Horse-ing Around 4

Back In Her Arms

Don't get too excited. I'm talking about Mother Nature.

I was ready to go bush, back to Pachamama, and felt like having a cycling companion or two for awhile. Since I arrived in Almaty I'd really been enjoying hanging out with English speakers at length, which I've hardly done this whole trip, and so I sent a message to our WhatsApp Central Asia cycling group asking if anyone wanted a riding buddy for a trip east from Almaty, and then down to Issyk-Kul, a huge freshwater lake in Kyrgyzstan.

A sweet German couple, Anna Lena and Julian, replied straight away, saying they were interested. They arrived in Almaty the next day, we had an Indian meal together (yeah, I know, Indian!), and we all decided to head off together the next day.

They're both uni students from Nuremberg, studying medicine and IT, and both are in the latter parts of their studies. They're super knowledgeable about loads of things (including bikes!), and are really interesting to talk to. But the best thing about them is that they're the sweetest, warmest, most caring people ever, we immediately got along famously, and ended up having an amazing time together for the next week and a half.

Plus they love chocolate, and music.

And nature.

What more could you possibly ask for?

We met in the morning, went to a big supermarket, and bought about 10 times as much food as we needed. They travel heavy in the food department, insisting on such cycle-friendly delicacies as glass-bottled olive oil and pasta sauces, fat bags of heavy pasta and grains, chunky blocks of chocolate and chocolate biscuits, and other items to fill cycle panniers to levels they weren't ever designed to have to endure.

Let alone the riders.

Anna Lena and I did the shopping. Julian carried their food. A great move on Anna Lena's part, no wonder she's smart enough to be a doctor.

Bewdy was giving me filthy looks as we finally headed off, all heavy and wobbly. She'd never had to suffer anything like this before, not from anyone.

The thing is, we weren't exactly sure what would be available on the way, so we'd decided it was better to be safe than sorry.

Or, in this case, better to be stupid than smart.

Heading East

It was actually pretty cruisey getting out of town, mainly through the back streets.

Our bikes before we packed them full of food

Random scenes from the burbs

The countryside was beautiful, and the riding good, once we'd left some busy high-trafficked roads just outa town.

These guys laughed at us as if we looked really funny. We laughed at them as if they looked really funny. It's all relative innit.

I bought a local honey, because I wasn't carrying enough already.

Lunch stop. Desperately trying to rid our panniers of weight.

Kazakhstani chocolate from the famous Rakhat chocolate factory in Almaty. Plus Ritter Sports Rum'n'Raisin, all the way from Germany. Well, the recipe anyway. Who knows where it's actually made. Thanks Anna Lena, I was happy to rekindle my love for real chocolate as a result of yours.

The strawberries here are the bomb at the moment. 800 tenge, $2.50 Oz, per kilo!

Modern yurts are often metal framed these days.

Our first campsite, by a dry river bed. It was our only waterless spot for our whole camping time together, but the Deutschies had enough water to see us through.

We sat around and sang songs and ate pasta and chocolate deep into the night. So good.

Trigger Unhappy

It was hot when we left the next morning, relatively late. Those guys were lucky enough to be in the shade in their tent for much longer than me.

We stopped at the first running water we could find, and filtered away.

Then Anna Lena saw this lovely dead sheep upstream from where we were collecting the water, not too far from the creek. Hmmm. I kept my supply, as it was super hot and had taken me ages to filter, but those guys went further upstream and started again. Their filter was way quicker than mine.

There were lots of little green frogs in the ponds adjacent to the creek.

Beautiful scenes as we rode off. You can probably tell from the picture quality that some of these pics were taken by Anna Lena and Julian.

Not long into the day we met a Kiwi cyclist, who was heading in the same direction as us. As soon as we met, I introduced myself, and then asked her her name. She said "Pinny," with a broad Kiwi accent, and I laughed, and said, "ah, Pinny, nice to meet you."

That was a mistake.

Before I could tell her that I was only joking and that I knew her name was actually Penny* and that she was a Kiwi, she'd already barked her name at me again, in an over-exaggerated Australian way, acting as if I was really stupid and rude.

Ooops.

And so began my accidental pulling of Penny's trigger with pretty much every single thing I said or did.

Penny's just spent some time cycling alone in Turkey, and was travelling in a completely different way to us, but immediately invited herself into our party without a moment's hesitation, announcing that she was now travelling with us, without any opportunity for a discussion whatsoever, and without even a little bit of time to see how we all fit together as a group.

I've gotta say I was pretty shocked by how she initially appeared to have no sense of humour whatsoever, and by how much she appeared to hate me, right from the start. It really threw me, and was a major bummer, because before she arrived Anna Lena, Julian and I had been having such a gentle sweet time cycling and hanging out together.

For the first day or so of cycling with her, I laughed everything off, her rudeness and her blatant criticism, and tried to bring her around, with general kindness and lots of listening. But it had no impact whatsoever. In fact, it appeared to make things worse.

Penny appeared very keen on controlling every single aspect of the group's movement, or, at the very least, making very very early decisions about things such as when we'd get up, when we'd leave our campsite, when we'd stop for lunch, how long we'd stop for breaks etc etc, ad fucking nauseum.

She told us early on she'd been a hiking guide in Pakistan in her twenties, and appeared to believe that she was now the self-appointed leader of our group, and had all the knowledge as to how the group should function, as well as exactly how we'd most efficiently get to our perceived destinations.

Aaaaargh!

Travelling with a control freak is not easy for me, especially when that freak totally has it in for me.

After my attempts to kill her (with kindness) spectacularly failed, I then began to get annoyed, but after a while of that, which turned me into someone I really didn't like very much, I decided that the only thing I could do was to just ignore her, and try not to be triggered by what she was saying and doing, and just be happy anyway.

Well, that great enlightened realisation lasted for about 2 minutes and 23 seconds, after which I reverted to hating her guts. In the nicest possible way of course.

Well .... you know me, I didn't hate her, I empathised with whatever was making her be like this, but it was pretty much impossible to have a good time or even an ok time trying to relate with her when she was constantly unable to do so in any meaningful way, unable to answer any normal question of mine with anything but ridicule of my question itself, unable to be anything other than be critical of me, and unable to be comfortable in my presence whatsoever.

*not her real name

Luckily the cycling was incredible though.

We found the most stunning spot to camp for the night, alongside this beautiful, fast flowing river.

Anna Lena, Julian and I stayed up, admiring the most brilliantly illuminated night sky.

We saw so many shooting stars, Sternschnuppe in German, and every time I said that word the Deutschies found it side-splittingly funny, I think because I kept saying it in an exaggerated Swiss way, which sounds absolutely hilarious to Germans.

Yeah, the celestial beings really turned it on for us that night, the sky was the stage for the most divine cosmic performance ever.

But Nothing's Permanent

And thank fucking Christ for that.

Although we tried to intervene and sort out the situation with Penny, attempts which didn't really seem to work for very long, it unexpectedly sorted itself out.

I'll tell you the rest of that story next time, so this blog's not too long, and to keep you in suspense, so you have no option but to read the next one, to find out what happened.

I've learnt from my Netflix days. Everything's never completely resolved, there's always so much more shit to sort out just as the previous pile is finally cleaned up. So you have to watch on.

Suffice it to say that we ended up having the most amazing trip ever, and camped in some of the most stunning landscapes you could ever wish to see.

I can't wait to show you more of it❤️

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