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a "room" with a view - camping Kazakhstan

If we wanted a relaxing holiday then we probably would have chosen to go a slightly different route to the one we are on. The last few weeks in the desert have been physically trying and mentally exhausting but we have been totally amazed by the hospitality of the people of Kazakhstan, and the scenery of their country. So far the further east we head the more we have been enjoying the experience of motorcycle touring/travelling and the more of an adventure it has become. After being in Europe the distances in this area of the world are so vast by comparison. People don’t even flinch when they say its “6 days drive away”… Starting when we got to Slovenia the number of road side food stalls has steadily increased. Initially just selling fruit and vegetables grown locally they have now blossomed into people selling anything from car oil, fruit and vegetables, hay, good quality cooked food (normally soups or shashliks) and the favourite chai (local tea). It seems the roads are the arteries that the whole economy blossoms around. It’s always astonishing to see the variety of good produce that these small road side stalls sell so fresh and cheap. No matter where we stop there are some things that are always the same, “b.m.v… they make bikes do they?” (and yes they say bmv not bmw)… they think we have gone and put some BMW stickers on some other brand bikes to look cool… much like you see Lada’s with Subaru wrx and Porsche badges… of course you know they are Lada’s based on the fact they are broken down on the side of the road with just some legs hanging out from under it covered in grease….. The other constant is that they feel that we “Westerners” are only on the road to be over taken… it must be something along the lines of.. its always safe to overtake a westerner…. especially if its around a blind corner on a hill with a cliffs for edges on a wet and oily road… the irony is that no matter how powerful they think they are we can still completely leave them in our dust even on the most shit road surface thanks to being able to dodge all the pot holes that they have to drive through… in the process breaking their suspension.. if we had a dollar for every car that has sped past us only for us to go past it about 10 minutes later broken down on the side of the road we would be very wealthy by the end of this trip… at the end of the day It provides us with hours of amusement warning each other of nut cases on the approach to keep each other safe.. for the most part we don’t get involved in their stupid games but its fun to watch as an observer.

Incoming Storm - Taraz Kazakhstan

Anyway enough about that crap.. and more about our story… or should I say our epic.. I’m pretty sure I can drag this article out to being at least a trilogy… maybe even add a few prequels and really screw it up star wars style… oh sorry forgot this is non fiction so its hard to create a prequel after the fact…

After leaving Shymkent we decided that we would attempt to make it to just outside of Taraz which was an easy 160km away, no probs we thought.. though given that we had left late and had no city maps we thought it would probably take us around 3-4 hours to get close to the next city… About 40km short of Taraz we decided that it was time to find a place to camp for the night. We turned off the main road and headed towards the huge mountains that we now had in the distance on the southern side of the road. After investigating one spot we decided that we would try and head to somewhere that was a little more secluded. After some investigation we decided that we would go up a big hill and camp on top looking over a reservoir and the 3000+ meter high peaks behind it… unfortunately it was not to be.. the evil clutch spirit came down to haunt Heathers bike half way up the steep hill resulting in a complete loss of power as the clutch gave way… in the process the bike was dropped but nobody was hurt despite the hill being so steep.. There was no where for me to stop so I had to continue to the top and then run back down the hill to help pick up the bike… with her confidence damaged she then got back on the bike and went down the hill safely without any issues.. using the momentum from the hill she managed to roll down to where we had first checked out a place to camp.. thankfully she just made it that far… no need to push yet.. in the haste we checked the clutch out no matter what revs we didn’t get any traction and the bike just didn’t move anywhere.. what a bummer we had thought about replacing the clutches before we left but thought it wiser to wait and see.. what a daft idea that was.. now we had broken down miles from the nearest town on a minor road where nobody went.. at least that is what we thought at the time.. hopefully it was not going to be too expensive to get a replacement clutch sent out from somewhere… while we sat in the shade and pondered our situation we started to email everyone to get some quotes.. it was about 4pm Kazakhstan local time which meant we had about 4 hours more “business day” before anything was closed.. maybe if we got lucky we could get some parts out that day to “address unknown”… yay!!!

