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