Issyk-Kul lake, truck driver's interpreter and KGB agents

The Issyk-Kul lake is so vast that you almost can't see the opposite shore. There is a lot of water in it. One could kind of expect a lot of water in a lake, but after a month in the dry steppe, I stare at it as if I saw a mountain of gold. We can bathe as much as we want in it, and we have hectoliters of drinking water. Our plan is to visit my (actually Janela's) family at the eastern end of the lake, which will take us a couple of days to reach. Then, we want to see some other Kyrgyz regions before our families fly in from Czechia to visit us.
It's a pleasant journey, and not even corrupt cops we meet almost every day can spoil it.

Valentina, Matteo and Horse at Issyk-Kul

 

Czech secret agents

Our next driver finds us suspicious. He agrees to take us on for free but he just doesn't get why we are traveling. Why to Kyrgyzstan? Why with little money? Why do we camp?

I explain him over and over again in my bad Russian that we would like to see countries we don't know and talk with people.

"So you collect information."
"Kind of."
"How much does your government pay you?"
"What? ...nothing. We are just traveling because we like it."
The driver smiles with an unbelieving, self-assured smile of a person who knows the way things are.
"So you work for the Czech KGB, right?"

He stands his ground and there is no way I can convince him. He is rather friendly for somebody who thinks he has members of secret police on board, though. He even decides to leave the road for us, and drives us to a small salt pond. He and Vojta go swimming in it. Even though the pond is just several hundred meters from the shore of the fresh Issyk-Kul lake, it is so salty that you can just lie in the water without moving, and you won't sink.

The salt pond

The driver then leaves us on the main road. We are still not sure if he really believed we were secret agents, of if he was trolling us.

We get a message from Valentina and Matteo, the bikers from the Caspian ferry: they are around and will be staying in a hotel at Issyk-Kul tonight.

We arrive to their village by afternoon and find out that our friends, like Alex yesterday, paid a huge fine to bandit cops for breaking a non-existing rule.

A moment for being poetic: "It was Issyk-Kul. There, the water met the sky, with nothing beyond them. The lake lay shining, deserted, and motionless, save for the faint stirring of white foam along the bank." (Chingiz Aitmatov, The White Ship)

Job description of a Kyrgyz interpreter

Hi horse.

The Italian bikers stay a small wooden hut in a holiday resort. Kyrgyz holiday seems not to have started yet, so there are not many tourists. And the resort is almost on the beach, so Vojta and I decide to set up our tent home just next to the resort. We swim in the lake (it's cold), make barbecue, make tea (with water from the lake), play Durak, drink Valentina's coffee and observe a horse chewing my backpack.

It takes us two days, and that pre-sets our traveling speed for the week to come.

The day we finally leave our friends and agree to meet again in Karakol, we only make 30 km. It's not because we get stuck, but because we meet Demir the interpreter and her boss the Turkish truck-driver. Demir seems to speak not only Kyrgyz and Turkish, but also Russian, Uzbek, Kazakh and any other language of the region. We speak with her and the driver in a mix of Russian and Turkish.

We immediately get adopted by them. (It seems that there is no other way if you meet a Turkish driver abroad.)

They are delivering goods to another nearby holiday resort, and they want us to stay with them until the next morning. To achieve that, they decide to pretend that we are all members of the same company. We understand the explanation of the master plan just partially, and we cannot imagine in which universe we could pass for their coworkers, so we just shut up and let Demir speak. It proves to be the right strategy.

Lenin lives.

The manager of the resort invites us to her living room and offers us tea and cookies. We shut up and observe the antlers, photos and other retro decorations on the walls while Demir has a conversation with the lady.

After that, Demir goes back to the truck to manage the unloading – it seems that this also is a part of her job. We meanwhile walk around the resort to see what is there to see. In the middle, there is a big concrete sculpture of Lenin's head and Young Pioneers, with an inscription saying „LENIN LIVED, LENIN LIVES, LENIN WILL LIVE“. It seems that in this place, Lenin and the spirit of the Soviet times will live for ever and ever, even through the end of the world, no matter how many times the regime changes.

At night, there is a barbecue party in honor of the newcomers. That seems to include us.

Slaughter party

When I say barbecue, I mean a journey to the nearby town to buy a sheep, journey with the sheep in the car trunk, beheading the sheep, processing the sheep, roasting it and then eating it. Demir is the one who calls the tune. Apparently, the work of an interpreter also includes butchering animals.

Our new home for tonight

Our cover doesn't burst – or maybe it does but nobody cares – and we get a wooden holiday hut with beds and clean sheets to sleep in. No tent this time.

The following morning, we say goodbye to everybody, and continue to Karakol. I have no idea how Demir and the driver explained this to our hosts, but nobody seems to look surprised and we don't even get any strange looks whatsoever.

Truck driver and Demir the interpreter

The next people who pick us up are tourists from Hungary. They travel around in a rented car. Except for meeting Kyrgyz cops who–of course–fined them, in Uzbekistan they met our Swiss friends, Kasha and Mira. The world shrinks a bit again.

