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Ants and Jo

Taxi for two from Bangkok to Brighton? Ants Bolingbroke-Kent and Jo Huxter aim to cross 12 countries by tuk-tuk, and raise £50,000 for Mind.
Entry: 17
Date: 31/07/2006

The girls charm their way through yet more red tape.

Bashkortostan Autonomous Republic, Russia

Jo writes...

"Yesterday we managed to get stopped five times by the police and today we were stopped twice. Mostly, they just want to see our documents and ask questions about Ting Tong. Even though Ants speaks very good Russian, when we get pulled over with that irritating white baton she speaks as much Russian as I do - none! Given that the weather has been incredibly English i.e. cold, wet and grey, we are starting to find these all too frequent police stops in the cold a little trying.

We left Yekaterinburg yesterday morning, driving in convoy with Rudy and Oleg to the Asia/Europe border. We parked TT with her front end in Europe and her back end in Asia. It gave us a brief moment to reflect on how long we've been tukking and how far we've travelled. We left Bangkok nine weeks ago and have travelled 13,000km. Being back in Europe has made us start to think about our arrival back in Brighton. We need to start planning for a big homecoming and work out quite how we are going to raise another £29,000 for Mind.

Saying goodbye to Rudy and Oleg was really sad and I cried. Even though we'd only known them for four days, we'd spent nearly every waking moment with them and become really close. If it wasn't for meeting them, TT would never have got to flirt with those sexy beamers, nor would we have been on the local news and been allowed to speak about our trip and mental health. It was also sad saying goodbye to Ivan, the first friend we made in Yekaterinberg, after we literally kidnapped him to show us to our hotel.

"We parked TT with her front end in Europe and her back end in Asia."

Ants writes...

This morning we set off, again in the rain, for the last 170km to Ufa, capital of the autonomous Bashkortostan republic and home to the Muslim Turkic Bashkir people. We met our first Baskhir, Zoofar, last night, who very kindly asked us to his sanatorium. Although the idea of being pampered in the mountains for one day was very appealing, we opted to hit the road and head south west in search of the sunshine. Having spent the last week getting cold and wet we're craving some heat, and have decided to re-route south along the Black Sea Coast via Odessa for a few days of sun, sea and surf.

Aside from the incessant rain, which we all have a strong aversion to, and the almost as incessant police checks, we had an uneventful drive through beautiful country. Not since China have we driven through such natural beauty. The road plunged, weaved and climbed through rolling green countryside, populated by silver birch copses, herds of grazing animals and an abundance of wild flowers. Freshly cut piles of hay dotted the fields and farm workers laboured, looking up in astonishment as we drove past. Occasionally we passed through a village of wooden houses, all with ornate, brightly coloured windows. Beautiful.

Five police stops later, we came across a hotel and decided to call it a day. I left Jo with TT and dived in to check it out. After the corpulent receptionist had finished getting her oversize knickers in a twist about the fact that firstly we were 'inostranka' (foreigners) and secondly had a curious vehicle that was 'nyet motorcycle and nyet mashina', we were allowed in. Twenty minutes and one beer later, Jo and I had acquired our next pair of Russian boyfriends, Roma and Zanil, both from Siberia. As we have both said before, Russians are wonderfully friendly people, sometimes the men a little over so, and it's hard to sit anywhere for five minutes without being accosted by a potential suitor. Before long a third, slightly inebriated gentleman had come over to our table and was declaring undying love for Jo. It was 1am before we finally got to bed.


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