Kazakh wrap-up

Total distance: 805km

Distance on unsealed roads: 85km

Nights spent camping: 12

Number of consecutive nights camping: 11

Days spent cycling: 11 (not including in and around Almaty)

Rest days in the tent: 3

Average distance per day: 57.4km (owing to our offroad jaunt in around the Asy Plateau)

Longest day: 106km

Shortest day: 20km

Maximum number of consecutive days without showering: 13 (although this did include several river washes)

Tips for travelers

This is just a quick overview of accommodation, food, bike shops, cafes and visa registration tips.

The Asy Plateau

28th – 31st July 2010, 125km

It honestly looked a lot flatter on paper. Jump over a few contour lines at the start, sail over the plateau, coast down the valley on the other side. I reasoned with Ali, that ‘if jeeps can do it, so can our bikes, it’s going to be beautiful and it means we don’t have to go back on the highway!’

Coincidental Harmony

From Almaty to Sharyn Canyon

Cycling through strange lands brings you into close contact with passing humanity. Our brightly coloured, high-tech presence prompts a variety of reactions. A gentle smile and nod. Enthusiastic, often drunken enquiries as to our origins. Indecipherable attempts to either sell us something or ask us to do something. Most times we return the wave and move on, but sometimes an instinct leads us to follow the opportunity that presents itself on the roadside.

One afternoon while riding in the vicinity of Shelek, we chose to bypass the town centre with the usual combination of vague maps and gut feeling. A few hundred metres down the road we noticed a couple of whistles and yells from a roadside yurt behind us. Being hot, hungry and heading for a lunch stop, we were a bit disinclined to turn around and investigate the friendly locals.

How to get a job while cycle-touring

Footloose and fancy free? Need to eventually earn some cash to pay for your gallivanting? Here is a practical guide to jobseeking at a distance (based on a actual events).

1. Make contacts with potential employee/influential people/potential referees before departure and express desire for gainful employment.

2. Meet up with one of those people and realize afterward that your ‘casual chat’ was actually an interview.

3. Hope that you weren’t too casual.

4. Depart on adventurous mission across unknown lands with electronic CV ready to go.

5. Submit applications online from small town in western Mongolia.

6. Beg widely via email for referees to submit references whilst in small towns in Russia.

Almaty Take 1: Where Petrol’s cheaper than water

If I may paraphrase a fellow cycle tourist, ‘Almaty is, in a word, expensive’. It is a city whose theme is grand buildings, green parks and water fountains. A cosmopolitan hub that seems out of place relative to the places we’ve cycled through to get here. Where oil money is fueling disposable incomes. Where mercs are the rule. Where gorgeous snow capped peaks are visible between tall man-made urban mountains. Where water isn’t the cheapest fluid going around.

25 hours or 25 days?

1000km of flattish, uninspiring steppe in the middle of summer. Who wouldn’t choose a hot, bumpy overnight bus ride? We quashed the voices of the hardened cycle tourists within and prepared for the logistical battle of alternative transport.

The surlys on the bus stay nice and still, nice and still, nice and still...

Bus wasn’t our first choice though. A nice sleeper seat on a train was a much more appealing prospect. Yet it seemed that the next available seat (in 3 days time), didn’t coincide with the next available piece of baggage space for bikes (four days time). The bus station proved more fruitful when an English-speaking Kazakh helped us acquire 4 tickets, 2 for the Surlys and 2 for us on that evenings ride. At least we would be accompanying Melanie and Gaetan, our compadres from the CCCP bar.

Heading out into Southeast Kazakhstan

We've got a lot to show for our long day on foot through cosmo Almaty. A couple of high quality (1:200 000) topographical maps of SE kazakhstan (from akademkitap 1), good advice from ecotourism information resource centre, a bucket load of central asian dried fruits and nuts from the bazar and some sore feet from strolling through numerous parks and the lovely museum of kazakh musical instruments.

On the 17th we will leave Almaty for a trek into SE kazakhstan. Using our maps and various resources we've pieced together a route. At the very least we should be on jeep tracks through what is hopefully quite pretty valleys and mountain passes.

We'll let you know how it goes in about 2 weeks.

You can download our route and view it on Google Earth. Click here to go and download.

Semey Charmed Life

From Semey

Firstly and foremost, go Cadel! Yellow jersey at stage 8.

The border crossing from Mother Russia to the ‘eldest son that now has a well-paying job with disposable income’ Kazakhstan was delightfully uneventful. A few stamps here, a bypassing of bag inspection due to our heavily laden bikes there and we were through. Kilometres later, outside a road-side shop a friendly “Hello guys, welcome to Kazakhstan!” was being accompanied by two large complimentary bottles of iced-tea. We could grow to like this respect for the cyclists hydration needs.