Caves, steppe and mud

 

The Ukrainian cyclist, Igor from Rivne, turned his iron horse around and rolled down the hill, back towards Simferopol. His trip was almost over but I still had many kilometers ahead of me. The landscape was changing as I moved further to the south. The hills became higher and I could see some small mountains further down the road. On the side of the road someone had put small coloured pieces of cloth on some tiny trees. Some kind of muslim tradition I guessed. Yes, there are muslims in Ukraine, the Crimean tatars. After some not too tough hills I arrived in Bachchissaray, the old capital of the Crimean Khanate. They have a theme park there with “Crimea in miniature” and a small zoo.They had mini versions of all the Crimean palaces including the one where the 10^th Yalta Annual meeting  was being held at the moment. This yearly summit is organized by the businessman and billionaire Victor Pinchuk and always attract many powerful guests. Among them was not surprisingly our very active foreign minister, Carl Bildt.  On Mcdonalds back in Simferopol I had met a group of young stipendiates on their way to the summit. Their leader, a young academic with a Ph.d in International Economics had explained to me that corruption was not always something bad, his thesis was that it could actually help the economy. I was not really sure about what he meant and I might have misunderstood the whole concept, but it was definitely an interesting point of view on corruption. For a moment I felt an urge to attend the summit myself, the debates there must be interesting,  but soon realized that I probably would not be allowed in there. And it was still many kilometers to go to Jalta, By the time I got there, the summit would be over anyways. No, better to not bother with economy and politics for the moment and focus on being a very small man on a very heavy bike.

I hit a nearby street gym for some pull-ups and dips. I´m trying to not let my upper body become too decrepit, so when I see these installations if I do not fell too tired I usually do a small work out. As I rolled into the centre of Bachchissaray my “Exotic radar” went on full alert. The town is situated near some very non-scandinavian cliffs and contains old houses as well as mosques. I arrived at the main attraction, the Khans palace. An old lady tried to convince me to sleep at her homestay for a good price but I declined. After two days in the busy city Simferopol I longed for some wild camping. I really enjoy sleeping outdoors, most of the time I sleep much better in the fresh air than in some unventilated rotting soviet hostel like for instance the one I had stayed in in Simferopol. You could get a bed in a shared dormitory for a good price, but only if you were Ukrainian or Russian. “We ususally don´t let foreigners sleep with natives, people can become upset” the old hag in the reception said. So I got a dormitory for myself. That´s what I call racism. Or maybe it is just the same old  soviet mentality again. Well, at least I could walk naked in there without anyone bothering. I went into the palace and admired the minaret, ornamented doors and the chess table in the Khan´s harem. Then I pedaled out of town towards the Uspenskiy cave monastery. I met a big van, apparently a Australian one. It had some stickers on it saying they were travelling around the world or something. That´s also a way to travel. I might try it too when I get old and weak. Or maybe I will just keep on pedaling until the day I die, time will tell.

It was late evening when I came to the end of the road. From here it was just a small path leading towards the monastery. The sun was about to set behind the mouth of the valley and I wanted to find some kind of place to pitch the tent. Here I met Omari, a very friendly Georgian who immediately bought me coffee. He insisted on that I should go to Georgia. “We Georgians are very hospitable, you will be treated like a king.” Omari was a hard working bus driving man, he was taking tourists to and from the monastery. He pointed towards a small plateau beneath the precipices. “You can sleep there, my friend in the house over there will keep an eye on you, if anyone tries to harm you he will help.” A very helpful, hospitable, hardworking man he was indeed. Before I went to sleep I climbed up the hillside to take some photos of the sunset. Some guys were welding something on the opposite rock wall, probably a climbing route. Crimea seems to be a good place for climbers, there are many, many walls in beautiful surroundings. I passed through a restaurant in the valley for some Tatar food and then found a small tea house. A very religious man worked in there with his wife and son. I think his name was Ahmed. We had a very interesting conversation about big questions, but that is a story of its own. The weather was clear so I did not pitch the tent, instead I slept under the stars, in my opinion the best version of camping, if not of sleeping.

