Lucky you!

At 5:15 a.m. Tanja’s rooster screams at me from her cell phone. I could strangle him, but what good would it do? The cell phone would only break. So I lie there as calmly as possible and feel my whimpering body. Tanja didn’t feel very well all night. Nevertheless, she gets up and starts packing. I also get up and crawl out from under the mosquito net. Sabib and his wife arrive by jeep at 6:00 a.m. sharp. “Hello, how are you?” he asks cheerfully. What should I answer him after that night? Shitty, I would like to say, but I stifle it and smile a little pained. “Tanja didn’t exactly have a good night. She threw up,” I explain. “Oh? That must have been the Kumys.” “The horse’s milk? Can it cause such a fatal reaction?” I wonder. “Yes, didn’t you drink before?” “Well, that was a long time ago.” “Hm, well then it was the Kumys. You can only drink a small sip at the beginning. A little more every day, then it’s very digestible. But if you haven’t drunk horse milk for a long time, it can clear you out a bit.” “Or clean it out,” I say with a laugh and continue my work. Galina serves me milk tea, fried eggs and bread. Tanja, on the other hand, can only sip the black tea. “I still feel terribly sick. I hope it goes away soon,” she complains. “I’m sure of it. When you’re on the bike, your stomach will settle quickly,” I try to find a few good words.

Before we set off, Sabib wants to go for a spin on my bike. I don’t normally give in to such requests. It’s just too heavy and takes some getting used to. It is too easy for an inexperienced cyclist to fall, injure themselves or damage the bike. “But please be careful,” I warn him. He carefully sets the heavy road train in motion. It fluctuates considerably. I hold my hand in front of my eyes, I can already hear it crashing, but he makes it and comes back. “Very heavy. How are you getting on with it?” he snorts vigorously. “It was exhausting at first, but I’m fine now,” I say with a laugh. Then we take a few farewell photos, shake hands and leave these lovely people behind. “Come back again! We’ll always have a place for you!” he calls after us, waving.

The ugliness of Rudnyi

10 kilometers further on, we pass the town sign for Rudnyj. Fortunately, the road leads us around the town, which is supposedly contaminated with radiation. It is shortly before 10:00 a.m. and already 43 degrees in the sun. A 70-year-old jogger comes towards us on the road, which has had little traffic so far. “Malazee!”, (something like unbelievable, fantastic) he shouts. “Malazee!” we reply, just as impressed with him as he seems to be with us. It’s not long before a woman of around sixty years old whizzes past on roller skates. “Malazee!” she calls out. Malazee!” we reply, laughing and pointing at her. Then a young, muscular sportswoman on in-line skates comes towards us. “Juhuhuuuu!” she shouts, holding her poles in the air. “Yay!” we reply happily.

Now we reach the first houses and the gangrenous ugliness of the half-ruined factory halls and buildings immediately hits us on the head. “It’s only 52 kilometers to Kustanai. I should call Nurlan,” I say and lean my bike against a traffic sign. “Nurlan? Hello, it’s Tanja & Denis,” I shout into the cell phone. Communication is extremely difficult because I can’t supplement my Russian with body language when I’m on the phone. Nevertheless, we get on reasonably well. “Do you want to go to a hotel or to my house?” “Either is fine. Whatever’s best for you,” I say, to give him a chance to withdraw his invitation, because looking after guests for a whole week can be a huge burden. We agree to get in touch again when we have reached Kustanai. Then we drive on.

Chimneys spew blackish-grey smoke that is carried by the wind over the human settlement. The streets are getting dirtier and dirtier. Rusty fences, torn open in some places, also clasp rusty, smashed construction machinery and scrap metal. A concrete factory seems to be suffocating in a veritable fit of coughing. Gray, toxic-looking dust clings to every part of the building. People stand disinterestedly at the factory gate and look over at us. No one returns our greeting. The road winds its way past more factory buildings, monstrosities and horrors made of concrete and steel.

