Thursday, 7 July 2011

Driving the Tran Siberian at 50pence or 25 Rubbles a litre.

The picture shows the typical road. It is called the Chuysky Trackt. This road is the Russian answer to the M52 and goes into Mongolia. We are Crossing border between novoskybersky region.  It's all paved so far. The driving is fast.  Andrei says it is not fast driving but low flying. The vehicles are modern day high speed utility vehicles, with plenty of audis toyotas BMW and mercedes not forgetting VWs and porches 4*4. There are quite a few trucks and some of them we have passed by a few times on this journey.
Petrol in Russia is cheap very cheap at approx 50-60 pence a litre. The Russians seem to have plenty of it. So big plush cars are the order of the day. Petrol stations are nice and clean and are sometimes attached with a cafe or restaurant.
We are navigating using a GPS system, which doubles as a phone and runs on windows. It is pretty good and depending on who is driving change the woman to speak in Russian or English. Apparently the womans voice can be changed to represent Putins voice too!!

A little bit about the Car. We  are travelling in a Subaru Legacy. It is about 7 years old and done over a 10000 km. The car belongs to Andrei and has travelled all around Europe a couple of time with him. Before the start it went into Subaru dealers for a going over. All seemed well apart from the brakes. The car is 2 litres in engine capacity. It is an automatic and has plenty of gusto in it even with a full load.
Andrei has had the car from new and it is like his baby!! He loves the car and probably has given it a name but not told us!! I suspects it's called Anastassia.

As most of you know one of the most famous Russians was the first man in space. Yuri Gagarin. By the way did you know Yuri Gagarin died in a crash when testing in another mission. On discussing with Andrei after his first mission I suggested he should have settled for a life of golf, fine dining and a life with the stars! But Andrei says he was not that sort of personality. He was the ideal man for the mission and for going to space. He not only was an adventuerer but a gentleman and scholar too.


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