Thunderstorms or even a hurricane?

After a pleasant night we leave the dream meadow and after 20 kilometers we reach a poor village where we buy water, bread and yoghurt. For some time now, the hills have been running out into the expanse of a lowland plain. Ideal conditions for the master, who whistles into our wheels with almost malicious ferocity. Our sturdy aluminum frames make a plaintive sound as the cool north wind plays with them. We pedal for all we’re worth, but we often don’t reach more than seven or eight kilometers per hour. It takes us a while to find a suitable place to have a snack behind some bushes. We spread out our blue foil, sit down on it and take a breather. Then we eat bread, tomatoes, cucumber and a cheese spread. Meanwhile, the wind is getting stronger and stronger. Dark cumulonimbus clouds tower high into the atmosphere like mighty mountains. A strong local thunderstorm suddenly builds up. The first drops fall on us. We eat as quickly as we can and pack everything back into the Ortlieb saddlebags in no time at all. The enormous wind blows the large cumulus clouds right past us. We are spared the rain for the time being. We huddle behind the sparse bushes through which the gale-force gusts press. Sand swirls in our eyes and paper flies like birds through the agitated air. The scale of my anemometer shows force six (52 km/h). “There’s no way we can continue cycling in these conditions. It’ll blow us right off the road!” I shout.

20 minutes later, as another soon to be black front of cumulus clouds races past, the wind dies down a little, which is why we venture back onto our road trains. Because the master is blowing at us from the north and we are heading east, he constantly pushes us off the road into the unpaved gravel with his force. We stumble and falter. When a truck comes towards us, it throws a soon painful wall of air at us. When a 38-ton truck overtakes us, it takes the pressure off for a brief moment so that we are automatically drawn into it. The rest of the journey is like a suicide mission. “We have to leave the road at every truck! Do you hear me?” I shout over the master’s loud howl. “Yes, definitely!” Tanja confirms. We cycle on because we can’t just stop here on the main road and the plain has no bushes behind which we can find shelter for the night. We look intently in our rear-view mirrors to see the approaching danger of a van in good time. “Aaachtuuung!”, I hear Tanja’s warning cry and steer my aluminum machine into the gravel as the monster moans past me. The wind shakes my body and the bike. Then we continue our journey, laying against the gusts that come and go. A balancing act, because when they pause for a moment, we sway onto the road. Then they roar off again without any warning and push us into the gravel. We’ve experienced a lot in the last 10,000 kilometers of cycling, but such an extreme crosswind situation is new.

The storm clouds are now clearing around us. Every now and then one of them catches us and pours its ice-cold water mercilessly over us. We stop, put on our rain gear and drive on. Water lashes into our faces, runs down us and drips onto the rough asphalt. Cars honk their horns. The lights of their headlights hit us like arrows. They do no damage, beam past us and disappear into the dripping wet steppe.

Then suddenly the sun breaks through a few cracks in the clouds again. It warms up instantly. To avoid having to bathe in our own sweat, we take off our rain gear again. I stop for a quick photo. Nature in the extreme. Black-blue, ominous megaclouds illuminated by glistening rays of sunlight. “Wow, where have we ever seen anything like this before? Will the photo be anything? Will it reflect reality?” is what goes through my mind. I pack the Leica into the Ortlieb bag just as the sun is literally devoured by the monstrous front. We cycle on. Between the fronts. Always with the horrible crosswind. Want to escape the battlefield of the storm clouds. Don’t make it. They cross the wet bitumen strip from north to south. It flashes and thunders as if grotesque-looking colossi were striking us with their swords, as if oversized claws were reaching for us. The omnivorous “nothing” from Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story comes to mind. That’s exactly what it looks like. A gigantic, evil-looking claw that reaches out to crush us and the world within.

We cycle for our lives. It looks like we are now in the center of the place of damnation. Now the floodgates of the sky monster open, leaving us shivering in the cold and wet. At the same time, the master rears up as if he wants to sweep us off the earth. Spotlights break through the surreal scene. I get scared. It clings to me and brings back memories of Cyclone Sam, which we experienced while crossing the continent in Australia. We, our dog Rufus and our seven camels only narrowly escaped the devastating eye, in which wind speeds of 280 kilometers per hour prevailed. Is something similar happening here? Do cyclones even exist here? Or is it rather hurricanes that hit Kazakhstan? Kazakhstan, the land of wind, shows us once again what the wind is capable of over the last few hundred kilometers. And yet I am aware that the current wind speeds barely exceed 60 km/h. But what’s next? Is it getting stronger? Where should we seek shelter? My thoughts are racing. We are pedaling against a force of nature that is about to stand on its hind legs.

There are still no bushes in sight. The cars race past us at high speed. We are mercilessly sprayed with water. We hold our breath in horror as one of the cold water avalanches pours over us. Stop and go, stop and go, that’s how we make progress, escaping the dangerous gusts of wind from the trucks and heavy goods vehicles thundering past us. With widened eyes, Tanja and I watch the voluminous tires with their coarse tread smacking past us. We can no longer understand the drivers. When the weather is nice, they wave at us. They honk with enthusiasm and some of them give us a few treats. But now, just when you might think the world is coming to an end, they race past us like kamikaze (Japanese: “divine wind”, suicide squads organized by the Japanese air force) and mutate into egotistical idiots.

“Over there! Do you see that? That’s a group of bushes!” I shout and the sight of them makes my heart beat even faster. Under extreme muscle strain, we pedal our wet riese und müller at around 12 km/h along the soaked hard shoulder towards our promising destination. In fact, the greenery turns out to be a reasonably useful group of bushes. In this weather, no longer caring whether anyone sees us or not, we roll down the steep embankment and immediately sink into the mud at the bottom. We have to muster all our strength to push the wheels with the heavy trailers through the clay, which immediately sticks to the tires like glue. After just a few meters, the sumo bikes and Ortlieb panniers are totally filthy and covered in mud and sludge. Just before I collapse, I take my bike behind the bushes. It is the toilet of a hunter. Bullet casings and human excrement give us pause despite the storm and the rain. “Should we pitch our tent on this shit?” asks Tanja incredulously. Twenty meters further on, a few sparse bushes also grow. As it is already dawning, there is still lightning and thunder and every driver certainly has no opportunity to look to the side in this storm, we pitch our tent for the first time during the Trans-East Expedition in the easy field of vision of the road.

As soon as our fabric house is up, I crawl inside and rub everything dry as far as possible. Tanja hands me the Ortlieb bags, then I get our bedroom ready while Tanja hands me the rest of the things I’ve hurriedly unloaded from my bike. Then I head out into the inhospitable weather again and spread the board-cutting foil over our bikes with Tanja. Only now can we both crawl into the shelter of our tent. “Wuuuummmm!” it booms above us. Glaring twitches of light illuminate the infernal sky. Damp but happy to have found a relatively safe place in time before the storm and the night, we lie on our artiachi mats and listen to untamed nature. “How are you?” I ask Tanja. “Good. We’re lucky to have found some shelter behind the bushes.” “Yes, that’s true. It’s been an extraordinary day,” I say thoughtfully. “You?” “Yes?” I hear Tanja’s voice muffled by the drumming of the rain. “Actually, today would be a day to celebrate.” “Why?” “We’ve covered 2779 km (9651.86 kilometers in total) since Samara. That’s the halfway point of our third stage.” “Where’s the champagne?” “We’ll catch up,” I reply, to which we both laugh freely.

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