 

People of Kyrgyzstan #2: Metal guitarist and bandits in uniforms

The moment we meet Sasha, he has a particularly bad day. His previous boss owes him several months' salary and he doesn't seem willing to pay him anytime soon - or maybe ever. Sasha of course has no contract because that's not the way things work in Kyrgyzstan. Also, he had to give some of his last money to corrupt cops in the previous village. He didn't do anything wrong but there was no way how to argue with someone in a uniform.

We live in a free country

Sasha - or Alex, as he prefers to be called - was the first driver who stopped to give us a ride on our way from Bishkek to the Issyk-kul lake. It's a robust blond guy in a metal hoodie coming from the Kyrgyz countryside. 

We are driving along a picture-postcard country road surrounded by green plains and snowy tops of the giant, majestic mountain wall in the distance. Alex is playing System of a down on his car radio - after a month of Russian hip hop, this is something I actually enjoy listening to. The mild, cheerful weather strongly contrasts with Sasha's mood.

We were quite surprised because he addressed us in fluent English. He tells us he has an English degree from the university of arts. Now he's jobless, though, because it's hard to find work in the region. Recently, he had to quit from his last job in a fancy mountain resort because he wasn't getting paid. But he needs money so bad because he is moving to a new house with his girlfriend. She doesn't have money either because she is 19 and a student. They are getting married next month. (He invites us to the wedding and I feel sorry we will have to already be in China on that day.)

"Is it hard to live in Kyrgyzstan?" I ask him.
Sometimes it is. The unemployment is high and the government is corrupt.
"But I like it here. We live in a free country. Our government sucks but you can say it aloud and you won't end up in jail."

I notice a bass guitar on his back seat.
"I have a metal band, you know. I'm a guitar player."
"What kind of metal do you play?" Vojta asks.
"Just metal. Any kind of metal."
"Do you have concerts?"
"Sometimes. A couple of weeks ago we had one in my village."
"Is there a lot of metal fans here?" I inquire.
"Nope. Not really. People have no taste in music."

Alex shows us some videos and pictures of his band on his phone, and also pictures of his girlfriend and their new flat.

Then we see another police car on the side of the road. They wave at us to stop, and Sasha gets out of the car.

"Fuck," he says when he gets back. "Now I have no money left at all. That was the second fine today, for nothing. They told me I was drunk, so I told them I haven't drank since yesterday. So they told me I was driving too fast - that the speed limit was 30, even though there is no sign and there has never been such limit here."
"Why didn't you stand your ground? They would give up."
"There's no point," Alex shakes his head. "They are cops. They would just ask for more money."
"I'm sorry for you. That's so messed up."
Alex shrugs his shoulders: "Their salary is shitty and they need to feed their families. So they just collect money from people on the road because they can."

Trust me, I'm an engineer

 

"At least I met you and I can chat with you. That's the only positive thing today", Alex concludes bitterly. In the distance, at the bottom of a green mountain, he points us the ski resort he used to work at. Many people from Almaty come here in winter because it's way cheaper than in Kazakhstan. 

"I will take you a bit further, I just need to switch cars first. I must move a bed to my new place, so I will borrow a bigger car from a friend."

We stop in a village that looks like any small village in Czechia. Except that in the ditches along the streets, loads of cannabis plants tall as a person grow instead of nettles. Vojta and I stare at it but locals seem to find it totally normal.

Alex meets his friend, talks with him for a while and then he sinks back on his seat.
"He won't lend me that car."
He leans against the steering wheel and puts his face in his hands. "I don't know what to do."
"You have no other friend with a big car?"
"No. And I really need to move it today."
"Is there anybody else who could lend you a luggage rack that we could put on your car?"
"No."
"How big is the bed?"
"Big."

Alex looks lost. It's clear that we just cannot let him down. We will just have to move it in any way that is physically possible.
"We will help you. We will just tie it on the roof of your car."

There is nothing else Alex can do, so he drives to his village as planned. We meet two other members of his band, parking on an abandoned lot with loud metal music on. They look like the most typical metal fans ever - and they don't seem to be particularly excited about the idea of moving furniture now. 

Sasha's parents live in another typical family house, with a small yard and a little grocery store in front (no cannabis this time). We greet his mother and his sister who also wears a metal T-shirt, and the guys squeeze the huge bed through the tiny door-frame. Then we start dragging it up the yard.

"You can't carry it, you're a woman," Alex tells me after some time. 
"Why does it matter? I'll be happy to help you."
"Oh, really?" Alex looks confused for a while, and then we carry the bed on. 

Eventually, the other band members show up as well and we manage to move the bed up on the street. It's huge, bigger than the car. Alex has no tools to dismantle it and no ropes to tie it to the car either.

First, we put the mattress on the bare roof - it's maybe a meter wider than the car. Then we put the wooden bed on top and Vojta fishes two clotheslines out of his backpacks. We open the car windows and the trunk, and tie the Tower of Babel on top of the car to anything solid we can tie it to. 