The Uspenskiy Cave Monastery is situated in a breathtakingly beautiful valley where the monks are keeping their livestock close by their living quarters and the church which is situated partly inside of the mountain. The next days were spent cycling around the Crimean mountains, visiting some old cave towns. These places acted as fortifications for the Goths  from about the 5^th century until the 13^th century when they were finally seized by the Tatars. In the local shops I met some Crimean Tatars. One of them, an old man where very excited about meeting a swede. “You know, we were allies once, fought on the same side against the Russians. Your king Charles the 12^th said that our warriors were the finest he had seen.” After the second world war Stalin had a solution to the tatar problem, he sent them all to central Asia.  “We lived in Uzbekistan for more than 30 years, but now we have returned to our land. When we got back here there were Russians living in our old houses. But we don´t care about that, we built new houses that are much better.” The mountains provided me with some very interesting trails connecting different valleys. A good opportunity for some bike pushing and downhill riding on narrow forest paths with the occasional beautiful scenery from the hilltops.

The route continued towards the bay of  Balaclava. On the way there I tried fishing in a local stream but again, without any catch. But the stream were very nice, with water crystal clear and cliffs surrounding it. In Balaclava I sat down on an internet café for a Skype session. A bearded man came in and asked if it was my bike that was parked outside. He wanted to help me with a place to sleep, on the construction site where he was working as a guard. The house was almost ready and was going to be a hotel. This worked out fine. We cooked some food on a fire on the street and then had a good meal together. My host told me about the nearby submarine docks that were used during world war two and about the nearby battlefield of Balclava, where British and Russian troops clashed during the Crimean war. This was where the light brigade was almost annihilated as a result of a conflict between some British commanders and very unclear orders. But the soldiers were loyal and followed the handbook. They rode straight into the so called “valley of death were they had Russian guns mowing them down from the hilltops around them. The few of them who returned were exclaiming a “Hurray!” and “Shall we attack again sir?” My host told that every year the battle is reenacted by enthusiasts who come here from Britain and Russia.  In the morning I had to leave before the workers arrived to the site, it was not allowed to bring tourists there.

The road to Jalta goes along the sea and offers some good views with the sea on one side and mountains on the other. Unfortunately it is heavily trafficked but you cannot always have everything. I stayed in Jalta for two nights on Sobaka hostel which I found after some searching in the dark and narrow streets of Jalta. On the hostel I met some very nice people from different parts of Europe. Among them some British guys who were planning on arranging guided climbing trips to Crimea. Now they were reconnoitering the terrain.  

Jalta is situated on the southern shore of Crimea which has some kind of subtropical climate. So even if it was late September the water was about 20 degrees. There were big waves so I was the only one swimming. After stocking up on some warm clothes in local sport shops I continued eastwards. The next few days were pretty tough with lots of serpentine roads and the kind of hill that you think will go downwards around the corner but just keeps on going up and up. After the physically most demanding day so far I found a nice camping spot on a beach next to a small café close to the road. When I asked the owner of the café if it was safe to sleep on the beach he replied “What are you afraid of? We are afraid of ourselves. You see the van over there? There´s an old man sleeping in there every night and no one has threatened him yet.” Then he showed me some melon and cucumber plants that had set roots on the beach. There were two gentlemen with metal detectors searching along the shore. They told me they were looking for objects that people had lost. “Sometimes we find gold. We search historical places sometimes, it is possible to find objects from the ancient Scythes. No, we do not go to battlefields of the great patriotic war, we know the places but there´s no reason to go there.”

The next day the hills were a little bit easier and the day after that I came down from the mountains. I rode through eastern Crimea for a couple of days. Eager to get to Russia I headed for the ferry in Kerch. My Russian visa had already started more than a week earlier. That´s what happens to me when I come to a place where everything interests me, I move slowly. Now I had to go faster to get out of Russia before the 19^th of October when my visa would expire. The first day on the plains the wind was to my favor, but on the second day it turned against me. Riding a full day with headwind is not the easiest, on those days the best thing to do is to take it easy. Eventually I reached Kerch on a rainy day. I went to the market and bought a pair of warm and waterproof but lightweight winter boots. Then I took the small ferry over the strait to Port Kavkaz in Russia. I passed customs without any problems and after some food at a café I followed the only road which headed to the main land with the sea about 20-30 m on each side. I camped near the sea and the next day set off towards Krasnodar.

