Tuesday 18th Samara to Saratov

Found our way out of the city with our group of rebels following along behind Tom who used a combination of dead reckoning and taliking to the locals to find our way to a rout we had found on a russian map Tom had procured.
So once ahain in pretty good weather we found a back road that ran down the Volga river. Lots of flat cultivated land and some fantastic tree lined avenues. We managed a few wrong turns, a combination of GPS, maps, closed roads, and plain wrong advice however we ended up in the town square. A rapidly decaying rural town as the younf people move to the cities. At one time this was a thriving settlement. A large church now dilapidated; war memorials, now overgrown; (the Russians are very proud that they have "never lost a war") and a town square, mostly overgrown. However the school was thriving and the kids were friendly and interested.
So we were back on the back road and after some more wandering found and crossed the Volga and found the main road to town.
A good day riding in rural Russia.
Had dinner with a local friend of Toms. He was very interesting on the Russian economy but was more interested in a crocodile skin coat and whether I could get him one. There was some confusion in his mind as to where New Zealand was, but he very proudly showed us the military collection of tanks and again proudly proclaimed we have never lost a war.
Military might runs deep in the Russians we met.
The Volga is an astonishingly large river. However the hotel did not yet have hot water. On the matter of hot water it is customary that hot water is heated at a council facility and distibuted by means of insulated pipes. Consequently hot water is available at certain times morning and night but not allways it seems.
The city could have been anywhere. Restaurants, kids in the streets, mobile phones, it is uncanny how the world has such an amazing similarity in its cities.
nzl07