Syd Stelvio Peking to Paris 25 - Day 14 – Khorgas to Almaty – 385km

Day 14, border day, exit China and enter Kazakhstan. What could possibly be complicated about that? Except a border is like the proverbial box of chocolates, so set your expectations low, prepare for a long wait and perform whatever rituals the border force requires to get your magic stamps of freedom.

Thankfully, the crossing from China into Kazakhstan is actually fairly simple, despite the insistence that all of the luggage had to be removed from the cars for the passengers to ‘walk through’ the border, with only two luggage trolleys to share between the group, but apart from that it was all fairly painless, even the cars that were towed across seemed to make the jump across the time zone with no issues.

Border dispatched and we could get on with rallying again, after a stop at the first proper service station anyone has seen in the past two weeks, for decent coffee and pastries! I hope everyone savored the experience, as in a few days that kind of facility will be non-existent again. After that there was an introduction to Kazakhstan’s less than smooth backroads. A mottled patchwork of different shades of tarmac, they aren’t rough as such but seem to have a strange kind of oscillation. This rippled surface would soon give way to dirt, and the days only regularity, which was a fairly simple one, but with three timing points there was plenty of opportunity to drop time and everyone picked up a few seconds or more. Best of the lot were Austrian and Belgian Bentley Boys, Christian and Alex Gruber, and Mark Vervisch and Bernard Vanderplaetsen, crews of the number 28 and 31 cars, who only dropped a couple of seconds each.

The scenery was a mixture of lush grasslands and rolling hills, and there was time to visit to Charyn Canyon as well, with its 12-million-year-old rock formations. There were still mountains in the distance, but everything felt fresh after so much time in the Gobi. This continued as the day went on, with a beautiful drive across country on the way to Almaty, the quiet backroads providing serene solitude, with the seclusion only punctuated by the occasional Shepherd on horseback. It was almost too good to be true.

All in all, it was a pretty calm day, with only Tomas de Vargas Machuca encountering mechanical woe, when his Bentley packed in with a distributor issue that couldn’t be solved on the side of the road. Fortuitous then, that we have the second non-transit day of the rally in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city that is nestled in the foothills of the Trans-Lli Alatau, part of the northernmost part of the Tian Shan range. Tomas isn’t the only one who will be glad of the opportunity to perform some automotive surgery, there are several cars that have been out of the running for the past few days that are needing some generous TLC and even those crews lucky enough not to be requiring serious work, will need to perform some preventative maintenance to give them the best chance of a trouble free transit through the Kazakh steppe.

Two weeks in then and the competition has settled down a bit, with the Perez Companc’s maintaining their first position by 33 seconds over Brian Scowcroft and Mark Gilmour in second place, followed by Tony Rowe and Mark Delling in their perennial third position, a few minutes further back. In the Classic category, Harold Goddijn and Corinne Vigreux are continuing their occupation of first position, with John Henderson and Lui MacLennan 55 seconds further back, with Gerd Bühler and Laurenz Feierabend behind them. There are some big days coming up though, and some treacherous roads, beginning with a 759km day to Shymkent. We may be in the modern city of Almaty for now, but this country quicky becomes very remote.

Syd