July 19, 2014
I'm holding on for a Hera to the end of the night: She's gotta be strong, and she's gotta be fast, and she's gotta be riding a bike
The reason why I had been so keen to get my bike in ship-shape condition whilst in Bishkek was that I had a hell of a lot of distance to cover over the coming months and there would be precious little time to waste fixing things on the way. How reassuring, then, to cycle away from Nathan and Angie's wonderful home in the direction of Kazakhstan on my freshly painted bike with new parts fitted, holes in panniers sewn up, and a carefree sense of optimism that nothing would go wrong for a good while now. And how frustrating, a mere three kilometres down the road, when one of the clips on my rear panniers broke, dropping it to the floor and spilling my possessions everywhere. "Well," I said to my bike as I got out the old trusty cable ties, "Three kilometres. We had a good run."
Crossing the border into Kazakhstan was a relatively easy affair and I was quickly heading out across the steppe towards Almaty. No, I don't know what steppe is either, but its what everyone calls the huge empty space that constitutes the vast majority of this large country. From first impressions it appeared to be a cross between a desert and a prairie. Grassy sand, or sandy grass, as you will.
As for things breaking, I made it through most of the rest of the day, until it was time to put up my brand new tent. I'd slept in it at Nathan’s but this was my first time setting it up out in the field. Or the steppe to be precise. Or pedantic. Of course one of the poles snapped. On my brand new tent. Did I mention it was brand new? I tried splinting the pole with tyre levers but it didn't work, there was no way to put up my tent now, so I slept on top of it under a million stars, and thanked the heavens it wasn't raining.
The next day I made an early start in order to ensure I got to Almaty as I had a hostel booked. After 40 kilometres I saw a touring cyclist catching me up in my mirror, and so I stopped and waited for her. Yes, she was a her. Yes I said she. Another solo female cyclist. I couldn't believe it! These lone females on bikes are like buses aren't they? You cycle around for four years looking for one without a trace and then all of a sudden three come along at once. Well, not all exactly at once, that would be oxymoronic. I didn't mean that literally, I meant three had come along within a few weeks of each other. Actually, come to think of it, they're nothing like buses are they? Anyway, this one was named Hera and she rather brilliantly came with her very own hapless sidekick, Remco (I was rather jealous.)
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Hera and Remco seemed like jolly nice people and so naturally we cycled on together to Almaty, chatting as we went. Being from the Netherlands, Hera had started her journey there and cycled to this point in three and a half months. At this news I did a double take, because it had taken me a year.
"How many kilometres have you cycled?" I asked her.
"5,500" she said, "plus 1,500 by train across Kazakhstan, because the steppe is not interesting for me."
Even adding these two numbers together it was only... hang on... wait a minute... carry the three... 7,000 kilometres. I'd cycled 22,000! Blimey O'Reilly, I'd cycled 15,000 kilometres more than I needed to! This journal had never seemed so appropriately titled. Hera had taken a straight-line approach across Europe to Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan. As for the hapless sidekick, Remco was a friend from home who had flown in to Bishkek to join her for a couple of months around the Pamirs. After Almaty they were planning to loop back down to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Of course, what else did you expect? She was an attractive solo female cycle tourist, you didn't think she'd be going the same sodding way as me did you?
So I had to make do with just cycling together to Almaty, me occasionally interrupting the conversation when I saw a promising bit of junk at the side of the road that might possibly be useful for fixing my tent. I did in actual fact find the perfect piece of rigid tubular plastic for the job as we entered the city. My Dutch companions joined me in staying at the hostel where I offered to cook them dinner. Whilst I was in the process of doing so Remco, in true hapless sidekick fashion, got a nosebleed. A young Czech girl, Maria, was also in the room nursing a knee injury from a hiking fall and the kitchen of the hostel consequently took on the distinct appearance of a hospital waiting room.
The next day the three of us registered at the police station, a silly piece of necessary bureaucracy. After filling out a form we then had to wait an hour to get a piece of paper with a stamp in exchange, so the four of us walked to a nearby park. We were four because we had been joined by a rather irritating Englishman named Daniel, who took great pleasure in telling us all about his extraordinary journey from England by bus and train. He'd done all of it overland you know, never flying at all. "Thats very impressive" I said dryly. He went on quite a bit about all the places he'd been to, seemingly oblivious to the fact none of us really cared that much, on account of his general annoyingness.
There was a bouncy castle in that park and Hera really wanted to go on it. Remco didn't, I think he was tired from all the cycling, he'd never done a bike tour before. As for me, I quite liked the idea of going for a bounce around too, if only to get away from Daniel. He, presumably, was too tired from all the buses and trains he'd been sitting on. But then Hera found out it cost 75 cents to go on it and we decided it was too much.
After we'd lost Daniel we spent much of the rest of our day in bike shops. We found Almaty to be a developed city with modern buildings and wide boulevards more reminiscent of Europe than Central Asia. One main street near our hostel even had a European-style bicycle lane running the length of it which presumably made my Dutch companions a little homesick. And there were quite a few people riding bikes, and plenty of bike shops in the city to cater for them. I made my way through six or seven of them, buying up spare parts to carry with me through Siberia and Mongolia.
Because something else was definitely going to break.
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19/07/14 - 119km (95km in Kazakhstan)
20/07/14 - 124km
Today's ride: 219 km (136 miles)
Total: 22,580 km (14,022 miles)
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