I had previously thought on going down through Georgia and Azerbajdjan but that would be a complicated option if I wanted to continue the trip. There would be the option of going through Iran but for me that was not so attractive, I want to be able to speak with people and that would be hard in Iran. Another option is to go with ferries from Baku to Turkmenistan or to Kazakhstan. The problem there is that Turkmenistan only gives you a five day transit visa which is not a reliable option since the ferries are not really ferries but cargo ships taking some passengers. I read on the internet that some cyclists have had to wait for up to ten days in Baku. That´s not what I want. I want to be able to ride the bike into the sunset every day without waiting. Then there´s also the processing time for a Turkmen visa, about 10-14 days. That´s something I could have thought about earlier of course but now I just had to make the best of the situation. Northern Caucasus would have been very interesting to for a cyclist but I was unsure about the current security situation. If you read about Checnya and its neighbouring areas on Wikitravel it seems extremely dangerous. The best option I could see was to leave Caucasus until another time. It´s good for me that life is long (inshallah). I decided that this time it was time for some steppe cycling. I was going to go through the autonomous republic of Kalmykia and Astrakhan and then continue into Kazakhstan with the goal to reach the central Asian mountains in Kirgizistan. After leaving most of my decision angst behind me I continued rolling through the Krasnodar area.

The landscape here was not the most impressive, everywhere huge fields and long hedgerows stretching several kilometers. The rain was pouring at least a few hours most of the days. All over the sky were sullen clouds that seemed to have pursued me since Odessa. People had been telling me all the way since southern Ukraine that the weather usually was much dryer and warmer around this time of the year. I passed a small town where I bought a Russian simcard. A guy working in the telecomshop had an explanation for the bad weather. “This weather was created especially in order to make snow for the Olympics in Sochi.” Could this be true? It would in some twisted way feel good if I could blame someone for the rain. But it would also be a little bit frightening if this was the truth. If it was, what would the consequences be? I had heard something about weather crafting before the 1980 Olympics so it does not seem impossible that it would be used now as well.

In Krasnodar I got some more winter equipment in the shop Alpindustrija. Then I wanted to send some stuff home. I had decided not to try fishing any more so the rod would go home with some other stuff I did not need anymore. I went into a post office and asked if I could send a package to Sweden. No, I could not send international mail from an ordinary post office, I had to go to the main post office which was situated somewhere in the centre. I asked some people about directions but could not find the place. I got confusing answers from those I asked. It was a very annoying situation because I really hate cycling in cities. Big cities in these countries are not a good place for cyclists. There are no real bicycle lanes and the pavement edges are often very high and people are driving like idiots. At last I found some old ladies who knew where to go. Apparently the name of the street I was looking for was the same as the name of some other place in town. Very annoying. Now it was getting late but I almost found the way to the post office. I stopped at a street corner where I asked some guys in a pub. They said that the post office was close but it was closed by now. Then they invited me for beer. I could not refuse such an offer. Then began about 24 hours of obscure entertainment such as beer drinking, eating dried fish, billiard, eating Ossetinian pirogues, watching boxing and more. I think places like this are a little bit like the island where Odysseus was held captured by the nymph Calypso. You enjoy yourself while you are there but they makes the trip take so much longer time. Overall it was a good experience though. The next day I was not in top condition but I got help from the Russian gents to send the package to Sweden.

After almost two days in Krasnodar I steered the iron horse out of the city.  The landscape here was the most boring of the trip so far. I camped in exactly identically looking places two nights in a row, near long hedgerows on huge fields. Now came the first nights with frost, no problem at all with a good sleeping bag and dry socks on the feet. The roads where the best I had encountered so far. With broad shoulders and slight downhills I could almost effortlessly make 160 kilometers on one day. When I entered the town Apaty I realized that it would be impossible to make it to Astrakhan in time to make a Kazakh visa before the Russian visa would expire. The solution was to leave the bike on the bus station and go with a night bus to Astrakhan. After some sleeping in a dark place near the bus station a police officer came by asking me what I was doing here. I answered that I was sleeping, waiting for the bus. After checking my passport he mentioned that I had to register. I replied that I had not had the opportunity to do it yet but I would do it in the next town. He was satisfied with that and let me go. After a very bumpy ride with bus I arrived in Astrakhan in the morning. I found the embassy quickly but I had to wait for several hours outside. At least the guard was friendly. Then I was let in by a guy looking like he was about fifteen years. Then I got some papers to fill in handed to me by another official. “Where are you from?” “Ah, Sweden, do you have Swedish money?” He was apparently collecting money from different countries. I actually had a 20 kronor bill in one of my panniers back with the bike. I promised to bring him Swedish money and he looked happy. No invitation was needed. I started filling in the papers. The money collector was extremely impatient. “Don´t sit there for ten minutes, just fill everything in now, quick!” “You know how to do it?” “Do you have education?” I was thinking for myself that I probably had longer or at least more qualitative education than he had but I kept quiet. After everything was filled in and the fee was paid I was thrown out of the building. “Come back in five days! And don´t forget Swedish money!”  I took the bus back to Apaty and resumed the cycling.

