Timur plans a face-to-face confrontation with the chronically ungrateful Tokhtamysh in the Golden Horde’s Kipchak Khanate, departing in 1391 with an army of over one hundred thousand men to discipline his former protégé and from there launch an invasion of Russia.

Timur leads his army north for more than seven hundred miles across the empty steppe north of the Caspian Sea to reach the Great Bulgar state.

Learning that Tokhtamysh and his army march on the western side of the Ural River, Timur plans an attack, though mindful that his movement necessitates marching his undersupplied army across desert regions.

He then rides west about a thousand miles, advancing in a front more than ten miles wide.

During this advance, Timur's army gets far enough north to be in a region of very long summer days, causing complaints by his Muslim soldiers about keeping a long schedule of prayers.

Tokhtamysh, seeing Timur’s army approaching his rear guard, attempts to halt the confrontation with gifts and fawning diplomatic gestures, but an implacable Timur, once betrayed, advances, boxing in Tokhtamysh's army against the east bank of the Volga River in the Orenburg region.

In the ensuing three-day Battle of the Steppes (or Kandurcha River), Tokhtamysh’s forces nearly destroy Timur’s left flank until his reserve troops, positioned at the rear of the center, encircle and break Tokhtamysh’s rear to defeat his troops, demoralized by a rumor from Timur’s camp that Tokhtamysh had been slain.

After the battle Tokhtamysh and some of his army are allowed to escape.