Update: Thu 21:00

It rained in Almaty yesterday but there's nothing particularly exciting about that. It was ominous as I woke up thinking I'd have a soggy day at the mechanics but there was a gap when I went to ride over and after hanging about for ten minutes there was a gap on the way back.

Last night the rain started at midnight and was (so far as I can tell) continuous until 7 or 8 am. A bit less promising. My lower half (somewhat more tricky to fix at the side of the road) was waterproofed up when I left, just in case.

In fact, it didn't really rain but it wasn't very warm. Perhaps upper teens centigrade which with a 50mph wind chill factor is hardly summer holiday weather. My frail body couldn't take it any more after a few hours under grey skies so I stopped and changed.

One of the things the Kazakhs like is a good police speed check point and they'll have permanent checkpoints with speed cameras further up the road and various individuals finding a quiet spot.

I was doing 82 kph in a 50 kph zone though I never saw the speed limit sign and they had a picture of me doing it on their laptop. The man waved a bit of paper with some handwritten message saying I was over the 50 speed limit and must pay something at the bank. He then added $100 which was a bit of a shock and pointed at a printout of the crimes and punishments list where it mentioned 15000T for going between 20-40 kph over the speed limit.

Oh dear. The best policy in these situations is to try to wear the opposition down so rather luckily for me the man's laptop was recording people live and he could hit a button and it would flash up the speed. I watched this for a bit and pointed out some people going quite quickly (so far as you could tell form the once or twice a second picture update). He hit the button and decided that someone in an Audi was going too fast (80-odd again) and sent his man out to flag them down.

He changed the $100 to $50 if I paid them here. That old chestnut! I then started asking for some paperwork to support their claim -- although, to be fair, they were handing out lots of green slips to the locals.

I continued to argue my case that there had been no speed limit sign but they kept pointing to a triangle sign further up. I then argued that triangles are warnings and not imperatives (circles). In the meanwhile, a nice looking woman came in looking a bit nervous with ID and wallet in hand. She was shown the picture of the Audi speeding and started her own defence. In the meanwhile an SUV came whizzing through and I pointed at them and he did the business, 101kph! get them, I said. No, no, diplomatic plates (red) he pointed out. I then tried the "I'm diplomatic too" which he dismissed out of hand but then had a change of heart and gave me back my International Driving Permit (I knew I should have gotten more than one then I could have done a runner!) and told me to go. I went.

Not long after I passed a triangle sign warning of a sharp bend with a 50kpm sign immediately below it. maybe there had been a genuine sign and I'd just missed it. Ah well.

And so it was that I arrived at the Kaz-Kyr border. While queueing on the inside a hippy pitched up and asked me if I'd come from Almaty. Yes. I was in the same hotel, he said. He then said, were you in Gokana in January? Gokana? Between Goa and Kerala. Yes, yes I was. He'd seen me there too. Small world. He'd been on a BMW something or other and managed to make it across the Gobi Desert before some sort of crash a couple of years back left him with plates in his arms and elsewhere. But still, I clearly (or the bike) makes an impression!

The border is something of a shambles, I managed to sneak round the side of the queue to get in but it was a three or four car-width queue to get through the one car width barrier. Very Indian, if I may say. The Kazakhs sort of gave up on me when I couldn't produce some vital document to do with the bike (they never gave anything to me on the way in!) and in the end the guard just waved me on.

At the Kyrgyz side I had to make a bit more effort going to see someone in addition to immigration who gave me a vital stamp in my passport, (I thought they were customs), immigration then I had to go see another group of people about the bike. These may have been customs again and they gave me a slip of paper (in Russian) to fill in. Someone pointed me at an example on the wall but I was none the wiser so went back to the woman and said "I dunno" and she kindly filled it in for me. I have no idea what it is but I have to give it to someone on Osh. Or I have to keep it. It wasn't very clear.

Given that they didn't give me such a piece of paper when I crossed in Kyrgyzstan at Torugart maybe it's not very important after all.

The best thing about it all was that I really do have a multiple entry Kyrgyz visa even if it's only valid for another week.

What isn't good news is that the delightful A has gone out of her way and phoned the Russian consulate in Tashkent who are saying that in order to get a Russian visa through them you require an Uzbek visa for 90 days. What? This super-odd rule isn't mentioned in the Lonely Planet, who have been quite good on these things, so I wonder if it's something that can be blustered through.

I'm back at Shumkar Asia where I was welcomed back like an old friend...and asked to pay straight away. Ah well, at least we've got that out of the way.