Alex looks way happier than I think he should look. "Perfect, that's great!" 

I wouldn't exactly use the word "great" to describe our engineering work.

"Alex, please, go very slowly!" I urge our friend when he, his sister, Vojta and I crawl back to the car through the spiderweb of ropes. 
"It will hold, I trust you," Alex laughs and turns on some metal music again. He starts driving down the mild slope so fast that the load on top our car is swinging there and back. 
"That's not exactly slow."
"Don't worry." 

At the end of the street, Alex swerves right, the pile of stuff swings again and inclines a bit. It is still staying on the roof, though. 

It seems that our piece of engineering is a bit too much even for Kyrgyzstan, so people stare at us everywhere we go. Alex doesn't seem to mind - his good mood is back. He turns the music up and laughs at his sister that she doesn't understand the meaning of the English quote tattooed on her forearm. He even drives us a bit further in our direction even though they have to go some 50 kilometers back with the bed. 

An hour after we say goodbye to each other, Alex sends us a picture: the bed on the rooftop is dangerously tilted but they made it home. Both he and his sister are smiling brightly.

People of Kyrgyzstan #1: Central-Asian volunteers and a young poet

If you come to Kyrgyzstan in early summer, it feels like a kitschy paradise: weather is way fresher than in the steppe, and there are green mountains everywhere. And again, thanks to coincidence, we meet interesting people on our very first day. And then again and again.

Stadium for the World Nomad Games

Staying in a school

We don't have to dig our way through the new country on our own because we have a Kyrgyz friend, Janela. Technically, she is my relative because she married my cousin. I think there isn't a word for our relation in English but I bet there is one in Kyrgyz. Janela is not in Kyrgyzstan for the moment since she studies in France but it doesn't make her any less helpful.

She connects us with her friend Urmat from Bishkek - and he is calling us three times a day to ask whether we already are in town. Bishkek is just maybe twenty kilometers from the border but getting through the customs is quite slow. There is a big queue, the officers ask a lot of questions and one of them wants Czech coins that we don't have after all these months on the road. (Or maybe he wants a bribe and we are too dumb to understand but we wouldn't be able to afford it anyway.)

Hitchhiking is quite easy if you walk a bit further from the border so that the swarm of waiting taxi drivers can't see you. Hitchhiking is a pretty much unknown concept, like in Kazakhstan, so it's important to say you are traveling without money. 

Bishkek looks like a totally normal city. It almost surprises me because I was told that it looked poor and not very urbanised. The center looks neither poor, nor unurbanised. We buy internet in a shopping mall and meet up with Urmat and his girlfriend. We were supposed to stay at his place but the plan changed and we are going to his friend's place. (Janela seems surprised but my cousin not at all - "it's a normal way of planning things in Kyrgyzstan that you never know what the plan is".) We are blocking a packed marshrutka with our backpacks for maybe half an hour, and we end up in the suburbs, on a river bank under the mountains, in a quiet place that looks like a school. In the garden, there is a young guy resting - when he sees us, he jumps on his feet. He seems to be waiting for us. Urmat introduces us to him. His name is Amanat, he speaks a bit English and seems to live here. Then Urmat has to go. Amanat shows us around and then he has to go too.

Our Bishkek home

We have no idea what this place is but it has a kitchen, a garden, a classroom, a shower and we get somebody's room and we are told we can stay three days. (We just hope the inhabitants of the room know that and won't be sad when they come home.)  

In the classroom, there are photos with some important looking people in smart clothes and some logos, so we think we are in some kind of association, but at the moment nobody is home to ask. 

In our room

The next day, we spend most of the time taking official photos for the Chinese visa. The Czech visa agency told us that the embassy in Czechia had accepted our documentation, but rejected the pictures because they hadn't liked them (even though the pictures we gave theme were way better quality than those for the Iranian visa). So we go to one of the fanciest looking photo studios in Bishkek so that they are at least able to meet all the strict Chinese requirements. The guy knows exactly what the requirements are. So hopefully it will work this time.

We also walk around Bishkek - it's full of old socialist monuments - and end up in the bazar. You can buy there pretty much anything you can think of. My favorite shops to stare at are those with traditional clothes. It's not a tourist trap - it's normal clothes, and locals buy and wear them. (My favorite items are kalpaks - tall felt hats with curly patterns, mostly worn by elderly men.) 

At night, we resolve the mystery of the school we are staying at. All the inhabitants are having a Ramadan dinner that they are cooking in a big cauldron in the garden. They invite us over. Besides Amanat, there is Maisalbek - he can speak English and he says he is from the mountains, there is a boy from Uzbekistan, a boy from Tajikistan and three or four others. There is also Azamat who is "the president". That means we were right: this must be some kind of organization.

The guys are all pretty young, and even Azamat the president is way younger than we are. They all study at the university in Bishkek. In their free time, they volunteer for the association this building belongs to - that's why they can live here. 

