After 4 bordercrossings we arrived at the Kazakhstan-Russian border thinking this would be easy as usually. But for the first time they actually checked our car. Everything had to be carried from the car, through an X-raymachine and back. When the luggage was allowed to leave Kazak, it was our turn. The guard got the passport but discovered that we missed a stamp in our imigrationcard. We tried to plead ignorance, but he pointed out that it was written in english on the backside. After that we didn't speak english. The guard told us something about "police" and "straf", but our act was so good that he gave up and let us through. We were back in Russia!
Russia greeted us with a real winter. Since China had forced us to apply both kazakhstanian and russian visas again, we were out of money and decided to set camp for 10 days in a forest. The first couple of days went by with no problems. We had a fire going, good temperatures and plenty of food. Then we counted the food and sigarettes, temperature dropped and we had a lot of problems... Almost no food left, 20 sigarettes for 8 days and -30C during the night, which made the car act kind of funny. When we opened the door the head lights automatically turned on. The hydraulicfluid froze, and the oil was like syrup. Heavy snowfall also made it hard to move the car. Thanks to the 4matic we got out!
We had now reached the temperatures were we needed the car running all the time, but we were almost out of gas and rubles. After 4 days we had to abandon the camp. We phoned home, got an early christmas presant, and drove to Novosibirsk.
After writing this we are driving east to Irkutsk, around 3 000 km from here. We will not stop the car unless we have to.