Austin and I successfully received a transit visa to drive from Georgia through Russia to Kazakhstan. We picked up our visa a day or two before crossing the border and drove close to the border for our last night in Georgia. Many people have been using this transit visa to overland through Russia to Kazakhstan and have shared that the border process is quite rigorous. We have heard that it ranges between 6-12 hours to successfully cross (entering Russia is what takes so long). A few people have said that there is an “interview” and get questioned while others have said you fill out the normal paperwork for border crossings and then are let through. There are usually long wait linea but with the motorcycle, people wave us to go to the front of the line so that helps cut out a lot of time out, phew!

The crossing out of Georgia was quick, I went to a different area for passengers and Austin went with the bike. After exiting Georgia, we drove in the no man’s land for about 5 minutes then started the Russia border crossing. We first met the most smiley and nice border crossing guy and I think he loved saying Austin‘s name or Austin in general because he would always call Austin by name when at talking with us about paperwork and the steps of the border crossing. He checked in with us multiple times throughout the day too! He was also the one that escorted us to the separate building for our “interviews”. The interviews have ranged quite drastically. Some people we had met shared that the interview was very uncomfortable asking many questions about their opinions and thoughts about the war and questioning them for hours whereas other said that there was no interview. We didn’t know what to expect besides waiting for a long time.

We got to the interview building and saw a British guy and an Austrian guy who we had dinner with the night before and they had already been there three hours, yikes. The British guy (one with his head down in the photo below) was questioned for over two hours for his first interview and they took his phone and computer and went through them for about 5 or 6 hours. He was questioned longer after we left. The Austrian guy (standing and smiling by the doorway in the photo below) was questioned for about 45 minutes and they took his phone as well to go through. Fortunately, Austin and I were only question for 10 or 15 minutes each and it was mainly about where our family lives, work, and our purpose of travel. Once they realized we were trying to drive around the world, they seemed to relax some. They asked Austin his opinions of the war and he was able to share that he does not like war and nor killing, the interviewer nodded and said “ok”. They did not ask my opinions of the war so my interview was very very simple. Fortunately yet again, they did not take our cell phones to go through them which saved us a chunk of wait time.

After about 5 hours of waiting for our interviews and waiting in general, we were given our passports and were told that we should go get them stamped and we can exit. It took about 15 minutes to get our passport stamped because they were confused where our vehicle was and why we were coming up to the stamping border control now. We use Google Translate to explain that we had been here five hours and just completed our interview and now need to get stamps. The woman made a bunch of phone calls and eventually she stamped our passports and arrival & departure paperwork. After that, we had one more passport check and we were on our way!