning silk road cities. We are glad we have experienced them now, as we can see mass tourism here isn't far away.
What a story of ‘nuts and bolts’ ,,, such a relief to know it’s all fixed and for us just reading about it, let alone having to live through it like you two! ,,, best wishes for an onward ‘stress free’ driving >> G and L x