In the heat of the lonesome steppe

So there we were, without Viktor but with our bicycles, and started our second day of cycling in Kazakhstan around 5 in the afternoon. Our mood wasn’t the best after leaving the paradise as we now had to face the challenges of this country on our own. The heat was still present and soon we had a snack – just potato chips and ice cream but ok…
Still we managed to cycle for 70 km that day until we found a cafe where we could buy some water. When we wanted to give our empty bottles to be thrown away by the people standing around (we couldn’t find any dust bin), they brought them back filled with drink water, as they said. Ok then, so we had about 20 liters of water with us! 😀

After a nice talk and taking a few pictures as memory we said goodbye and found a place to camp a few kilometers away. We didn’t really care about the hoof traces in the sand but there seemed to be other people camping some hundred meters away from us and we didn’t know what their purpose was and if they saw us. The next morning we found that it was only participants of the Mongol Rally, thus kindred spirits, so to say, just that they are much faster than we are. 😉

On our third day in Kazakhstan we reached our first 4.000 km, yaaay!
After there had been several drivers stopping for taking a picture with us, Stefan decided to also take a picture with such people. In the end there might be a nice collection. 😀
At noon we had a break in the village Zhympity, hoping to avoid the annoying heat. However, it was pretty suffocating in the cafezi too, so not really comfortable…
On the other hand there were again many people who were very interested in us, our bicycles and our trip, taking photos and asking us about everything.

4.000 km, yaaay!

just a moment before he looked happy 😉

After our break it was still pretty hot and for the first time on our journey Alexandra had to state that she had been eaten too little for our energy consumption. 😀
In this heat we didn’t really wonder when we saw big swads of smoke appear in the distance. The closer we got the creepier it looked, but in the end it turned out that it was only a case of controlled fire clearing.

Fiiiiiiire!!!

In the evening we found a really reat cafezi with good food, extremely friendly people and: INTERNET! It was the first time since Saratov that we had internet and therefore we had to use it – a lot.
The (seemingly) owner of the cafezi was very interested in our journey and could also speak a little German as he had been living in Germany for a little while as a little kid. Also he paid two big Kwas for us which were rather good after cycling in the heat. 🙂

nice cafezi, nice people 🙂

Unfortunately, due to the people and the internet we had be lingering for too long, although we wanted to end the day with at least 120 km. For this reason we looked for a place to camp far too late and couldn’t find (or see) any. Therefore we had to camp some meters into a obviously not used drive. But suddenly a car passed by, turned around and drove into this drive pretty fast as if hitting our bicycles. Phew, we were horrified!
A police offer jumped out very angrily and asked us in Russian what we were doing here. We tried to explain that we will just stay one this one night, he told us that was impossible due to bandits in this region. It would only be safe in Aktobe which would be difficultly to reach for us by bicycle (some hundred kilometers away), we explained to him. So he just left again, but we couldn’t hardly sleep at all always thinking the next car would enter our drive again.

Fortunately, nothing happened and after we got up at 5 in the morning, we could proceed towards Aktobe.

how much water we sometimes drag around with us 😉