Spontaneous culture night in a classroom

We learn that the association focuses at education of children. When we ask what exactly they do, the guys show us photos from summer camps they organized, and take us to Azamat's fancy presidential office with flags and medals. We also watch videos of the World Nomad Games. It's Olympic games of nations with nomadic tradition, and the participants compete in traditional disciplines (it usually involves horses). Kyrgyzstan hosted the games last year and built a large stadium on the shore of the Issyk-kul lake for this occasion. The guys from the association assisted with organizing of the event. It was a big honor for them since some of them come from nomadic families themselves, and they are closely familiar with the disciplines. 

Our hosts from the association

The guys seem more than happy to present the stuff they do to random foreigners. Amanat is eager to speak English, and doesn't let us use Russian. He loves poetry and wants to become a politician - he is actually Kazakh and admires his president. The others make fun of him ("it's a dictator!", somebody shouts, and Amanat suddenly looks disconcerted).

The next night, we sit in the classroom with Maisalbek and talk. There are still many people in Kyrgyzstan who move to the mountains with their yurts and horses every summer, and in autumn go back to the village. Also his family does that. 

We then talk about music and literature and Maisalbek sings us a part of a traditional epic called Manas. It's not recited in an ordinary way - there is a special rythm to it. Vojta brings his overtone flute and we try playing it. A boy peeps in the classroom and joins us. And then another. One by one, all the students gather around. They play their music instruments and sing songs they know, and they even show us a dance. (Maisalbek wears a "modern" kalpak hat which is a bit less tall than the ones the elderly guys in the city wear.) I sing a Czech song and the guys try playing my flute. It seems that they are not familiar with it even though in Europe it's the most common and most unimpressive musical instrument you can think of. Amanat recites poetry, from Russian authors and also his own. He is good at it. And he loves it. (The others joke that he finally has an occasion to show off, and won't bother them with his poetry in the morning when they want to sleep.)

Our spontaneous art session ends at three or four AM and I am pretty sad we can't carry on. We can't complain about this introduction to Kyrgyzstan.  

Kazakhstan: 2500 Kilometers of nothing and a bit of hospitality

When you hitchhike in Kazakhstan, most of the time you are in the middle of nowhere. That's because there is a lot of nowhere in Kazakhstan, so it is quite easy to be in the middle of it. Sometimes, you at least drive on a road, though. 

How to hitchhike on a field

When our Dutch friends with the old Land Rover leave, we stay alone in the steppe on the outskirts of Beyneu. We need to cover several hundred kilometers of pretty much nothing, reach a crossroads with the road going to Aktobe, and then go through more nothing. 

We are waiting for any cars to show up on the road. It's hot and windy, and only endless steppe is ahead of us. Again, I'm a bit nervous. What if hitchhiking is actually difficult here and we will get stuck without water... Or what if we meet more zombie gorillas who will want to punch us like the ones a couple of days ago? Pepper spray wouldn't help at all in this wind. 

I don't have time to imagine more things to be afraid of because a guy stops. Time to practice our fake Russian.

"Hello, we are hitchhiking. That means we travel without money. Can we still go with you?"
"Yes but I'm only going to the next village."
"How far is that?"
"100 km."

The Atyrau-Aktobe highway

Our next car is a truck with two drivers - the one who is not driving wants to play Durak with Vojta. They ask us about our journey and want to know how much our government pays us for traveling. They are reluctant to believe that we are doing it voluntarily, for free, and our government has nothing to do with it. 

Soon, we get to the crossroads. Our friends are headed north. Locals told them the highway straight to Aktobe was bad, so they are taking a detour. 
The road looks normal, and in the map, it is drawn in red. And roads drawn in red are nice - they are big highways. So it can't be that bad, can it?

After a couple of kilometers we cover with an old Soviet minibus, the nice road becomes so full of potholes that there actually are more potholes than road. The driver doesn't bother with it and steers into the steppe. The ancient Soviet car shows to be a solid offroad. It doesn't seem to need any asphalt to go 60 km/h. 
The wide field is full of intertwining car tracks but the driver never doubts which way to take. I'm trying to keep an idea where the asphalt road is, but I sometimes can't see it as we are jumping up an down on moulds. There at least is a railroad nearby going the same way, so I hope we won't get lost and be eaten by camels. 


The driver leaves us near a Soviet monument in the middle of the field and continues to a village behind the train tracks. It seems that here, most drivers have mercy on the road and use it, so it might be a good hitchhiking spot. (Except that there are no cars.)

When there is a car, you can see it from afar. Or actually you can see a dust cloud. You watch it approaching for several minutes until you also hear the noise and eventually discover a car under the cloud - and then it goes past you as if the driver weren't surprised at all to see hitchhikers in here. It happens every ten minutes or so and it is the most interesting thing you can see around.

There is only one car which doesn't have a cloud of dust behind it. It is a white truck which is going very slowly - at first we think it is not moving at all. We watch it approaching for ages, and then it stops for us.

