Shemonaika border crossing (Russia-Kazakhstan)

[saule]

from 2 globetrotters:
Border crossing from Russia to Kazakhstan ( Trentjakovo-Shemonaika) is a very relaxed border. They let 5 cars through at a time and process them before letting the next lot in. We had 12 cars in front and even so it took us less than an hour for both sides. Kazakhstan they did not even want to have a look at our big rig.

[Timlemaitre]

Hi,
I crossed this border by bike last night with absolutely no problem. Maybe one hour to cross the 2 passeports control.

Important thing:
Our original plan was to cross the border by train so we took a ticket Novossibirsk - Oskemen. When going on the train the chef told us it was forbidden to foreigners but no one was able to explain me why. Finally we managed to negociate a stop at tretyakovo. The provonitsa asked us to go out very quickly with our bikes and not to speak. The soldiers make the passeport control on the train and I think she didn't want any trouble and was a little bit paranoid, as a consequence it was stressfull for us, for nothing as I had expected.

After studying the route I realized that the train we took (Tomsk - ridder) crosses a very small part of the kazakh territory just After roubstvosk city and Comes back to Russia . I think that's why only kazak and russsian citizens are authorised to take this train.
Of course no one told us that it was forbidden to take this train when we bought the ticket either in saint Petersbourg or novossibirsk...
If you are not caught by the russsian soldiers it's ok, when you are outside the train nobody can prove you were on this train, but my advice is to avoid this train Tomsk - ridder. We were forced to go out and to cycle to shemonaikha by night, which could be quite funny, but for a traveller without any transportation you will be obliged to take a taxi or something. It can je difficult because it's a very small village.
Cheers Tim