Kieran Turner's photos with the keyword: aral

Near Aral. We were here looking for the Aral Sea. It had gone.

Weirdly, Kazakhstan is littered with brand spanking new petrol stations like the one in the background here. Not one of them is open. The rusty old places like we're actually in here are usually open and staffed, but they fairly seldom have any fuel. Or anything better than the 80 octane stuff that goes in old Soviet cars. We sought anything from 91-100 (yes, we saw 91, 92, 93, 95, 96, 98, and 100 during our trip!) but often there was none. On this occasion, the woman running the place had a few 20-litre plastic bottles in a shed, and allowed us 10-litres each of whatever was in those. The cars were pretty sluggish on 91, especially as we gained altitude later on in Kyrgystan. The Micra's emission control light came on more than once, although it had been doing that across Western Europe too, after I'd been running it on V-Power 97/98 for a while to get it cleaned out (and to give it fun extra oomph :) I still wonder why V-Power is 100 in some countries. Feel cheated back home!