Tactics to defy the wind!

“Huiii! Huuiiiiii! Huuiiiiii!” howls around the dilapidated Gastiniza again this morning. Tired, I listen to the unpleasant noise. “So he’s back, the wind, the heavenly child,” it goes through my head. As heavy thunder rumbles through the window pane, which hasn’t been cleaned for at least 20 years, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “This can’t be true? Should we wait another day in this humble abode?” With stiff bones, I get up from the squeaky bed and look outside through the cloudy window. The sight is downright frightening. As on previous days, it blows all kinds of garbage across the dusty road in a north-westerly direction. Glistening lightning flashes from a low-hanging cloud front, shooting somewhere out there into the endless steppe floor. Despite my best intentions, my motivation is in the cellar. Yesterday I thought I had the power to turn the world upside down, and now, at this moment, I feel as small as a church mouse. “Wuuum!”, it booms again and again through the milky glass pane as differently charged cloud particles collide and discharge with a crash. Like a knight in shining armor, I settle back down on the crusty mattress and drift off into a restless sleep.

“Do you have a stomach ache too?” I ask Tanja quietly a little later, who is also staring up at the sky. “Yes, a little.” “Was it the water?” “I don’t know. Maybe we shouldn’t have eaten the salad after all.” “Yes, it was undoubtedly the salad. They certainly didn’t wash the tomatoes and the cucumbers were unpeeled,” I grumble. “What should we do now?” Tanja wants to know. “How should I know,” I reply, not exactly in the best of moods. Tanja gets up and starts packing her equipment and our travel kitchen. Suddenly the storm has passed. “Maybe we should set off,” Tanja suggests. “Hm, maybe,” I reply taciturnly and leave my bed again. After we have stowed all our belongings in the Ortlieb bags, I look for Igol, the manager of the store here, to pay. As today is Monday, the second floor is unexpectedly busy. The Gastiniza consists of only three rooms, while all the other doors lead into simple offices. Aigol leads me into one of the offices. “How much would you like to pay?” I am surprised by the question from a woman who looks like the boss. Aigol, who is standing next to me, lifts up a thin notebook, hides her face behind it and whispers something to the woman. Then she takes the booklet and writes the price of 1,500 tenge (approx. 8,- ?) per person and night on it. As one of the women had quoted me a price of 1,000 tenge when I checked in, I ignore Aigol’s scribbling and say: “I’ll pay 1,000 tenge per person per night.” “That’s all right,” I hear in amazement and know that the nice Aigol would have cheated me. She smiles as if nothing had happened. I pay, get my receipt and we drag our possessions into the backyard. Then I get the bikes out of the shed where several tons of cement are stored. While we are loading them, about 10 men gather around us. They watch our every move with curiosity. Everything is commented on. We are asked how much the bikes cost, to which we always reply: “They belong to the company. Not ours. We don’t know the price.” “Ah, the company,” they whisper, nodding in understanding. To reduce rolling resistance on the asphalt, I pump the tires up to 5 bar pressure. An interested hand grabs the Schwalbe tire on my bike. “Ho, ho, he’s as hard as a rock. Did you see that? Like a car tire!” wondered one of the observers. We click the Ortlieb saddlebags onto the bikes. “Man, what a system!” another man points in wonder at my hand movements and pokes his neighbor on the arm. “Is that a fridge?” “Of course it’s a fridge. They need a fridge in this heat,” says a man dressed in a green camouflage suit. “That’s not a fridge, it’s a box in which we keep our tent and mattresses,” I correct, rubbing my legs with sun cream. “What kind of stuff are they putting on their bodies?” we hear. Then we put on our cycling gloves and put on our helmets and sunglasses. “I feel like an astronaut getting ready for a flight into space,” I say quietly. “Yes, it may soon look like that to the men here,” Tanja replies with a cautious laugh. As I click the GPS, radio speedometer and cable speedometer into the mounts on the handlebars, the voices rise to a lively shop talk. We are not comfortable presenting modern bike technology at the moment, but we have no other option. “Come on, swap your bike for my motorcycle,” suggests a man in work clothes. There is general laughter as I cautiously decline. “What are you doing there! “Dawei! Dawei!” (Go on! Go on!), the boss’s deep voice suddenly demands that the men get back to work. “Have a good and safe journey,” the men wish us and shake my hand one after the other. At 10.50 a.m. we roll our high-tech road trains out of the yard into the glistening sun. The wind immediately blows in our faces on the wide street of the village. We swing into the saddles to defy it. Our stomach pains have thankfully subsided. Who knows, maybe it was just a defensive reaction of our bodies to avoid having to get back on the aluminum horses?

