It’s not just the wind against us!

After the humpy night in the tent, we get up tired and with crooked backs. To avoid wasting too much time, we eat some cookies standing up and wash them down with water. Then we drive our horses over the sandy ground of the path back onto the road. We are immediately greeted by wind speeds of between 12 and 16 kilometers per hour, which slows us down. I just can’t believe it, I don’t want to understand the stark reality of the Kazakh steppe. My inner self rears up, trying to defend itself against the constant exertion of force, but only succeeding in building up anger in me. After 10 kilometers we discover the first yurts on the roadside that we already know from Mongolia. About 12 years ago, we crossed Mongolia on horseback and the yurts meant hospitality and warmth to us in the solitude of the steppes. “Look, it looks like there’s a magazine there,” I say. In fact, there is a small stone house next to the yurts where a couple sells food and bottled water. We take this rare opportunity to fill our water bottles and drinking systems. Then we set off again against the constant wind. The first camels at the roadside reveal the exoticism of the remote steppe landscape.

With all our efforts, we reach maximum speeds of between nine and eleven kilometers per hour. In this way, we make very slow progress and use up our energy and water reserves early on. Today it is 70 kilometers to the village of Dzhambeyty. 70 kilometers against an even stronger wind than yesterday is hardly feasible. My psyche is already collapsing at the start of this stage. How are we going to conquer the steppe in this way? That is a mystery to me. And why, why is this natural element of wind usually against us?

A car turns out of a dust track onto the main carriageway. Drunks bawl out of the window. “Uhhh! Stop the car! We want to talk to you!” a loud voice commands. As we have learned from experience that it is better not to cycle away from drunks, we stop at 42 degrees in the sun. A long lanky man traipses towards us. He takes off his peaked cap and pulls out a white-grey mass about two centimeters long and one centimeter thick. “Take it there! Eat it!” he orders Tanja, “No thanks,” she replies kindly. Then the man comes to me and hands me the disgusting thing. “You have to eat it. It tastes good. It’s cheese!” he says with a serious face. “Thank you,” I say, taking the stale cheese. “Later, I’ll save it for my provisions,” I add, laughing and thanking him. In the meantime, four more men, dressed only in shorts, emerged from the car. They are all very drunk together. They laugh and bawl unpleasantly. Apparently they were swimming at a nearby lake and had a drinking binge there overnight. While the tall man is talking to me, one of the half-naked men grabs Tanja’s ass. Another wants to take the scarf off her face to see who is underneath. Tanja has been protecting her face from the sun’s glaring rays behind this scarf for a few hours now. Tanja pushes the men’s hands away in both cases. “Let’s keep driving,” I say before the situation becomes more awkward. “We still have to get to Dzhanbeyty today. Lots of wind and heat,” I say and use the explanation to say goodbye in a friendly but firm manner. The men accept, laughing out loud. A few minutes later, they speed off in a different direction. We breathe a sigh of relief. “This shows that there are others here too and that we always have to be on our guard,” says Tanja

After 30 kilometers, we stop at a lonely, half-ruined bus stop to spend our lunch break in its shade. “Strange, there’s a bus stop in the middle of nowhere?” Tanja wonders aloud. “Hm, there’s probably a small settlement a few kilometers from the road,” I say. “They must have the timetable exactly in their heads. There’s nothing posted here for miles around.” “Who knows, maybe the bus only comes once a day or once a week,” I muse. Then, after an hour, we lift our burning butts back onto the saddle and let the cranks spin again against the evil wind. Suddenly a car overtakes us and stops in front of us so that we can’t go any further even if we wanted to. An entire family gets out. “Can we take a photo of you?” asks another long lanky man. “Gladly”, we reply as kindly as we can under these conditions. “Ah, you’re from Germany!” says the tall man. “Yes,” we answer, nodding our heads and, as always, are about to list the countries we have traveled through so far. He is not interested at all and interrupts: “Germany, Ah, Adolf Hitler!” “Hitler not good,” we reply. “Adolf Hitler, ha, ha,” he says and wants to raise his hand in the Hitler salute. “Not good,” I say cautiously because I don’t know what denomination he belongs to. During our long journey, we traveled and lived in Muslim countries for years. Hitler was often popular. Despite all the talk against it, we had no chance of convincing people of our convictions. On the contrary, we were advised to keep quiet so as not to arouse suspicion and resentment among our hosts. “Adolf Hitler no good?” the man now asks while his older friend films us from top to bottom with his cell phone. “Come apart a little so we can stand between your bikes for a photo,” the young man orders. “No can do”, we reply firmly. Then the woman with the child in her arms comes and steps on Tanja’s left pedal to get over her bike. Tanja holds her heavy goat, protects it from falling and shows the woman that she should walk between the trailers so that she can stand in the middle. “Hi! Hi! Hi!” she giggles and stands between us for more photos. Then the Lulatsch also wants a picture. “Adolf Hitler!” he shouts and raises his hand in salute. “We have to move on,” we say and say goodbye to the Kazakh paparatzis.