The driver is Iranian, doesn't speak any Kazakh or Russian and looks very much lost. We dig out of our heads some Farsi words we have almost forgotten, and he seems actually happy he met us. We spend in the truck next three hours - and cover 30 kilometers. 

The best hitchhiking spot

It is the first time the driver is going this way, and he too believed that the big red line in the map actually was a road. His car is made for nice flat asphalt. He is going 10 kilometers per hour, he sometimes tries to leave the pothole road and very often has to go back again when he comes across a bigger mould that his truck cannot climb up or down. And he is running out of his visa. 

At evening, we stop in a village (yep, there is a village. And it has internet network coverage). The driver fails to find a shop in there. He looks like he is going through a culture shock.

Camping in the steppe is quite scary this time since anywhere we go, we are technically camping on the road. So we set the camp behind an iron pole and hope that a car doesn't bump into us. It is a bit colder here than in the hot south, so the night is actually comfortable for sleeping.

A zombie camel

In the morning, we take a position at a communist monument behind the village and use it as a watch tower for finding cars. Hitchhiking is quite hard here because the road is several kilometers wide. You need to identify a dust cloud in the steppe and then run to be able to meet the car and wave at it. And you mustn't fall asleep while waiting. We miss a couple of cars because they are too fast and too far, and then we are lucky and make some 40 kilometers with a local truck at a normal speed.

There we meet our Iranian again, and we know that our fate is to suffer up to Aktobe together. I mentally prepare for three more days in the wasteland, but surprise surprise, a real road starts in the middle of the way. When we are saying goodbye to each other on the outskirts of the city, we realize that the driver also ran out of money for food, so we give him some.

It's for free, we are Turkish

1950s crane in Aral

For several days, we are making our way through the steppe. For the first time in months, we spend such a long time just going ahead, without stopping much, without meeting people to stay with and talk to. Drivers and strangers on the street are way more reserved than in Azerbaijan, Turkey or Iran. The fact that we are bad at Russian and know nothing in Kazakh doesn't help either. A lady tells me how to say "hello" in Kazakh, except that there are four versions of it according to the sex of people who are greeting each other, so I never really know which version to use. I end up saying always "salam" and hope I won't offend anybody too much.

It's hot, the steppe is endless, the constant wind is throwing dust into our faces. I'm actually happy for the wind, though, because without it, the heat would be much more annoying. And if the wind stops at evening, mosquitoes attack us. We are covered in dust and sand. In almost a week, we find running water twice: once, it is a river, once a gardening hose in a park. Finding drinking water is also hard. 

Meeting Johannes

I'm getting tired of the monotonous days, the dust and the heat. We are starting to get to each other's nerves. I'm getting annoyed by Vojta being all the time bitchy and rude and in a hurry, and he is annoyed by me not wanting to be in a hurry and telling him to stop being bitchy and rude. 

We meet Johannes, the Austrian biker, on the road on several occasions. The long way is tiring him too.

Harbour in Aral

We reach Aral, a totally uninteresting small town that used to be a thriving harbor before the Aral sea dried out. We are thinking about hitchhiking more into the desert to find a cemetery of old ships stranded on the former sea bottom, but we google that they have already been sold to China. So we at least go to the ancient port. We navigate through sandy streets, family houses and a couple of zombie-looking camels. Several locals we ask don't know where the harbour used to be, but eventually we find it. There still are a couple of puddles in the ancient marina, some desolate factories around, and especially two huge, magnificent cranes from the fifties. We climb them up a bit - from the platform, I can see the port and the sea of sand.

"Short history of the Aral sea"

The Islamic month of Ramadan has begun: Muslims are not supposed to eat or drink when Sun is up, which in this heat requires a true devotion. My new hobby is to watch our drivers and see if they celebrate Ramadan, or not. Most of them don't; they can't stop drinking water because of their physically demanding jobs, and some say that they usually respect Ramadan if it is in winter, but not in summer. Some do celebrate it, though - one of them is visibly thirsty and exhausted, and the very minute the Sun goes down, he pulls out and takes out his snack (and insists on sharing it with us even though he was starving the whole day). 

Our Uzbek hosts

As we are heading south, it is hotter and hotter. On the outskirts of Shymkent, I decide that I'm just not going anywhere without at least a bucket of water. I find a car workshop with a cafe, and the staff show me an outdoor water tap. A real water tap! With water! Real water! I squeeze underneath and pour water all over myself. The workers are staring at me: I must look like a water ghost, but I'm totally happy because it's my first shower since the gardening hose in Aral. Vojta wanted to know prices in the cafe, so I ask one of the technicians.

"For you it's for free. Where are you from?"
"Err... thanks. From Czechia. We are hitchhiking."
"Oh I see. Come have a meal." A small group gathered around me.
"Thanks a lot but my friend is waiting..."
"Where?"
"Over there. He is building a tent."
"Go and get him here, tonight you sleep here. Be our guests."