The landscape became more open and soon I was on a steppe with gently rolling hills as far as the eye could see. I passed a river and then I was in Kalmykia. I got company for about a day by a black stray dog. She was running after the bike without any signs of fatigue during the first day, then slept outside of my tent. The second day I gave her some water but she eventually  couldn´t keep the pace. But she was a strong dog so I think she will do just fine without me.

Kalmykia is a very special place. It is kind of like a little Mongolia inside Russia. The Kalmyks, a people related to the Mongols immigrated to the area in the 17^th century from somewhere in western Sibiria. They had connections with Russia early and became a part of the empire. The Kalmyks are Buddhists and had their own distinct culture and language. However, much of that has been destroyed by the Soviet powers, most people I met spoke Russian and the young people even don´t know their native language. In the Second World War (or great patriotic war as it is called in Russia) some Kalmyks sided with the germans and some with the soviets. After the war Stalin decided to deport all of the Kalmyk people to Sibiria. About half of them died before they were allowed to go back to Kalmykia in 1957. In Elista, the capital of Kalmykia the main sights are the big Buddhist temple and “Chess city”. Chess city was created by the former president of the republic, Karsan Ilyumzhinov who is also president of FIDE, the world chess federation.  It is a small town entirely dedicated to Chess and has hosted the chess Olympiad in 1998. Wandering around Chess city I met two Kalmyk ladies who were very friendly and showed me some interesting places during the last evening in Elista.

Next, I hit the steppe again and went through Kalmykia to Astrakhan. On the way I met many people from nearby Chechnya and Dagestan. The Russians in Krasnodar had warned me about these places. But almost everyone from northern Caucasus told me that it was perfectly safe there by now. “War is over, in the 90´s it was unsafe, now its ok” they said. Someone mentioned that there was occasional explosions every now and then but most people thought I should go there. I was not really convinced but people from northern Caucasus seemed to be very friendly.

Astrakhan is a big, dirty city on the Volga with many old decrepit wooden houses. A taxi driver told me that some of the houses collapse every now and then and people regularly get killed as a consequence. I went to the embassy again. The money collector asked me if I had the Swedish money and I handed him the 20 kronor bill. “It´s Selma Lagerlöf, famous Swedish writer and Nils Holgersson” I told him. “Yes, yes” he was not so interested in Swedish literature. He impatiently hid the bill so no one would see it. Then I got the visa, valid until the 16^th of November. “Welcome to Kazakhstan” the money collector smiled and then had me leave as quick as possible. 

“There´s nothing there, only savannah, you should go down through Iran.” The words of a cyclist I met in Vilnius ringed in my head as I closed in on the Kazakh border. I had done the contrary to what he supposed. Well, now at least  I was about to see what “nothing” looks like.

The border crossing between Russia and Kazakhstan was smooth. The Russian customs officials didn´t even seem to check if I had registered. I had registered one day too late, you are supposed to register within ten days from arrival, but no problem this time. After some 10 kilometers of no man’s land I passed Kazakh customs and I was in Kazakhstan. For some reason I had counted on there being an ATM near the border as there had been on many of the other borders. But this was Kazakhstan, no ATM but a couple of guys ready to change my rubles to Kazakh tenge. The tenge bills are very colourful but not worth so much. One euro is about 250 tenge.