Despite topping up our water, we are running low again. But our energy reserves are also at their limit. We stop every few kilometers to catch our breath. Then we discover a hermitage about 1,000 meters from the road. “Let’s ask for water there. If they’re nice people, maybe we can even spend the night there,” Tanja suggests. I stop for a moment to think about her suggestion. “Hm, okay. Just hope I don’t make a detour with this,” I reply. The wind drives us over the bumpy ground. I lean my train against a dismantled track gate. Tools lying around reveal that work was still being carried out here recently. “Hello! Hello! Is anyone there?” I call out cautiously, prepared to be confronted by a guard dog at any moment. My gaze falls on a simple shed covered with earth. Nothing. There’s just an old bike in there among a pile of other stuff. Old cars, huts, an enclosure built from long sticks and a completely rusted bus are scattered randomly across the area. When I discover the end of a line, I jump back from the mud wall. Perhaps the guard dog is sleeping behind it. It takes a load off my mind. A goat, who is at least as frightened as I am, jumps up into the air and takes off until she is jerkily slowed down by the leash. Then I pluck up my courage and look through the cloudy window pane into the obvious apartment building. Now I’m really startled, because there’s a man lying on the floor. “Surely he should have heard me? At least my shouts?” it goes through my head. Once again, I look through the window pane, which has been eroded by the ravages of time. The man lies on a thin mattress and sleeps. There is another mattress next to it. Perhaps his partner’s? It can’t be a woman. Everything here looks too sober for that. I return to Tanja with the results of my observation to report back to her. “Well, I don’t know. This place doesn’t make a good impression on me. It has a bad energy somehow. It also feels like a man’s business,” she says before I can hand in my report. “Hm, you’re probably right. Should I still wake the man up to ask for water?” “I don’t know,” Tanja is undecided as I go back to the house and knock on the window. But an inner voice makes me pause. Why? I don’t knock on the window and go back to Tanja. “Did you wake him up?” “No.” “How far is it to the village?” “About 25 kilometers.” “We can still make it.” “I think so,” I reply and get back on my bike, this time pedaling against the wind back to the road. As soon as we get back on the road, a car stops on the other side of the road. A hand imperiously beckons us to stop. The man gets out and although he only has to walk a few meters across the road to us, he activates the central locking system to lock his property. “I’m a policeman,” he introduces himself in a friendly manner and after he knows everything everyone wants to know, he warns us about the place ahead. “No good people live there and the gastinza is bad. I should know, because I’m a policeman here,” he explains. “Thanks for the information,” we say goodbye and set off with the last of our energy to cycle to a place that the police have now warned us about personally. “Man, what a day. I want to go home!” I shout, and although I actually wanted to make a joke, I sense a spark of seriousness in my wish. “Oh yes, it’s nice that you have thoughts like that too,” Tanja replies.

For some time now, we have been taking it in turns to track against the wind. Every few kilometers, sometimes Tanja is in front and sometimes I am. This means we can rest in each other’s slipstream for a while. In the meantime, my body has become resistant to water intake. As soon as I drink, the valuable liquid comes back to me. I put this down to complete overexertion. I convulsively try to keep the water in my mouth so that I can swallow it down again. My Pulst Rast, the wind holds us back, but we can already see the houses of the village on the horizon. That motivates me. Once again, I find myself in my wife’s slipstream. I am impressed by your extraordinary performance and perseverance. Inspires me. After all, women are always said to have a harder time than men due to their lighter physique. “I wonder what she’s thinking now?” I know their motivation, their strengths and weaknesses. Without a doubt, Mother Earth or All That Is has given me a reliable, strong and loving partner for this life.

