Unexpected water shortage!

As soon as we have pushed our trestles back up the steep slope, the master hammers us with gusts of force five. I find it hard to find anything positive about cycling given the effort involved. Nevertheless, I don’t want to let it get me down and try to nip any negative thoughts in the bud. On days like these, being on the road requires a lot of mental energy. “Nothing lasts forever, even the master comes and goes. He can’t stay forever,” I motivate myself. “From tomorrow we should get up at 5 a.m. again!” I hear Tanja shout. “We should!” I reply.

Misunderstanding

After 15 kilometers we discover a café on the side of the road. “24-hour service!” I shout, reading the sign aloud. We lean our sumo bikes against the crumbling back wall of the house. “I think we can watch the bikes through the windows,” I say, whereupon we enter the service area pub. “Kuschet jeest?” (Is there anything to eat?) is the question I always ask expectantly at such a time. “Jeest”, replies the cook, looking forward to doing business at 10:00 in the morning. When we have filled our bellies with lachman (noodle stew), fresh bread and pancakes, fruit juice and tea, I ask for the bill. “950 tenge,” says the landlady kindly. I pay with a 1.000 Tengeschein ( 5,41,- ? ). The landlady then gives me back a 1,000 tenge bill and 150 tenge in coins. I put the change back in my wallet when the woman suddenly looks at me, startled, and starts to shout at me in Russian. “What does she say?” Tanja wants to know. “I have no idea. I only understand the train station,” I reply, concentrating on the landlady’s quick word albums. Then it occurs to me that she may have given me too much change and I hand her 150 tenge. She shakes her head. “It’s all right,” she says, giving up her explanation. “Strange,” I think aloud and don’t know what’s gone wrong. “Why don’t you give her the 150 tenge,” Tanja asks me. “But she doesn’t want to take the money,” I reply, now completely unsettled.

The landlady’s husband and a kitchen assistant give me a strange look and shrug their shoulders. Although we could leave now, I am not satisfied with the outcome of the situation. “Do you have a pen and a piece of paper for me?” I ask, trying to supplement my lack of Russian with a drawing. Suddenly, a flash of thought flashes through my tired brain. I look in my wallet and discover the 1,000 Tengeschein. Only now do I realize that I have received more money from the cook than I had originally paid her. Happy to have cleared up the misunderstanding, I hand her the bill. “Nyet, nyet”, ( no, no ) she replies dismissively, only to once again barrage me with rapid Russian like a machine gun. “Why don’t you take the money?” says the kitchen help and her husband soon despairs. Finally the landlady laughs, accepts the 1,000 tenge, and then explains her mistake to us again at breakneck speed. We laugh at the woman, pretend to understand her and leave the café. Happy and obviously relieved not to have cooked her customers and paid for it, she follows us outside, talking quickly and incessantly. “Da ßwidanja!”, ( See you again ) we say goodbye. “Da ßwidanja!” she shouts with a laugh.

We soon realize that we have to cover longer distances from village to village than we were told in Kustanai. Unfortunately, we listened to the people and didn’t take enough water with us. “There are lots of cafés and villages on this route. You don’t need to carry too much water with you,” explained a German from the Caucasus who often drives this road in his car. “It’s always the same. A car driver sees distances from a different perspective than a cyclist,” says Tanja. Now, with a very strong headwind, we only manage 10 kilometers per hour despite all our efforts. This greatly reduces the chance of coming across a human settlement where we can get the water we need to survive. As our map material is still very poor and only shows larger towns, we feel as if we are moving through unmapped country. Everything that comes is a surprise. Only the road and occasional cars and trucks remain a reliable component of this journey.

In the early afternoon we are already completely exhausted and would like to hit the bushes to set up camp, but we only have one liter per person left. After almost 1,600 kilometers through lonely steppe country, it is annoying for us to suddenly run out of fluids. “Denis! Stop the car. There are two women at the side of the road!” calls Tanja. Two Kazakh women sit in the shade of a tree. We learn that they have been berry picking and are now waiting to be picked up. “Is there a café or magazine up ahead where we can buy water?” asks Tanja. “Oh, the next café isn’t for another 70 kilometers and a magazine is 60 kilometers away,” they say, startling us. “With this wind, we won’t make it today. There must be a village somewhere where we can get water,” I ask. The two shrug their shoulders. “I’ll call my husband quickly. Tell him to bring some water. How much do you need?” she asks. “10 liters would be good,” I say with relief. However, our joy does not last long because the battery of her cell phone is empty. As we try our cell phone, an old Lada comes rushing up. It is the younger woman’s husband. “What are you doing out here without water?” he wonders and tells us that there is a dirt road just two kilometers from here that leads to a village. We thank you for the information and cycle on. When we reach the slope, we consider whether it is worth pushing our bikes through the soft sand. “It’s going to be exhausting,” I say wearily. “Yes, but we don’t know when the next village is coming,” Tanja replies. “There are always villages,” I say. “But I also think we should play it safe.”

