Semey to Barnaul

Today's a badly planned mess. It's a border crossing into Russia which apparently is renown for its delays. It seems that the Kazachs and the Russians don't get on so the Russians limit the number of vehicles thru the border to 3 or 4 per hour so when 13 bikes turn up it causes chaos. The problems start when the Kazach computer goes down because someone turned off the power. In their defence the mange to find a laptop so we all rush to get processed before the battery runs out. Then we discover the Russians will only let the bikes thru in groups of three with roughly an hour between each group, actually they seemed very organised if a little slow. Unfortunately our side had not allowed for the five hours it took to get through the whole lot and had assigned us a 200 mile ride into Barnaul after the border. We didn't actually start the ride until six thirty in the evening in the middle of a thunderstorm. We finally arrived in Barnaul at 11:30, five hours to do over 200 odd miles in the dark and the rain over strange roads covered in road works and all that with a tinted visor. The adrenalin was really flowing by the time we finished, in hindsight a bit foolish.