The first sign on the road shows 322 kilometers to the town of Aktöbe. “That probably means 322 kilometers of steppe for us,” I say almost reverently. There is hardly a cloud in the sky and it is often slightly uphill. Around midday, temperatures rise to around 44 degrees in the sun. As we can’t cycle in the shade, the sun’s temperature is crucial for us at the moment. The wind has picked up even more. Again and again I take out the small anemometer (wind gauge) which shows me the exact wind speeds. “Has improved again,” I say in amazement. “How strong?” Tanja wants to know. At the moment, gusts of between 15 and 27 KMH are blowing around our ears. So between 3 and 5 wind forces,” I explain. But because we have 22 liters of water with us today, the headwind has lost its terror for the time being, except for the enormous effort. With our water supplies, we can cycle for two days without having to resupply. This means that we can set up camp at any time without having to worry about dying of thirst on the route. In addition, we have determined in our map program that there should usually be a village every 50 kilometers, sometimes 80 kilometers.

Traffic has decreased rapidly. We count about 10 cars per hour. None of them stop to ask us about the usual where from and where to. “It’s strange, isn’t it?” I say. “Hm, maybe none of the drivers want to risk stopping on the lonely stretch of road?” “You mean that could be a reason?” “Who knows? There’s no cell phone reception here and no towing service to get a broken-down vehicle out,” Tanja ponders.

After almost seven hours and just 41 kilometers in a day, we find a camp site behind a narrow strip of forest that still stretches in fragments to the left and right of the road. “We can hide there!” I shout. When there is no car in sight, we push our bikes through high grass and wild herbs as fast as our strength allows. It stings and rubs unpleasantly on sweaty calves. Mosquitoes are flushed out and immediately attack us. Filming or photography is out of the question at this moment. After we come to a halt behind the first trees, I immediately reach into my handlebar bag and take out our Jaico anti-mosquito spray to put an end to the nightmare. “Look over there,” I whisper quietly as my gaze falls purely by chance into the thicket. “What is it?” “Look, there’s an owl,” I say, pointing at the large bird, which is watching us with both curiosity and a wait-and-see attitude. Then it goes on. Breathing heavily, we find our place for the night in a waist-high patch of grass and flowers. We are happy to have found another unseen spot and set up the tent, put the sleeping mats inside and stow the panniers in the awning. Then we each drink a liter of water, which immediately leaves us through our pores. At 18:00, the thermometer still shows 34 degrees in the shade. “Look at my legs. They’re suddenly swollen and full of pustules,” says Tanja. “Oweh, it doesn’t look good. It’s probably the result of your hay fever and allergy to grass,” I diagnose. “Hm, probably. It’s definitely uncomfortable. I should wear long socks in future before we hit the bushes.” “That’s probably a good idea. My legs burn too and thank God I’m not allergic,” I say and while Tanja cleans herself of the road dust and grasses with a makeshift washcloth, I transfer the pictures to the computer and write down the short notes of our experiences.

Apart from a car engine whizzing by in the distance, we only hear birds in this camp. It chirps almost noisily. Insects, dragonflies and mosquitoes fly around in large numbers. Ideal feeding grounds for the local birdlife. It seems to me as if we were sitting in the middle of a bird sanctuary. At around 22:00, swarms of mosquitoes make it almost impossible for me to write my notes. When a tick starts to crawl up my legs, I take refuge in our tent. Tanja is already fast asleep while I listen to the excited chirping for a while longer. Suddenly, the many crows with their loud caws fall silent and are replaced by the calls of the nocturnal hunters, the owls and owlets.

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