Now the plan was to go to Atyrau and then cross the steppe all the way to the Aral sea. Then I would take the big road down to Kyrgyzstan. I was not sure if there were any roads on the steppe between Atyrau and Aralsk but on google maps I could see that there were many, many dirt tracks. The road to Atyrau was pretty good. I could easily make over 120 km a day. As soon as I got into Kazakhstan I could see signs that told me I was in Central asia; camels, lots of sand and houses made of clay and oil wells. People where generally very friendly and interested in from where and whereto I was going. People often slowed their cars and began a conversation through the window. I stopped at a small restaurant on the side of the road and got invited by one of the guests. He had been drinking but I did not understand how much until we sat in his car on our way to his home. He was driving very fast and on a small dirt road going from side to side. I was getting nervous and yelled at him in Swedish: “För helvete håll dig på rätt sida av vägen!” Then he started driving more carefully. In his house his wife gave me food and a place to sleep and next day he drove me back to the restaurant. In Atyrau I went to the local market and bought among other things a road map. Now I got confirmed that there where roads between Atyrau and Aralsk, although they were so called “steppe roads”. Atyrau is a big seaport and it is easy to see that people there have got money. The streets were crammed with big new SUV:s and they even had a TGI Fridays restaurant. I did´nt want to stay for too long, I didn´t bike to Asia to sit on TGI Fridays, I can do that in Malmö.

I hit the road again and realized there was a shortcut between Atyaru and Kulsary. I could go on small dirt roads to Kulsary, yummy! But I lost time when I was navigating out of the city in the dark. The next day I followed a road which I thought would lead in the right direction, but it only led to some ind of factory out on the steppe. I turned around and lost two hours. The steppe roads were not shown on the GPS so I headed back to a small village to ask for the way. An English speaking man in a SUV greeted me. “Hello!, I think you are lost, because there is nothing here.” I told him I was going to Kulsary over the steppe. “No, no that´s not a good idea, the roads are very bad. They are bumpy like the one over there. And there are wolves out there! But if you really want to go, it´s that way.” One of my principles in life is to ignore the naysayers. As soon as you say you are going to do something just a little bit outside of the box people will start saying it can´t be done. But that doesn´t mean that it can´t be done, I would rather say that it means it is something worth doing. So I set the compass to the east and drove into the steppe. 

After some hours on decent dirt roads I came to a small camelfarm where the inhabitant showed me the way. Just follow the power poles. I went along the poles and the next day I came to a small oil station. I could see on the map that the sea was close, but there were no roads leading there and it was probably 5-7 kilometers to go. The workers told me that it was about five kilometers to the south but that there were “dirt” for 20 kilometers before the real sea started. I wanted to see the “dirt” so I rolled to the south. After five kilometers there was no water in sight but lots of loose dust, that must have been what they called dirt I thought. I shot some pictures of this desolate place and was just about to go back north when I saw a vehicle approach. It looked like what we swedes would call a “bandvagn”, a tracked carrier. “Damn it, now some kind of coast guard or something will bother me in some way” I thought. As the vehicle got closer I saw that it was a Swedish Bv 206. The vehicle stopped and two gents in civilian clothes peeked out. “Are you military?” I asked. “No we are hunters.” They were on their way to the sea and I asked them if I could go with them. “It´s just 3 km further down the road” they said. 

I followed the tracks and came to the hunter´s camp. They were six guys, construction workers from Atyrau who were on a duck hunt over the weekend. But how had the vehicle come from Sweden to Kazakhstan. Exactly how it had made its way to Kazakhstan was unclear but it had been bought through Russia in some way. The last date of vehicle inspection was in 1999. It was time to go hunting, the last hour before dark is the best time. I jumped into the vehicle and it rolled out over the dirt which here was covered with water. So I finally got to see the Caspian sea as well. The sunset was very beautiful. There were lots of small patches of the big grass called Kamysh by the Russians. Some hunters were already out there, others deployed to their hiding spots in the grass. The carrier stopped in a shrubbery and we waited. We could hear some shots and after an hour we went back and picked up the guys on the way in. Then it was time to prepare dinner. They had shot maybe six ducks and now there was going to be a feast. The table as always had vodka on it and everyone in the company made a toast. I got pretty drunk. The next day it was time to go hunting again, I didn´t feel that well but I still jumped on the vehicle. This time I deployed together with the oldest guy in the company. We got off the vehicle and immediately sank into the mud. It was hard to walk, the boots got stuck in the mud. Then my companion fell. I helped him up but he couldn´t move any further and his shotgun had got mud in the barrel. I couldn´t move either. Not much to do but to wait. My friend sent up an emergency flare to call for the carrier. It didn´t work. We tried to call for help instead, it worked and we got picked up, but only after three hours in the mud.