I then went to find a place to camp further away from the road.. about 400meters away I found a nice place where the shepherds clearly came to relax in the heat of the day. A beautiful view out over the two valleys and a nice place to camp in the shade.. what a blessing.. there was even a load of fire wood for us to “tidy up”….. maybe this clutch thing was not such a bad problem after all… we hadn’t really stressed at all about it given that we knew we could find someone to take the bike somewhere.. we just had to negotiate a fair price.. hmmm..negotiate. The campsite even had some owls as residents in the tree above our tent…

Sunset over the Steppe - Kazakhstan

I then went back to get heathers bike to push it to the camp site.. 400 meters never felt so far.. its amazing how hard it is to push a bike up hill along a sandy track.. in the end the he-man in me gave out and asked for Help and Sheira.. ooops I mean Heather came to the rescue helping to push the bike up the rough section and thankfully into the shade…

That night we pondered what to do over a camp fire watching a monster electrical storm hit the high altitude peaks to the south.. what an amazing lights show.. at this time we got our first email response… at 7:30pm local time we got a response from the BMW dealership in Ankara…

slowly but surely we managed to get some light rainfall, during the night we heard our first wolf howls in the distance and woke to a beautifully clear and very crisp morning… with more beautiful sunshine… now it was time to find someone to tow or help get the bike to either Taraz or Shymkent so that we could work on the bike… After some tea I set off on my errands to get some supplies and find someone to take the bike into town… Unfortunately we didn’t plan on having this exercise and didn’t really have much money on us.. so the first thing was to find a bank where we could get some money, to buy some supplies and get some help… ummm sorry no banks in 60km… every town said that the next town had a bank… then the cycle continued.. after a few hours of going around in circles I found someone who actually told me that Taraz or Shymkent had the nearest banks… wow wasted 2 hours for nothing.. Oh well.. I returned with some food and water and sat back to enjoy the rest of the day while we waited for email responses….. on the way back the cross wind was sooo strong that I nearly got blown off my bike several times… when I got back we still had no responses from the dealerships or parts distributors in the UK… Another few emails to send to some other various distributors and to make some phone calls…. We thought that was enough for today, we just relaxed waiting for emails and took in the beautiful day by playing some cards and reading our books.

A nice night by the fire - Kazakhstan

That night we had another fire and relaxed… while preparing the firewood the farmer came by and told us to be careful and make sure we cleaned up after ourselves.. He had no problems with us staying on his land which was a huge relief… again there was a beautiful light show courtesy of another electrical storm over the same mountains.. The farmer went past several times, we think he was looking for some live stock that went on walk about…. that night the wolf howls got very close.. thankfully we think the fires we had kept the wolves at bay.

I woke early so that I could make the most of the morning with another effort to get some food, find some help and organise a tow for the bike to Shymkent… On the way to the shop I found the farmers missing live stock.. in the eaten out remains on the way to the road… poor goatie.. At the shop the now friendly shop keeper was more than helpful offering me some advice and giving me some tips to find help… it was great advice.. In the end we didn’t have any more money so I had to go down to Taraz and find a bank.. but that had to wait until after

Eugen after helping us with the Clutch - Kazakhstan

breakfast/lunch… now starving I returned to camp.. goatie had been removed by the farmer… hopefully the wolves had had their feed and didn’t need to come any closer tonight.. After a lovely lunch of horse sausages and eggs, I set out for Taraz to finally find a bank and get some money while Heather hard the hard job of sitting with the bike reading her book, hard stuff… 2 hours later I returned to the shop to get some more vegetables now that we could afford to eat again… hmmm veges… while at the shop the guy had organised for some people to offer some help… at the same time a guy rocked up on his Kawasaki and offered some help.. we rode out with our fresh supplies to the bike and camp site… he quickly identified the problem and did some magic to fix it… not a permanent fix but at least its going to get us to the next town to replace the clutch properly… we ended up having chai and chatted for a while with the help of a notepad to write down stuff because we didn’t speak much Russian, and he did not speak much English… It was a great afternoon and his help was really appreciated, he was very friendly… In celebration we decided we had to have a big fire burning all our wood rations and geting drunk…. whoooooo hoooooooooooooo were going to Kyrgyzstan tomorrow! We are not 100% sure if there were any wolves… we didn’t wake to any howels.. maybe that was because we were drunk from the vodka or maybe it was because they had eaten poor goatie…

One of the funny points to raise in all the various trips back and forwards between the different towns and the camp site there was a group of guys collecting hay… It was funny because every time I went past they seemed to be having Chai.. yet every time I went past they had more hay in the bak of the truck.. every time I went past they would be cheering at me and waving… it became quiet funny going back and forwards to all the cheers and waving… only once did I see them in the field and got cheered with the pitch forks as though I was just about to be on the receiving end of some sort of witch hunt.. the situation was very amusing.. in the end the shop keeper actually said that I could have got them to drive the bike to Shymkent no problems at all… I never stopped to ask as the bike was fixed before I got to that far down my list of options..

After 4 days here is how the score board looks for quotes….

This entry was posted on Friday, August 21st, 2009 at 8:06 am and is filed under Adventure Motorcycling, Desert, Kazakhstan, London to Sydney, motorcycle touring, Wild Camping. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.