In the morning there was one more quick visit to our host’s garden as they had offered us more vegetables for lunch! While we were there we saw the banya and an outside sink that Marjool liked. I think my jobs list when I get home will involve building both!!
And the inside of the traditional banya. You can see the birch leaves from the last session.
The village is fed with gas for heating and cooking. The pipes are above ground and so become quite a feature of the villages!
We left the village and headed off onto the M7 towards Kazan to meet Marat. This is the place where east meets west, it is the Istanbul of the Volga and the capital of the republic of Tatarstan. On the way we stopped for lunch outside a school and met a few of the teachers. They were very friendly and interested in the trip.
There was also a rotavator tractor unit with a big load!
We stopped roughly where we thought Marat wanted us and waited a while for him to get his spare wheel fixed. When he arrived with his wife Valya and son Albert he arranged for our car to be put into secure lorry parking behind the services, where we would be sleeping. We then went into the centre of Kazan to eat and take a look at the Kremlin which was very large and beautiful.
We did not expect to sleep well in the services with the lorries and the compressor tools in the tyre workshop being used most of the night, however we must have been tired as we slept really well. It’s starting to get chilly at night with the clear skies. Have we got enough blankets for Mongolia!!??
troopytracks 