Border between Europe and Asia!

Overnight, the Gastinza is deserted by everyone. We are the only guests and the staff have gone home. We bring our equipment into the forecourt and wait for someone to come and free our bikes from the factory building. As it was already over 30 degrees at 8 a.m., we actually wanted to set off earlier today. “Well, that plan went down the drain,” I remark. “Hm.” “There’s no point getting angry about it. I just hope someone comes at all.” “Hm. Today is Saturday. Do you think they’re working?” “Who knows. Maybe Saturday is a holiday in the nest? In any case, I told the owner that we have to be on our bikes at 8:00 a.m.” “Maybe he overslept.” “Maybe he’s been drinking and completely forgotten about his only guests,” I ponder. We use the time to eat our Rapunzel muesli with Sanatur’s drink powder mixed in water when the young woman who couldn’t make a facial movement yesterday comes shuffling along. “Do you have the key to the factory building?” asks Tanja. “Nyet.” “We want to leave.” “Hm,” she says, pulls out her cell phone, looks at the display and keeps walking. 10 minutes later, there is still no movement. By now it’s 9:00 a.m. and we’ve been waiting for an hour. The sun steals through the few branches of a tree under which we are waiting and shows us what it can do today. “I’ll go into the house and ask again,” says Tanja as I watch a few ducks looking for food in a pile of garbage. Then Tanja reappears. “And?” “You wouldn’t believe it. She was standing up there looking out of the window. I told her emphatically that we had to get to our bikes, whereupon she took out her cell phone again and this time actually called someone,” Tanja explains. It takes another 10 minutes for a Lada to make its way across the dusty road and stop with us. The owner gets out and leads us to the shed, which he unlocks without comment. Then he swings back into his car and drives off.

“We need to fill up our water supplies,” Tanja reminds us after we are ready to go. Because a liter of mineral water is 0.50- ? cent and packaged in environmentally destructive plastic bottles, we decide to fetch water from the village well. “If the surrounding residents all live off this water, it can’t be that bad,” I conclude. Unfortunately, the village fountain is not working at the moment. A local sends us to a nearby house. We ask for water. The woman is extremely friendly, climbs into a hole in her garden, pulls out a hose and lo and behold, it provides fresh, clear water. Again we take 32 liters on board. Although this amount is incredibly heavy, the water guarantees safety and freedom. We are happy to pedal the extra weight. We supplement our food in the village. We buy fresh bread, some pastries, are happy about a few mandarins, bananas, tomatoes, some spread and a tube of mayonnaise. The mayonnaise and the cheese are the only things you can spread on the bread. I pack them at the bottom of the trailer because of the heat. It stays cool there for a relatively long time.

Ural Mountains

As we leave the village of Novoalekseyevka behind us, hot fountains of dust blow into our faces right at the start. Our muscles are instantly stretched to the limit, especially because just behind the settlement we climb 290 meters in altitude. We are used to climbs by now, but ascents with headwinds of up to 28 KMH are still an almost inhuman challenge. You only make progress in first gear until you see signs indicating a 12% gradient. From this point on we have to push. Often over long distances. Time and again we are forced to take short breaks to rest our bodies, give our lungs a breather and give our beating hearts a chance to regain strength. Meter by meter, piece by piece, we work our way over the first mountain ranges of the Ural Mountains, which run out here in Kazakhstan, stretching over 2,000 kilometers in a north-south direction and are considered the geographical border between Europe and Asia. However, it also forms the border between the East European Lowlands in the west and the West Siberian Lowlands in the east. We are glad to be able to cross the Ural so far to the south, because further up in the north it drops steeply over striking steps in the east.

Because of our heavy luggage, I made a point of avoiding all the mountain ranges, such as the Alps, the Carpathians and the Urals, when planning this trip. This is exactly why the interesting route through all these countries was created, exactly why we travel in large arcs, following the twists and turns of a snake, from the west to the east. Here in the southern Urals, the mountain ranges are no longer too high. We expect a maximum height of 400 to 500 meters. We can also do this with our road trains. At least that is what we assume in the current situation. As I push, I can see the map I’ve studied over and over again in my mind’s eye and I’m really looking forward to crossing the border between Europe and Central Asia. The vast mountainous region extends from the northern Pai-Choi Mountains to the Kara Sea and then continues to the islands of Novaya Zemlya in the Arctic Ocean. “How cold it might be up there right now?” I think to myself. With a little imagination, you can see that the mountain ranges were formed from the eroded hulls of an ancient mountain range, which, according to my documents, rose about 250 million years ago. I am fascinated by the thought of having made it this far on the bikes. This gives me the strength to ignore the wind constantly howling in my ears and to move forward step by step. After 41 kilometers and 6 hours, we reach a narrow stretch of forest in 43 degrees in the sun. Because this narrow strip of trees next to the road was planted artificially, it is so dense that we can only pitch our tent behind it on the wide steppe meadow that begins. As in the last few days, the forest strip serves as a visual barrier to the road and unfortunately offers no shade. Because of the incessant exertion, the increasing heat and the dwindling strength, I feel my psyche starting to play tricks on me. I feel it buckling, feel the annoying questions of meaning making their way into my consciousness. It’s time to take a break for a few days. A break in which our bodies can recover. Where the many horseflies and mosquito bites can swell away, where we can scrub off the street dirt that is deep in our pores with a brush.

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