Epic fail. Kazakhstan, October 2014

This trip to Kazakhstan seemed to be boring. Nothing to see and nothing to do in a small town in North Kazakhstan… But our gift of adventure seeking helped us.

It started with unexpected and deep snow. Lots of people were still using summer tyres. But though we did change our tyres to winter type, it didn’t really help us 🙁

We met our first adventure on the way to Kostanay’s Region. Lada with trailer flipped over on its way from Chelyabinsk to Astana (near Petropavlovsk). The car was heavily loaded itself and carried heavily loaded trailer.
Happily no one was injured. We couldn’t leave them without help – we helped to put the car back on wheels and towed it back to the road.

Somewhere closer to Kostanay we met one more car waiting for help. Nothing serious. They had both flat and spare tyres flat. Hand pump couldn’t fill tubeless tyre with air, so our compressor with air receiver was the only thing that could help 🙂 After pumping tyre, we followed that car for a while to check that tyre is not going to be flat again 🙂

After couple days in Rudny town, we started our way back to Novosibirsk.

At first we met a small truck with fuel tank empty. We towed it to nearest gas station. And other 300 km of road were quite calm…

It was raining all the day long, but by the evening, it went quite cold. The road was covered by glass-like ice… We noticed it too late. Our rear-drive car started drifting unexpectedly. We tried to avoid falling into right-side ditch, but the car turned around and fell into ditch on the left side of the road. The car flipped on its left side and drifted 10 meters more.

Dashboard cam was damaged, so we do not have any recordings of our stunt.

But we have text recordings from participants of this stunt:

Driver: It was raining since early morning. Something around 0°C. The road was wet, but not slippery. Rear-drive mode on. Getting late. It is still raining. There are puddles on the road. Rain is getting mixed with snowflakes. I didn’t notice the temperature going below zero… 80-85 km/h. At some moment right side of car drives into a deep puddle (to say the truth, roads in Kazakhstan are quite unpredictable and even deep puddles happen to appear even on flat roads). The car starts drifting to the right side of the road. Turning steering wheel doesn’t help. We’re still moving right into the right ditch. Turning 4WD mode on and pushing accelerator. The car starts moving back to the cernter of the road. Trying to do everything smoothly and gently… Whew. We’re not drifting out of the road… But… What? Oh, sh… The car started turing around. After couple moves it ran out off the road. Into the left ditch.
During the short flight, I had found some time to understand damage coming to us…
Landing was quite hard. Front-left window was broken. My left arm happened to be damaged by glass fragments. Windscreen ran out of the stunt scene and decided to move on its own.
The car stopped. Lots of blood on roof and steering wheel. Checked passengers – they are fine. All fixed in their seats with seat belts. Checked my hand and found out that the blood is mine. Injury was not serious, but bloody. Unfastened my seat belt, checked the car outside – nothing is leaking or burning. Helped everyone to get out. Many drivers stopped to help us. Great thanks to everyone.

Navigation officer (and my wife): After driving through the puddle, I heard “F… 4WD!” and understood it as command (actually it was already turned on and my husband sent this command to himself). I tried to turn 4WD mode on, but couldn’t do it. I was really upset. I thought it was the reason of our drifting out of the road… When the car started turning around, I felt that we’re going out. So I caught “oh sh.. bar” and started waiting for inevitable flight.

Rear passenger: When we started drifting, I couldn’t believe that we can run out of the road. I was just sitting and waiting. The first thought after flight was: “We’re fine. But the car…”.

Dauter didn’t think of anything at all. At the moment of flight, blanket covered her and protected from glass parts and scary views.

Everyone was fine. Mostly because of seat belts fastening. It is much more funny to hang above your friend then to fall on him 🙂

People helped us to get out. 20 people and UAZ helped us to put the car back on its wheels.

4WD didn’t help us to avoid ditch, but helped us to leave it. It went quite cold. The closest service station was 10 km far. The closest wrecker was 150 km far 🙂 So we had to move forward without window and with totally broken windscreen. As it fell out, we bound it by rope and handled by hands. It was impossible to see something through broken windscreen, so we had to leave 5 cm chink at the top. It is quite cold to go 10 km with the 20 km/h speed, but we did it.

Service station promised to help, but we had to buy windscreen that could be bought only in Petropavlovsk (that is 150 km far).

One more car entered the service station. This car has also ran out of the road, but its driver was more lucky. Nothing was damaged seriously – just tyre and bumper. Guys from this car promised to help us, so they gave us a ride till Petropavlovsk after their car was repaired.

Next morning we bought new windscreen and delivered it on taxi. All other holes were covered with duct-tape.

This could be the end of the story, but we decided to fix car in Rudny (400 km is much closer then Novosibirsk that was 1500 km far).

On our way back we met one more unlucky guy. Night. Crowd of police and people staying and staring into the deep and dark ditch. We decided that some car flew there and stopped to help. Old Mercedes was down there. The ditch was quite deep, but bushes stopped Mercedes from falling down.

We tried to winch it. We tried to winch it together with wrecker truck. Not really effective. So we decided to tow Mercedes by wrecker truck and tow wrecker truck by our car. And it helped! See it on the video:

We found a “very good” car repair service in Rudny. But even though it was recommended to us, it didn’t help. The service took our money and didn’t do anything. Actually they did… They disassembled our car and left it staying on the street near service station. So we had to notify the police about the case and get our car back as is.

Other guys from service are laughing – they say that they’re not involved into our case.

It took 3 days for me and my wife to assemble everything back (interior and doors). We decided not to search for “good service” in Kazakhstan any more.

We easily reached Novosibirsk and searching for service station at the moment.