Final spurt before the next stage

We are looking forward to our new book “LAND DES WINDES” (Trans-East Expedition Stage 3), which will soon be available hot off the press in our webshop
www.denis-katzer-shop.de
will be available soon. I am always surprised anew at the enormous amount of time and effort that goes into such a book project, but when we hold it in our hands after a year-long creative process, we are really proud to have recorded our latest adventures for our readers. We hope you enjoy reading it. Parallel to the book, an exciting multivision show has been produced again this year, which we will be showing in the coming 2010 season. You will soon find the first dates under the following link:
http://www.denis-katzer.de/de/vortraege/showtermine

As with any major trip, there is a huge amount to organize. Although this has been going on for me since 1982 and Tanja and I have been on our great journey since 1991, the challenges remain. Some days I find them almost insurmountable. Perhaps like a mountaineer who looks up to the summit at the base camp of Mount Everest and wonders how he is supposed to get up there. However, the memories of the past years of traveling give us a lot of positive energy and so we approach it with confidence and strength. Always one step ahead of the other, don’t let stress build up and manage what we can manage every day. We cancel insurance policies that we don’t really need, redirect our mail to our parents’ house, finalize our taxes, register our car, take care of the financing for the next six months, check the technical equipment and update some of it, send the Leica cameras to the factory for an overhaul, carry out a satellite phone test to see if the transmission of our upcoming online reporting will work smoothly, update the website in German and English, take care of the flight ticket, find out that Aeroflot treats our bikes as excess baggage and not as sports equipment and that we have to pay ? 11 per kilogram. have to pay. As we are carrying over 100 kilograms of excess baggage including bikes, their packaging and other equipment, the flight costs 1,100 euros. more than expected. I immediately write an application to Aeroflot and politely ask for a concession. The airline actually responds and sends a fax request to Moscow.

We are confident and continue to work, ask my friend Pfleidi if he will drive us to Frankfurt with bag and baggage, whereupon he takes a day off and agrees. Then it’s time to plan the equipment in detail. What did we leave with our Siberian friends Katja and Jenya in Krasnoyarsk when we interrupted our trip last fall? Thank goodness Tanja has written a detailed list in which she has recorded even the smallest item. “Did we leave the Ortlieb bags there or bring them with us?” I ask. Tanja studies her list and finds no entry. “I think we used the bags to get some of the equipment to Germany,” she says. And so the days fly by. On 16.06.09, the iron bird takes off for Siberia. Until then, we still have a few events and the remaining 2,000 meters of altitude to do to reach the summit of the mountain. Hoping that there will be no bad weather during the summit assault, we continue to work steadily, without stress ? At least that is our goal.

As I sit here writing these lines, I am thinking about our plans. We had actually planned to spend the winter at the end of this cycling stage in a tipi or yurt with the Tuvan reindeer herders, the Zaatan, who live in a region of Mongolia that is difficult to access. But because we had to interrupt our Trans-East expedition last fall earlier than we wanted due to a technical defect, we now have a longer route ahead of us. Under these circumstances, we only reach the capital of Mongolia, Ulan Bator, in late fall. This means that we don’t have enough time to organize a horse expedition before the coming winter. “It’s probably a good idea to postpone this project until next year,” I muse. Absent-mindedly, I look out of my office window and watch the birds sitting in the treetops of the nearby forest. My thoughts suddenly start to fly and I find myself in Siberia. “Just a few more days and Tanja and I will be able to jump back into a completely different world, a world that has hardly anything to do with this one, and yet it is on the same Mother Earth.”

Today’s Siberia covers most of the Asian territory of Russia and borders the Ural Mountains in the west. Up to the north, where Siberia borders the Arctic Ocean, it has an approximate width of 3,300 kilometers. It stretches about 5,000 kilometers east to the Pacific Ocean and about 3,700 kilometers from the Urals to China. Here in the Asian part of Russia, the climate is extremely continental. Extreme values of minus 67.8° C were measured in the city of Verkhoyansk in the north-east. In July, the thermometer climbs to 35° C on some days. A difference between winter and summer of 102.8° C! There is no other place on earth where these extreme values are exceeded.

How will it be this time? What experiences and insights will stage four of our Trans-East expedition give us? I see us cycling through the fresh resin-scented taiga, the largest contiguous coniferous forest area in the world. The word Siberia still has a mysterious, respect-inspiring ring to it. A sound of loneliness, wolves, wild tigers and leopards, moose, reindeer, polar bears and brown bears, of the terrible cold, the former habitat of mammoths that became extinct 10,000 years ago, hot summers and dangerous ticks whose bites can cause chronic arthritis, heart and nervous system damage and meningitis. Everything lies in this land: sadness, joy, loneliness, self-discovery, captivity and endless freedom. We come here as free travelers, knowing only from history books and stories about Stalin’s Siberia, which still makes our hair stand on end to this day. But that is a thing of the past. Today we get to travel Siberia in perhaps the most beautiful and exciting way, namely on our riese und müller bikes, the bikes that have already taken us from Germany via Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Romania, Moldova, Transnistria, Ukraine, the Crimean peninsula, western Russia and Kazakhstan to Siberia, 11,000 kilometers away.

Without a doubt, we are looking forward to seeing Mother Russia again and reporting to you, dear readers, on how we are doing.

Denis Katzer & Tanja Katzer

Mother Earth is alive!

We look forward to your comments!