“Is this the way to Kustanai?” I ask a young man. “Malazee!” he shouts and his laughter does us good. “Yes, always straight ahead,” he confirms the direction. Suddenly the asphalt stops. The wind blows the road dust into the air, carrying it higher and higher until it joins the black, lead-colored ejecta of the pipes. “No, you can’t drive on here. The bypass is still under construction and ends up ahead,” warns a businessman whose driver has brought the luxury limousine to a halt. We thank the man in the fine suit and turn around. “Now we have to get to the center. What a mess!” I curse, dragging my bike over an ejection of earth to get to the other side. We pass houses that leave even us speechless after almost 8,500 kilometers through Eastern Europe, Western and Eastern Russia and Northern Kazakhstan. Straw and clay gape out of the holey walls as if from large wounds. TV aerials and lines on which tattered laundry hangs are evidence that people still live here. “How are these poor people who live here ever going to get out of their misery? What chance do they have?” I ask Tanja, who is driving close behind me. She just shakes her head. How must she feel? After such a night and the crazy heat, the dirt and misery of this settlement that hit us both on the kidneys. The monstrosity of an industrial city is so horrible to look at that I don’t even want to take photos. Maybe a mistake, but I only have one thing on my mind: “Let’s get out of here.” High mesas peak through the houses. They seem to surround the entire city. These are the excavations of the opencast mine. So they are digging for natural resources there. Perhaps also for uranium ore. I wouldn’t be surprised if the story about the radiation is true.

We suddenly reach a better residential area. The road is asphalted again. Young girls plant trees by the roadside in the blazing sun. They work the dry, concrete-hard soil with small rakes. “No chance,” I think to myself as a huge cloud of dust engulfs us all and then disappears between the houses.

Back on the main road towards Kustanai, we meet locals on bikes. All of them leave the now well-traveled arterial road and follow a tree-lined dirt track. “Let’s ride down there too. There’s shade and no traffic!” I shout and let my sumo bike roll down the embankment. “Good shade,” says Tanja, exhaling with relief. Finally leaving the ugliness of an inhumane settlement behind us, we bump along over roots and dry earth. “Denis! Stop! I’ve lost my trailer!” I’m startled by Tanja’s call. I immediately apply the brakes and turn around. Tanja’s trailer is indeed standing abandoned and alone on the dirt road. We both turn our riese und müller around and drive back. “I’m glad I noticed. I thought someone was suddenly pushing me. It really is much easier without a trailer,” says Tanja. When I reach the trailer, my mouth is hanging open in shock. Speechless for minutes, I look at the clutch. “That can’t be! The solid metal bracket I rebuilt is broken!” I shout. “And do you have a replacement with you?” “No, I never thought it would break. It’s actually impossible. Anything can break, but not this thing.” “And what do we do now?” asks Tanja. “Well, I wish I knew. It’s a real stopper. I certainly can’t fix it,” I groan, now feeling the strain of the last 800 kilometers we’ve covered since Aktöbe and settle down on a large rusty pipe that lines the path. Now we are both sitting speechless on the tube, which is rattling strangely. We are sweating like horses, exhausted and exhausted and looking forward to resting soon. Just 40 kilometers ahead of us is Kustanai, possibly good food, a bed, a shower, lots of sleep and now we are sitting here, not far from a radioactively contaminated city and don’t know what to do next.

“Maybe we should go back to Rudnyj to find a workshop there? They can weld a new angle, can’t they?” asks Tanja in a low voice. “I’m sure they can. We just have to get there. And we have to find a garage like this first.” “We’ll just stop a truck by the road. Someone will drive us into town.” “To ugly Rudnyj with its ejections and radiation? Honestly, 10 horses won’t get me there,” I reply flatly. “Well, what do you suggest?” “I don’t know. I have no idea. Maybe we should go back to Sabib?” “Sabib? That’s at least 30 kilometers, isn’t it?” “If we don’t take the stupid detour, it’s only 20 kilometers,” I reply, looking at the broken piece of metal.

Crouching on my knees in front of the clutch, I think about it. Then, to be on the safe side, I unpack the Ortlieb bag with the spare parts. “No, we don’t actually have a metal bracket with us. Just a spare coupling, but no bracket,” I say dejectedly. “How can a bracket like that break?” “Well, with the load. We’ve now covered 1,600 kilometers since Samara. The route was a disaster in parts. The strain was enormous,” I ponder. “But your trailer is twice as heavy. So it should have been his connecting angle that broke and not mine.” “That’s right. Maybe it’s because I machined the original bracket to make it easier to fit? I weakened the material considerably. It may also have been severely overheated during grinding. I shouldn’t have done that,” I conclude. “Imagine we’d just driven down a mountain and the trailer had taken off on its own? Unthinkable,” I ponder aloud. “But that didn’t happen. It broke in the perfect place,” Tanja reassures me. “Yes, that’s right.