The trucks and cars that pass us by often greet us with loud honking. Some drivers give us the thumbs up, others shout good wishes. When we finally reach the outskirts of the small village of Dzhambeyty, a police car comes towards us. When we see the policemen laughing openly, we are relieved. The vehicle turns in front of us and now drives ahead of us with its blue lights on. “Escort to the city!” calls Tanja. Then the policemen pull up next to us and ask. We answer. “The Gastinza is no good”, says one of them, while his colleague says “Normalna” (normal).

The place makes a Mongolian impression on us. Flat buildings everywhere. There is hardly a house that has more than one floor. Cows walk in the middle of the road with downright arrogance. Dogs barking. Fountains of dust swirl between the alleyways and across the wide street. People look at us in amazement. “Bon voyage!” they shout after the first moment of shock. Then we stop in front of a run-down block building. “That’s the Gastiniza,” say the police officers. “Can we take a picture with them?” asks Tanja. “Taking pictures? Us?” the officers ask, initially somewhat incredulously but very happily. I stand in front of the police car with the blue light still flashing on the roof. The officers and I laugh in Tanja’s Leica. Then we let our trains roll into the broken courtyard of the accommodation. People come and ask us questions. Tanja guards the bikes while I heave my desolate body up an even more desolate staircase after more than 70 kilometers against the wind. Two young, dolled-up girls are sitting in a run-down office. They laugh and giggle. “Is there a room?” I ask kindly. “There is,” they reply. “Can I see it?” I ask. “Yes,” they answer, but don’t make the slightest effort to move. After a while I ask again. I should sit down, they suggest. 10 minutes later I understand that someone is fetching the key. “This must be a terrible place to stay. I hope there are no fleas,” I think to myself. In the meantime, I inform Tanja. We are both almost unconscious with fatigue. She sits next to the bikes on a broken, dirty staircase and tries to explain something in Russian to a drunken man. We realize that not everyone here understands Russian. We are already in the catchment area of the Kazakh Turkic language. Again I ask if we can at least take our equipment to the second floor for the time being. “Hi, hi, hi,” the girls reply. “You learn patience here,” I think. Then two men approach me. The younger one pointed at the older one. “He’s drunk. Cognac,” he whispers and clicks his middle finger against his own throat. The older man leads me to a shed crammed with sacks of cement. He takes a key out of his trouser pocket and unlocks the metal door. “You can put your bikes in there,” he says, not exactly friendly. At least that has been clarified.

Momentum is finally building. The two giggling girls go home. A lady in her fifties enters the house. She covers the beds. We are allowed to carry our equipment into the very simple, run-down but clean room. “Where can we shower?” I ask. “Dusch i Tualjet njet Rabotajet” (Shower and toilet don’t work), the woman replies. After the exertion of the last two days, our bodies are completely sweaty, salty and encrusted with road dust. “Well, the main thing is that we don’t have to go any further today and can rest here,” I say. “That’s right, we can wash ourselves downstairs at the water hose. Apart from that, what can we expect at a price of just under 17 euros (3,000 tenge) per night?” says Tanja with a slight irony in her voice.

After we have packed everything away in our room, we cross the street to the only restaurant in town. We enter a kind of hall with a few tables and chairs. A girl’s face appears on a display on the back wall. At first she is frightened and doesn’t want to serve us. She calls in reinforcements. Tanja is allowed into the kitchen and organizes two microwaved chicken legs and microwaved mashed potatoes with ketchup for me. This is served with dumplings from the freezer, also warmed up in the Mirko. The only meal of the evening. As Tanja is not a meat eater, she makes do with the mashed potatoes and ketchup. We drink two shandies with it. I’m so ravenous that I’m scarfing this stuff down in record time. “It’s strange how quickly a person can reach their limits and how quickly it can dehydrate the body,” I think, because I didn’t have to urinate once the whole day.

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