Today we saw a bit more activity beside the road. There were more villages, and in those villages there was more produce for sale in roadside stalls, and the main street through many of the villages had very extensive and long established groves of trees beside the street. We saw men out cutting grass with scythes and even saw one man painting the trunks of trees with white paint.

On a bad note the truck exhibited some transmission problems late today - every so often it would simply drop into neutral. In the past when this has happened I have simply reseated all the electrical connections associated with the transmission computer and the problems has "gone away" - however today that did not seem to do the trick.


At the start of a long section of road construction, about 130km from Almaty, we found a wide area to pull off the road for our nights camp. It was not quiet as the road crew seemed to be working 24/7.