Chocolate colored soil no wonder they can grow crops.
Drove
through avenues of Birch trees. Very beautiful with the leaves
blowing across the toad in front of us. Autumn is really here.
A
lot of the small villages have the loose “hay” stacked in yards or
on roofs. I think a lot of this is the leftover stalks from the
grain harvest. Often picked up by pitchfork. Also some is grass that
has been cut with a scythe, turned by hand, loaded onto a truck by
hand, and off loaded by hand, often onto shed roofs so the animals
cannot reach it.
At the
Pavlovka border crossing there was a long line of trucks waiting and
further on a short line of cars off to the wrong side.
We
parked inline and waited in the wind. A lady came up and chatted to
us. She was born in Ukraine and had lived in Russia and now back living
in Ukraine. She had been on a driving holiday with her sister.
I
bought Kazakhstan insurance for AU$30 valid for 15 days. Finally got
into the customs area, Got our passports stamped then a cursory
inspection then we were through.
Back
into Kazakhstan.
Harvesting
happening here as well.
Stopped
by a graveyard for lunch then moved on.
It
has been very windy today and wonder if the wind did not “help”
this poor truck leave the road. He had gotten his wheel onto the soft
dirt on the outside of the corner ….. Helpers had unloaded many
cartons of apples.
Next a pink lake. Very pretty sight but hard to capture in a photo.
We
had stopped early about 17:00 as we had washing to do, but we had so many
visitors I was not getting it done. We had been given, a watermelon,
round of bread, two freshly caught fish, a bar of Kazak chocolate and
a bottle of water.
A
guy and his son (Amir) who had good English were very friendly, they
gave us the fish and chocolate and invited us for the night we refused
but accepted and invite for the following day.
These two "air bags" were in the fish in the "gut" cavity up near the back bone. I have not seen them before in fish. The fish were nice but being freshwater "gold fish" relatives they were full of bones. In China I was introduced to "Y" shaped bones. Here they had 4forks!
309km Camp site 72m alt.