I bring Vojta and to be sure, I ask again how much a meal is in the cafe. 
"I said it's for free!" the technician, probably owner, gets almost mad. "We are Turkish!"

He gives us a hotel room and a meal and lets us use shower, a washing machine and power plugs. We wash almost all our stuff and for a while, we get rid of wind, dirt, mosquitoes and the burning sun. I realize that taking a shower is one of my dearest hobbies. I am absolutely happy.

Almaty: the fanciest city in Central Asia

Lunch with a Turkish truck driver

The little restart helped us a lot. It is even windier and hotter but we have regained some energy. Slowly, we are approaching Almaty. We meet Johannes once more and have beer with him. Jimmy and Roger are already in the city: somehow, they overtook us.

We hitch a ride with an Uzbek couple. The lady - her name is Gulnura - tells me about Uzbekistan, about winters in Kazakhstan, about Kazakh language... They also invite us for a delicious meal. Kazakhstan seems to be suddenly spoiling us.

We meet another Turk, a truck driver, and he adopts us for a while as well. We cook pasta together in his truck kitchen. Meeting Turks is nice. The world would be sadder without Turks.

Almaty

Almaty feels like a different world, and not only because there suddenly are mountains and the weather is mild and fresh. Almaty is cool, rich, fancy, fast, showy, international, modern, and mostly Russian-speaking. Everybody on the street look classy. There are big shopping malls, glass buildings, fancy attractions and expensive cars. (One of the favorite pass-times of the richest local kids is to show off with their cars at a particular parking lot. We are curious, so we go look at them: leaning against the cars and drinking doesn't look much like fun but watching them is as much fun as going to ZOO.)

We get in touch with a Couchsurfer who lets us stay with her. Let's call her Aygerim even though her real name is way less Kazakh. She also is cool, fancy and international, and speaks more Russian than Kazakh. She has no idea about all the versions of saying hi according to people's sex. She has never really been to any other Kazakhstan cities except Almaty and Astana because there is no point. Other city people hardly ever go to the west of the country either. 

We are enjoying life in civilization again - Aygerim shows us some of the fancy parks, a cable car, and we go to a swimming pool. I smoke weed with her and her friends and I get high and I'm surprised because normally it doesn't work on me. Aygerim tells us that once, her mom found the weed but Aygerim told her she only was selling it, not smoking it, and her mom was ok with that. 
 She also drives us to the Mongolian embassy and we get so far the quickest visa in our lives - a sleepy guy in the shabby building seems to look a bit surprised we actually came to the embassy for a visa. 

Aygerim studies abroad and tells us that she just wants to get out of Kazakhstan - pretty much everybody who can afford paying a school abroad do their studies elsewhere because local universities are bad. She is rather critical about the government, too.

We get in touch with the Dutch guys, their friend Denis and his wife Adisa again. Denis tells us a story about an unknown drunk dude in a traditional costume with an ax that was threatening to kill his wife for marrying a foreigner. Seems that Almaty also has some not very modern people.

We also see Karla, a girl that Vojta met at a train station in Beyneu, and she drives us to the mountains. At the beginning, there are some of the fanciest and most expensive hotels. The rich Almaty people seem to love going to the mountains dressed up, with high-heeled shoes and satin dresses, to take selfies. The mountains are tall and wild and eventually we get to a place without buildings. On the other side, there is Kyrgyzstan and the Issyk-kul lake. A guy tells us that in the Soviet times, he used to walk there on foot. We find an old observatory; Karla climbs up the rusty construction and we follow her - it's fun to see such a classy girl to enjoy urban exploring. We then spontaneously climb a mountain of 3800 meters, the highest place I've ever been to, and I again feel almost like after smoking weed. Then we have a picnic at a lake and are kicked off by some very important chieftains because we are foreigners. They probably also want us to give them money, but Karla is just being nice at them and keeps smiling and they let us go. 

Reunion with our friends

Like the previous countries, Kazakhstan also becomes too interesting for us, so we again stay longer than expected. Only after almost a week with Aygerim, we say goodbye to everybody and thumb towards Kyrgyzstan.

International Roadtrip through the Kazakh Steppe and Car Glass Smashed with a Fist

The city of Aktau is basically in a desert. It means that between Aktau and the rest of civilization, there are several hundred kilometers of nothing. Our plan is to cross this nothing with the Land Rover crew we have met at the boat, and to separate in the next town of Beyneu. So we start discovering Kazakhstan together with the Dutch guys and the Swiss girls who also became hitchhikers for now. Also, we come across the first assholes since the beginning of our trip.

Hildi the dead camel

Jimmy and Roger need to do some car maintenance, so we stay a few days in Aktau. Vojta and I spend most of the time in a fastfood with wifi, finishing the Chinese visa paperwork. (Eventually, we send the documents to my boyfriend who will bring it to a Czech agency together with our spare passports. Then we can just pray gods of all possible religions.) Meanwhile, Kasha and Mira do acrobacy on a rooftop of the car on a wooden pallet we stole for fire but decided not to burn. At evenings, we meet up with Johannes the biker who lives in a hotel, and drink beer together on the beach. Our big old green military car with white zebra stripes attracts a lot of attention - people stare and honk at us, and some of them come to talk.