After taking farewell to the hunters the trip went further east. I passed one more oil industrial complex where the workers were very hospitable. The roads where only dirt tracks, but they were not too bad. I really enjoy cycling on small roads with little to no traffic. The central Asian chipmunks make things interesting too. They live in small holes in the sand and when they see an intruder they watch and make a warning sound. Sometimes they come running straight across the road just before the bike and take refuge in their tunnel system. There is also another desert rat which runs like a kangaroo and has got a very long tail. It must be the fastest animal I have ever seen.

When I had only about 30 km to go to Kulsary something happened. Suddenly the back hub broke. That means that there is no transmission of power from the chain to the wheels. There was not so much to do but to wait for help. Some local oil workers on vacation drove me and the bike to Kulsary. There was no bike shop in Kulsary so we went to the market. They had some spare parts but nothing that would fit. One of the oil workers thought I should by a new bike. “When we have such problems with our bikes we usually throw them away and buy a new one.” I tried to go back to Atyrau to find a hub. A man named Durman who worked as a driver for different pharmacies in the area took me and my bike to Kulsary for 3000 tenge. Then he tried to find out if there were any bicycle shop in Atyrau. There were no bike shop so we went to the market. They had a part that would fit but it was made in China. The merchant said he was not sure it would work until Aralsk. I thought that it couldn´t be that bad. I bought the hub and then we went to Durmans home were we worked with putting the new hub on. It took half the night to get done because this was something none of us had done before. The next day I found a taxi that took me back to Kulsary. I was on the road again.

“Nothing can stop me now” I thought as I drove into the steppe again.  I came to a small farmhouse were an old man and his wife kept camels, sheep and cows. I told them about the plan to go to Aralsk through the steppe. They said that there were almost no people there and as people always do, they warned me about wolves. They also gave me some camel milk and bread for the road. The day after I cycled on small dirt paths and came to a place called Munayli where I met some oil workers loading oil from big tanks to their trucks. They pointed out the direction for me. I had to continue to the east on a small path where camels were chilling out nearby. After a while I thought that the road I was on seemed a little bit too small. I was about to go north across a plain to find a road I supposed would be bigger when I saw a small house far away. I went there to ask about the way. I could not see any people there at first but then I saw some suspicious faces in a window. Two women came out, one of them with a child on her arm. I asked them if they knew the direction. “My husband knows, he will be here soon”. After a few minutes two men appeared and soon they had taken the decision to invite me to stay over the night. I got to sit down in a room with almost no furniture, except for a low table. I was treated with tea, plof (a dish made of rice and mutton) and later Bishbarmak. Bishbarmak is a dish made from all parts of the sheep, including the head. The Kazakhs eat it with their hands. After the Bishbarmak my stomach felt strange and I had to spend half an hour at the toilet but after that it felt better. I got the directions explained to me by my hosts. They thought I should go through the village Diyar but not through Oymaut because there were a lot of hooligans and drunk people there.   The next day I set off into the east again. I passed a fountain for cattle and then there was only one road to follow.

Towards the evening I could see some small hills far away. The road split several times and was joined by different roads. The new hub had already begun to make a foreboding squeaky sound when the wheel rolled. I damned the Chinese bicycle manufacturers but couldn´t do much more than that. The quality of the roads varied depending on the soil. When the soil contained lots of gravel it was easy to drive but on some places the earth was soft, like the dirt close by the sea. On this places it was very hard to roll at all. I came to a valley were this kind of dirt was predominant. It was a beautiful place, as the sun began to set the soil got a reddish colour. It was a very isolated place, no signs of people except for the tracks. I now felt that the real adventure finally had begun. It was places like this that I was looking for. 

A hill lay not far in front of me and it was very unclear where exactly the main road was. I decided to go up the hill to see if any roads were visible from there. Maybe I could set up the tent there and see if there were any lights nearby. I now walked with the bike towards the hill, because it was impossible to ride the bike in the soft soil. I saw a car driving past a couple of kilometers to the south of me. It disappeared into a small pass between two hills. So there was some kind of road there. I decided to set up camp on the hill anyway because it wasn´t very far now. I carried the necessary stuff up the hill and then had supper in the dark. I could not see any lights. During the night the wind increased and almost blew my tent away. I had to go out and reinforce the tent. Then the rain came. In the morning it was rainy and misty and I couldn´t see anything from my hill. The dirt now became a thick mud that stuck everywhere. I carried the gear back down to the bike which I had left on the foot of the hill. I loaded the bike and started pushing it towards the place where I had seen the car last night. It didn´t move. The mud was so thick that it got stuck between the fenders and the wheel and prevented all rolling. I had to take the fenders and the brakes off. Doing this operation in the mud made all my gear become smeared in dirt. 