Then my eyes fall on the cable ties. “I think I have an idea,” I say, unpacking the cable ties and attaching them to the drawbar of the trailer and the luggage rack. “Great, that could work,” I say euphorically and do a test lap. “Works great. We can reach a workshop with it,” I cheer. “Will it hold?” Tanja is unsure. “Definitely. I’ll take three cable ties. They’re almost indestructible,” I reassure her.

Back on the main road, we drive towards Kustanai. Although it is further, we decided not to drive back to Sabib. No cyclist likes to turn back. And the ugly Rudnyj with its possible radiation is not an alternative anyway. To keep the trailer under control, I now follow Tanja and don’t let her out of my sight. It wobbles from left to right but the cable ties hold. It’s not easy for Tanja to drive her Roadtrain in these conditions, but she masters it brilliantly.

We stop for lunch at a rest stop to recover a little from the excitement. There is only a meager salad, meat and white bread. We just eat the salad and I dip white bread in the tea until I’m full. Suddenly the phone rings. It is Nurlan who is wondering where we are. I’m just about to explain the situation to him when the line breaks down.

Tired, we leave the rest stop to wag the last 30 kilometers to Kustanai. “That was Nurlan on the other side of the road!” exclaims Tanja. “Really?” I wonder, unable to believe it, but his jeep overtakes us and stops next to us. “Where are you?” he asks, laughing as he approaches us. We explain the incident, whereupon he loads the trailer into his car and drives slowly ahead of us. As so often, we are surprised to be so lucky. “The guardian angels mobilized everything again to send us help at the right moment,” says Tanja, who is now feeling better again and has sweated out the last of the Kumys. After a while Nurlan stops and asks me to load my saddlebags into his Landcruiser. “I’d love to,” I say happily. From this point on, we follow Nurlan at 20 KMH, who takes it upon himself to drive slowly ahead of us for the next 2 ½ hours to Kustanai. “This man is unbelievable!” I shout to Tanja. “It’s a Kazakh guardian angel!” she replies.

During the journey, I think about how I can stay with Nurlan for a week. We have a lot to do. Have to write the texts, repair the bikes, answer emails and much more. When we live in an apartment with someone, we also need a lot of time for conversation. We hardly have the energy for it. “I’d rather stay in a cheap hotel. We’d be independent and free,” I think to myself as the Landcruiser stops in front of a building that has been eaten away by the ravages of time. “So that’s his apartment,” I think again and can already see us sweating in a small room without a table or chair. “It’s a small hotel. I have to work at the weekend. I’m a farmer and have 5,000 hectares of land to manage. I thought you might be able to move around more freely in the hotel. I’ll call you again when I’m back from the fields,” I’m taken aback by his statement. Tanja and I look at each other and can hardly believe our luck again. Nurlan helps us check in and carry our equipment. He makes sure that we have a secure room for the bikes and asks several times if the accommodation is okay for us. As we move into a large deluxe apartment with a living room, bedroom, fridge, toilet and shower for 5,000 tenge (27,- ?) a day, and in the immediate vicinity of the center, we are very satisfied.

After a long shower, we go to a small restaurant on the other side of the street. A Volga German woman who works there is delighted with our visit and laughingly translates the menu. Again, it is hard to believe when we realize that we have landed in a gourmet restaurant where we can enjoy the best food since the beginning of the Trans-East expedition.

Something different!!!

Dear reader of our diary!

Please don’t forget our green streak. We don’t want to be intrusive, but it has only grown a little in the last few weeks. Together with you, we want to give life to 25,000 trees during our Trans-East expedition. One tree for every kilometer covered. A tree costs only ? 5,-. The trees are used to regenerate degraded and non-viable forests in Germany. We need healthy primary forests. This means that there are hardly any surviving primeval forests left. Forests are being cleared all over the world. We want to do something about this with our joint efforts. Giving something back to Mother Earth that we take away every day. We believe that the children of future generations should also have a chance of survival. Please help us to create something. So that people in the future will still be able to hear birds chirping and stand in the shade of a tree.

You can find information about the Green Vein on our website.
www.denis-katzer.com

The donations do not benefit us financially in the slightest. Everything you give goes to Mother Earth!!! We guarantee this with our life project and our name.

Donations are very welcome at:
Bergwaldprojekt e.V.
Keyword:Green vein
GLS Community Bank
SORT CODE 43060967
Account number 8022916200

Mother Earth is alive!

We look forward to your comments!