After his verbal tirade, my fears and anxiety increased even more. The border guard clearly vented out everything that had built up in him throughout the day, turned around, and silently returned to the booth, and we lined up again. I also took my place at the end of the line. The guys presented their passports, answered one or two questions, got their stamps, and walked back to our car, which had already passed the inspection.
And now the moment arrived when it was my turn. My heartbeat accelerated, my wrists trembled slightly, and a lump formed in my throat that I tried to swallow before approaching the window. Gathering my emotions, I greeted and handed over my international passport. Although an internal passport would have been sufficient for crossing the border, my passport had a stamp indicating that I was subject to military service, which could raise additional questions.
The border guard didn't respond to my greeting or even raise his eyes to me, not asking a single question. He simply scanned and flipped through my passport, stamped it, and returned it to me. I just said "thank you" and, with my heart pounding a million beats per minute, returned to the car where my fellow travelers congratulated me on successfully passing the border. But I still couldn't relax because I had lingering concerns related to the Kazakh border.
In some Telegram chats, unpleasant individuals wrote that Kazakhstan intends to soon close its land borders due to a large influx of people. Such news circulated throughout the following week, and occasionally, unpleasant rumors surfaced, but nobody knew how reliable they were.
We set off towards the Kazakh border. After passing the barrier, we caught sight of a new queue, which was not the only one. It began almost immediately after crossing the barrier.
It was nearly nine o'clock, and we stepped out of the car to breathe in the fresh night air and stretch our legs. There were three queues, unlike at the Russian border. The first one was for trucks, the second for cars with Kazakh license plates, and the third for cars with Russian license plates. Since we had Armenian plates, we were instructed to join the queue with Russian plates. This meant that we would have to wait for a long time, as the queue was probably 3-4 kilometers long.