When I finally was done it was possible to push the bike towards the assumed road. When I got there I could see that there was a track. A car came from the east. I asked the men in the car if this was the way to Diyar, the village through which I planned to go. Yes, this was the correct way. Navigating here was not so easy because the road map I had did only show a few of the roads. The map stated that these should be “hard covered roads” but that was pure bullshit. In reality there are only dirt tracks.  I wonder if this is a way to make the country look more civilized on the paper. “Look, we have this many hard covered roads here, we are a truly great nation!”

I had to trust the compass and the few locals I encountered. I lost the trail were I had met the car after I had went to a nearby hut to ask for the way. The shepherd pointed towards another road than that from which I had come and then I didin´t find the “big” road again. 

I went eastwards for a whole day. It went slow because the Chinese spare parts were almost not functioning at all now. The hub could work for a few kilometers and then not at all. I tried to make some unconventional solutions with parachute cord and metal wire around  the spokes and the ring.  It didn´t work very well and it bent the spokes with the result that they started to break too. When I combined the GPS with the road map I came to the conclusion that I now should be somewhere close to Diyar. There was another mountain to the south of my position, Diyar should be situated about 30 kilometers north of that mountain so it couldn´t be very far now. I decided to go north for some distance to see if I found some more used track. Then I saw some kind of human made structure very far away. I started walking towards it and after an hour or so I met a herder. His russian was among the worst I have heard but with body language and some da and njet he explained the way to Diyar. It was 12 kilometers he said. Towards the evening I saw a truck driving by close by and where it had driven I found  a somewhat bigger trail. My gut feeling told me I should go left and after a while I heard some kind of motorized vehicle in the distance. Then I could see some lights in the distance. I wanted to arrive in Diyar before it got too late so I pedaled through the dark on the sandy road. I had to push the pedals constantly, otherwise the hub would take the chain with it resulting in total chaos. 

I eventually rode into Diyar in the evening. It was dark and there were not many people on the streets. The first one I talked to didn´t understand any russian and soon drove away on his bike. I found a man pumping his car tires in his backyard and asked him if there was a shop in the village. He showed me where it was, in the backyard of a house. The owners of the shop let me buy some supplies and then I was invited to stay in their home over the night. The next day, after replacing the broken spocks I tried to go further. The owner of the shop was going to show me the way and drove away with his car. The bike was barely working now but I thought that I would give it a try. I didn´t know were my host had gone, because his vehicle had disappeared behind the horizon. A strange way to show someone the way. I continued on the road I thought was the right one. After about 5 kilometers the shop owner showed up from behind me. How did that happen? He confirmed that I was on the right way and then he went back home. A few kilometers later the hub literally fell apart and I realized that this was game over and chess matt. 

The attempt to cross Kazakhstan by bicycle had failed. There wouldn´t be time to find new spare parts and go back here to go further before the end of the visa. I sat down on the side of the road and thought about what to do now. Soon two gentlemen on a motorcycle appeared. I explained the situation and they promised to return with a car and pick me up later. Wile I waited I cooked some food on my stove and watched the sunset, then I tried making a fire from the abundant steppe shrubs. It became a small fire. 

A few hours later some other guys arrived in a soviet style pick-up. They explained that they were family of the motorcycle guy. We went back to Diyar were I got invited for tea. I stayed in the home of the motorcycle guy. There were lots of local men there, drinking in the garage. The motorcycle man had a friend who said he might be able to weld the broken part. I said that we could give it a try, it would be a possible solution. The welder and I slept in the same room. He asked me for money for beer and I thought, “why not, a beer would be fine now.” We went to the shop where I had spent the last night. I bought a beer and the welder bought half a liter of vodka. Then we drank in the garage. I refused to drink any vodka, I had lost all appetite for it since the feast with the duck hunters. But the welder drank a lot. It was cold and I wanted to go inside. “No, no we cannot go inside, the mother in the house doesn´t like that we drink.” After a while we went inside anyway. We slept on the floor, that seems to be how they do it here. The welder was quite drunk it seemed. He kept turning and mumbling in his sleep and on several occasions he almost rolled into men. I don´t know what the purpose was but I didn´t want to cuddle and kicked him away over and over again. I didn´t mention anything about it the day after. 