After another two kilometers we actually reach a small village. Near the settlement, children bathe in ponds and scream happily. When they see us lumbering past on our heavy bikes, they leave the pond excitedly, jump on their rickety bikes and follow us, cheering loudly. Sure, we are the sensation of the century. “Gdje nachoditza Magazin?” (Where is the store?) I ask the rascals. “Tam! Tam!” (“There! There!”) they shout in confusion and point to a small house on the village square. We actually reach a small store where we can buy water and other supplies. To avoid having to spend too much money on mineral water, the friendly shopkeeper gives us drinking water from the fountain. In the meantime, a whole crowd of children has gathered around us. Everyone wants to see the strangely dressed foreigners and their sci-fi bikes.

Kazakh tea round

We are just about to say goodbye when the shopkeeper invites us in for tea. Tanja and I look at each other and agree that we won’t get very far today anyway. We gratefully accept the invitation, whereupon the woman called Merujert simply locks up her store. We are allowed to leave our luggage on wheels in the courtyard and enter the clean and surprisingly well-furnished house. A blanket is spread out on the carpeted floor of the living room and served up. There are tomatoes, cucumbers, flatbread, sausage, jam, chocolate sweets and milk tea, which Merujert pours bowl by bowl. Only a short time later we are sitting on the floor in a remote Kazakh village with our hostess Merujert, her 14-year-old daughter Samal, her friend Saule, her four-year-old son Altinberg, his older brother Sabirjan and his uncles Ejan and Timur, enjoying delicious food and tea.

How does life play out? Somehow it seems to me at this moment that the original water shortage was planned by our destiny or Mother Earth. If we had had enough of them, we would never have gone to this village and would never have experienced this nice round. Another example of not complaining about unforeseen events and incidents. Things usually turn out differently than you think and often everything that happens makes sense. Even if you don’t want to or can’t understand it at the moment. Getting upset about it is often a waste of energy, because it won’t change anything. On the contrary, you may even lose the chance to learn something, feel something, make an extraordinary acquaintance or have an extraordinary experience.

All together we are cheerful and exuberant. Young Altinberg is particularly pleased to be able to wear a real, crazy cool-looking cycling helmet on his head and races through the living room laughing. “Just take care of the precious helmet. Don’t break it!” his mother Saule warns him incessantly while Merujert keeps pouring us more tea. “How cold does it actually get here in winter?” I want to know. “Very cold. It can easily reach minus 40 degrees. The snow usually reaches right up to the gutter here. There’s not much we can do. It’s a quiet time,” explains Merujert. We learn that Merujert’s husband works as a truck driver, a bit about her last visit to the capital Astana and are allowed to look at several photo albums. “Oh, I’m tired,” I whisper to Tanja. “I would prefer to stay here tonight. Do you think I should ask if we can pitch our tent in the garden?” I ask her. “I don’t know. If you say so,” she replies somewhat doubtfully. When we get back to our bikes an hour later, I think it’s a good time to ask if we can stay in the tent tonight. “I can’t decide that. I’ll have to ask my husband. But he won’t be home from work until tonight,” Merujert replies, so we thank him warmly for his generous hospitality and say goodbye.

It takes a while for our tired muscles to get used to the movement again and we have to pedal our heavy bikes across the village square in the 40 degree afternoon sun. Back on the main road, we find a mosquito-infested forest clearing just a kilometer further on where we pitch our tent. We devour a delicious travel lunch and take refuge in the tent early.

Tanja

Women’s secrets!

After a while, I leave the illustrious tea party to have a quick look at the bikes parked in the garden. The neighbor waves to me excitedly and gestures me to sit on the bench between the two gardens. Actually, I didn’t want to be rude and keep our hostess and everyone else waiting. However, Luda urged me so forcefully to sit with her that I capitulated. She sends some children away and explains that she has something to discuss with me.

As Denis was shopping in the little store, I made my first acquaintance with Luda. The usual questions were asked and answered. Where from, where to, what’s your name? Are you married and do you have children?

After I sit down next to her on the bench, the sturdily built, 45-year-old woman asks with a serious face: “Are you healthy?” “Yes, of course,” I reply. She now also wants to know if Denis is healthy and I realize where the rabbit is buried. She asks why we don’t have children. She doesn’t believe my answer that we decided to do this voluntarily because of our lifestyle. Luda starts leafing through my little German-Russian translation book. When she has found the word she is looking for, she smiles at me conspiratorially and shows me the word secret. She also lets it melt quietly on her lips, almost like a good meal, and begins to talk:

“My cousin tried in vain to get pregnant for eight years. She was very unhappy and cried a lot. Her marriage was in danger and she had tried so many things. They had both been to different doctors and even someone who knew about magic couldn’t help. Grandma told my cousin one day that she should sleep with a boyfriend and try to get pregnant by him.”

Luda’s eyes widened with excitement as she told me, beaming, that the first attempt had been a hit. When the cousin realized that she was pregnant, she naturally did everything necessary with her husband. This meant that he could not arouse any suspicion. Her cousin now has four children. The marriage works great and the husband is very happy. When Luda talks about her cousin’s husband, she holds her arms as if she were cradling a baby in them. “He kisses and hugs his children incessantly,” she says with a satisfied smile.

“Who else knows about it?” I ask her. “Just Grandma, my sister me and now you!” She grins meaningfully at me. “When you’re back from your trip in Germany, you can do the same!” Obviously Luda had prepared this conversation with me, because at these words she slips me a piece of paper with her address on it and adds triumphantly: “Please write to me as soon as it works out!”

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