Aktau: a lot of free space

Everything looks large in this town: roads, squares, buildings... It reminds us of how big this country is. So far, Kazakhstan looks fancier than we expected. There are no 30 years old cars like anywhere in Azerbaijan except Baku - most of them are new offroads. Also people look fancy. Houses are totally Sovietic, though. 

And there is one notable thing: sand. It's everywhere. There also is constant wind, so soon the sand is on us and in all our stuff, and we can't get rid of it.

Having a car just for yourself is comfy and you get spoiled very easily (even though there are just two seats and the rest of the crew is squeezed in the sleeping part like sardines in a can). You can carry a lot of water, food and beer, and move fast through the city to find a camping spot on the outskirts. (Except that anywhere you go, there is a lot of sand and wind, and that's pretty much it.)  

At the sea coast

Our drivers take us to a meeting with their Couchsurfing friend. His name is Denis, he is originally American and he happened to come to Aktau with a TV crew - they are making a show about the countryside of Kazakhstan (countryside means pretty much everything except Almaty and Astana). So we end up on TV again, two days after what we thought was the last TV interview in our lives - except that this time, it's Roger who does the speaking. 

Denis lives in Almaty and knows Kazakh as well as Russian. He shares some of his insights about our new temporary home country: "People in Kazakhstan are very hospitable if they know you - that means they push a lot of food on you whether you want it or not - and very rude if you're a stranger. Especially if you look Russian. That's from the Soviet times." He also tells us that Aktau was built for uranium miners during the Cold War. Now, it is used mostly for oil drilling. And in most of the Mangystau region, there is no fresh water whatsoever, so Aktau has a power plant to desalinate sea water. 

Kitsch time on Aktau beach

Denis and his colleagues then take us to the steppe to see the deepest canyon in the country. We meet a German dude with another Land Rover - a new one - and a hitchhiker with a bicycle. So far, Kazakhstan seems to be a hub for travelers. The driver is planning to cross all the way to the Aral sea, something like six hundred kilometers, through the steppe with no roads whatsoever. Denis says he's mad, but the guy is pretty sure about his plan.

We also find a large animal carcass. 

How we met Hildi the camel skull

I know it might be hard to imagine, but a skeleton of a dead animal can be very much fun. ("You guys are sick," Denis says.) We especially like the huge skull, so we take it along and get a new team member: Hildi the dead camel. 

Another advantage of having a car.

A dude who thinks he is the Hulk

The German guys heading to the desert

We slowly start moving towards Beyneu. There is mostly sand. We are all pretty excited about the journey, though. We are listening to a long playlist of good roadtrip music, and the young guys make fun of Vojta's Slavic English and random use of articles. 

The couple of villages we cross are way less fancy than Aktau. And usually it's hard to get water. 

It's pretty easy to buy ice-cream, though. Vojta buys one in every shop we stop at, and the girls start calling him Ice-Cream, or "the Ice-Cream" since the only thing he consistently uses with the definite article are people's names.

The air is getting very hot despite the wind that never stops. It's not possible to open windows at the back of the car, so it feels like traveling in a greenhouse. It's not possible to sit in there much either, so I lie on a pile of backpacks and usually sleep. 

We stop at a small cave in a rock near the road. Some people are having a picnic nearby.

"It's something else than just desert, so we want to see it," the Dutch guys say. "And there are people, so it must be something important."

It actually is important because it seems to be the only place with some shade in the whole region. Some of the people are resting in the cave. They make some room for us and then invite us (in Russian) to join their picnic. It's quite admirable how much Russian the Dutch guys are able to use thanks to their audio guide. We learn that our hosts are an extended family, and most of them work in the oil industry in Aktau. 

Picnic with a Kazakh family

They give us some sashlik - roasted meat - and coke. All the family members smile, tell us their names and are curious to know where we come from and what we are up to. Some of the kids examine our offroad.

"Nice people - I finally feel more at home in this huge country," Roger says when we are leaving. He is right. Later, when we are making our way through the wasteland and see mostly grumpy faces, the memory of these people helps me to stay in a good mood.  

We go further - the military offroad is actually pretty slow - and in the afternoon we stop at yet another village to scrounge some water and get more food. Then we sit on top of the car and eat ice-cream. Here, the Land Rover is even more of an attraction than in the city. All drivers going past us honk and wave - except two.

When we are sitting back inside to move on, we notice two dudes waving their fists at us. They stop just in front of us; the bigger of them gets off the car and goes towards us with a totally blank expression, as if he weren't an intelligent creature at all. We haven't seen them before and we haven't even blocked their way, so it takes us a couple of seconds to realize that for some reason, the gorilla mistook our car for a punchbag. 

