Over the Urals we go

A couple of weeks ago we met some lovely truck drivers at a service station. They were two Germans and a Dutchman who were transporting quality cows from Finland to Siberia. After a conversation about roads and drivers, they told us that things get better after the Urals. We had high hopes. Our first hurdle was that we didn’t really having an exact idea of where the Urals actually are. We knew the general location of the southern Urals, but every small hill we came to was met with a ‘is this it?’ After a couple of days of feeling like we were steadily increasing in altitude we arrived in Yekaterinburg, and knowing this was on the other side, we figured we must have gone over them.
The weather has been kind to us and we had a few peaceful camping nights and enjoyed lunch picnics lounging in the sun by lakes. We have driven through colourful villages receiving stares like we were aliens from outer space (I guess to them we may as well be). Cows, horses, geese and chickens filled the roads and the people seemed happy.
One particular day Hayden awoke with a headache. We had only driven about 20km before deciding to pull over so that he could have a little sleep under the shade of the trees. Just as he was dozing off and I was enjoying the Russian sunshine, another car pulled off the road and parked behind us. Here I was thinking ‘of all the places to relieve himself this clown had to choose here’. A young fella practically leapt out of the car and started speaking to me in very animated Russian. A smile, shake of my head and a “I’m really sorry but I don’t speak Russian” later, he calmed down and asked in English if he could look at the car. He sauntered over in a non-confrontational manner with his hands behind his back but started to get excited again, saying “Defender? Discovery?”, he clearly could recognise a Land Rover. It was about this point that Hayden, who had been napping, woke up to see what was going on. Young Russian was virtually lying under the car making all sorts of comments in his native tongue. When Hayden opened the bonnet the kid practically dove in – he was perched up on the front bumper leaning right in to get a real good look! A pigeon English conversation followed and he eventually wished us luck and sped away. Hayden, still with a banging headache, decided to take the opportunity to fill the gearbox with oil. Out came the carpet, up came the soundproofing, out came the spares box, and out came the footwell. Now do you think we kept the one oil bottle with the easy-pour nozzle? Nope. That would make far too much sense. Hayden contorted himself in the most uncomfortable of manners, and using a small funnel, managed to get most of the oil to go to where it needed to be. Dirty job done. Back went the footwell, back went the spares box, down went the soundproofing, and back went the carpet. We were on the move again.