It should have been a relatively easy 300 mile day but turned out to be longer than expected. We leave Saratov in the sunshine, quite warm already and eventually find our way out of the city. Roads are very good for a start but turn into a bone shaking exercise for most of the 150 miles to the Kazakhstan border crossing. A mixture of badly patched road and potholes certainly keeps us awake. The poor bikes take a real pounding. A delight on the way was to stop at this lovely local Russia roadside cafe. Very basic but we got a friendly welcome and a nice cup of tea. The long drop toilet was interesting mind you!

As we approach the Kazakhstan border crossing the road gets worse and is much like off road. It takes us about 2-3 hours to get through the crossing. We then hit temporary roads for about 30 kilometres. Really bad in places!

After much needed fuel and a break we continue our out journey along rough roads which eventually turned into wide avenues of newly made tarmac - wonderful! A chance to open up the throttle a bit until..... blue flashing lights and a police car pulled us for speeding. The limit was apparently 50 km hr and we must have been doing twice that. The two policeman got out of their car and it was a typical good cop bad cop scenario, one shaking our hands and interested in the bikes and the other cop reading us the riot act. We got let off and the two policeman left on good terms.

Finally at about 6pm (we have lost another hour to English time) we find our hotel Rathat in Uralsky. The hotel looks nothing from the outside but well furnished, clean and modern looking inside. Steve and I have a twin room which actually has three double beds.

So a long day but good to get into Kazakhstan, people are friendly, terrain is desert like!