"Just go!" Kasha tells Jimmy who is now behind the wheel. He tries to drive away as quickly as possible, which is probably why the engine fails. 

Without a single word or any change in his empty face, the dude tries to open Jimmy's door, but he can't because Roger is holding it. So he starts beating at the window. 

"Go, Jimmy!" 
"Hold the door!" 
- bang -

(The confusion reminds me of the Game of Thrones scene, and I'm glad there just is one zombie boxing into our car.)

With the third blow, he breaks it and the pieces of glass scatter inside. Jimmy manages to start the engine and to drive away. 

"Are they after us?" 
"No, they went to the left, let's just get the hell out of here."

We only stop a few kilometers after the village. Jimmy's face is still green and the pieces of glass are everywhere. We wash shards out of his and Roger's arm. Kasha, who is sitting at the passenger seat, takes an ax and a plank from the back of the car and puts it under her feet, in case the dudes would appear from an unexpected direction and assault us again. (I don't know what exactly she wants to do with the ax, but since she is the biggest fighter among us, and since in zombie movies axes always work, I trust her.) 

Two other guys stop next to us to say hi and take some selfies with us. They look totally unsurprised by the fact we are sweeping smashed window glass out of the car and walking around with an ax. Then they go again.

The zombie dudes don't show up anymore.

The whole thing didn't start making any sense. We just suddenly have one window less than before.

The engineer thinks that the glass won't work well

At evening, we drive a bit into the steppe, put up our tents next to the car and cook a good meal with a lot of heavy ingredients that we would never bother to carry on our backs, and we open beers. It has now become a ritual.

 Jimmy loses his car keys in the middle of nowhere and then finds them again, and we stalk a dung beetle rolling a really big ball of shit. We play flutes, guitar, and Roger even takes out his violin. 

My first dung beetle

There is a special poetry to making noise in the middle of the steppe.

When the night falls, we make a campfire with wood we scavenged in the morning from some old fireplaces, and we drink.

Once again, we have found good company to travel in. It makes me remember the Iranian hitchhikers. Even though our new friends are about the same age as Atesh and they dared going so far, they are way more organized and way less punk. I'm wondering whether it's because they are Europeans. Probably not; they actually are less punk than us, even though we are old.

A concert in the steppe (pic from the Dutch guys' camera)

The next day, we go to see a famous rock formation, which actually is the last rock we see in days. Up to Beyneu, we drive through a completely empty, flat, windy steppe where you can see that the Earth is round. It is almost frightening. If there is a storm with lightnings, you will definitely be the highest point above the ground. And if you need to pee, you just tell your friends not to look in your direction unless you want to walk several dozen miles to hide behind the horizon.

We don't meet any more Hulks. We once almost crash into a truck that  decided to take over another truck exactly at the moment our car was approaching. Roger somehow manages to squeeze between the truck and the only road sign on the whole steppe, though, so we don't die.

To be, or not to be

Our vague hope that Beyneu would be a super civilized city with a lot of  shops that sell car glass proved too ambitious. There mostly are roads with asphalt (and sand and wind), there are grocery stores and we even find an ATM for Master card, but that is pretty much it. As for the window, I go with the Dutch guys to look for it whereas the others are buying train tickets to Uzbekistan. Two guys tell us they know a place where to repair it, which pretty much is a trap. At first, Jimmy has to discuss with someone over phone and bargain the price from something like 100 Dollars down to 30. Then the dudes try to stick a toothed, obviously too small glass shard into the frame with a duct tape. We tell them that we think that the glass won't work well because it is a bad glass, and that we want a good glass (the Russian sentence we learned on the ship is suddenly super handy). They eventually find a car glass pane and even discover screws in the window frame to detach the frame from the car (they didn't try to look for them before). Then they try to cut the pane, they break it and ask for the 30 Dollars.

Inzhenyor dumayet shto stakla bude rabotat kharasho

We tell them: "no glass - no money", and to their question where we are going I tell them Uzbekistan, because I am worried they will try to follow us. 
We get a plastic foil (for free) from a photo studio, and Kasha and Jimmy make an improvised window themselves. Also for free.

We stock up on food and beer again, and go to the desert to make one last campfire before we all separate. Also Bjorn joins us - he is living in a hotel in town. Cycling from Aktau in the never-ending strong wind has been one of the hardest parts of his journey.

The idea of going on across this giant country without our new friends is making me slightly nervous. And I'm not the only one.

"You can go with us to the next city, if you like..." Roger offers us uncertainly. It actually surprises me; he usually is the one who sticks to the plan - it's usually Jimmy who makes generous offers. It sounds nice and it would postpone our separation a bit. I realize how much we are getting spoiled in the car. 

"I think we'd rather hitchhike...", Vojta says.  

Eventually we decide to part as planned. At night, Jimmy drives Mira and Kasha to the train station, and they continue to Uzbekistan. The next morning, we say goodbye to Jimmy and Roger at the end of the town, and we watch their zebra car disappear in the desert.

We are on our own again. 

Hildi chilling