We had a look at the hub but I decided that it would be pointless to try to repair it. I had to get to a big city where they had a decent bike shop. A neighbor of the motorcycle man helped me. First we had a look in the village, maybe there was some part I could use. But they only had bicycles for children and no part that would fit my bike.  The neighbor knew that there was a “taxi” leaving from Oymaut tomorrow towards Aktobe. I hitch-hiked with some truck drivers to Oymaut, the place I had been warned about before. After having placed my bike between rocks they were transporting and scratching it severely the truckers handed me over to a small man who operated a taxi business with his sons as drivers. The hospitality was good here as well except for the drunk man who came late in the evening and accused me of being an American spy. 

The next day we loaded the bike into a small van that had room for ten persons. The taxi departed and stopped at a house were the truckers also had stopped. I was suspecting that the truckers were going to Aktobe too and that I had paid money for nothing. I asked the truckers were they were going. “I don´t know.” ”Where are you going?” I asked again. ”Aktobe.” I got upset now and started barking at them in Swedish.  ”No, no only a joke.” Yeah right. Well, there wasn´t so much to do now, the bike was loaded. Now awaited 10 hours of suffering in a small hot van on bumpy roads with Kazakh music in the speakers. I really dislike buses, especially when the roads are bad it is a small hell, and the Kazakh music is pure torture to me. When we finally arrived in Aktobe I felt a great relief. After one night in a hotel I realized that there was no bike shop there either. I had to go to Almaty to fix the bike. To conclude things: the sustained bike effort across Kazakhstan failed, but that will not prevent me from new adventures in central Asia. You find the photos here.

As always, stay tuned for future posts!

Across valleys and along the coast

I am now in Elista in Russia, on my way to Astrakhan and then Kazakhstan. This blog is really lagging behind so I will try to make it more up to date. But there is a lot to tell and I don´t have a quality internet connection very often. Anyway, here is the story about the Ukrainian river valleys and the coast.

 

As I got tired of the rain and fishless fishing me and my bike headed eastwards through the small town of Verkhovnya and towards the lowlands. Now it was mostly downhill on narrow asphalt roads which were in very poor conditions. The plan was to get out of the mountains in hope of escaping the fog which had engulfed the Carpathians. I had originally planned to go through Romania and Moldova but decided to go around Moldova instead so that I would stay in Ukraine. Why stay in Ukraine? Because I wanted to practice my skills in the Russian language. I could clearly feel an improvement had taken place during the last weeks of cycling in post-soviet countries but I was aware that the Russian language would be much more used in southern Ukraine than in Moldova. 

As I started the descent I could see some fishermen along the river. They were fishing for trout with worms in the muddy water. I asked one of them if he had caught any fish. He replied that he had, but not today. It was always like that in the carpathians, everyone said they had caught fish but this day happened to be an especially bad fishing day. I tried not to think too much about fishing, I wanted to focus on cycling instead. The mountains got smaller and it was downhill most of the way. I passed a small village and asked some  locals for the way. They wondered if I had been to the european championships in football which I had not. It got dark and I had to find a place to set up the tent. Most of the time it is really easy to find a camping spot, you just find some place where there is no buildings and where the tent can´t be seen from the road. This time it was harder, because there was practically no flat ground outside of the road. Only a few meters from the road the terrain was too steep for sleeping.  I biked into a small dirt road which went parallel with the main road and the river. After a few hundred meters and a small hill I found a flat spot. The only thing that made this place less than perfect was that there was a small hut where people probably used to park their cars and drink coffee and have som barbecue. A less than desirable place but it was late and dark and I didn´t feel like dragging the bike a few hundred meters uphill to maybe find a good spot. So I put the tent up on the small path of grass near the hut and went to sleep. I thought that no one would come to this insignificant place in the middle of the night an I fell asleep. But I had mistaken myself. Of course there is no such thing as a path where people don´t walk in the middle of the night. Around 02:45 I heard two voices, a young man and woman were approaching. They probably didn´t have any hostile intentions but were most certainly only the western Ukrainian equivalent of “Lady och Lufsen” taking a little midnight stroll, but without the moonshine. Despite this my system went from rest to full “fight or flight” mode. I heard how the intruders approached and went into the hut where my bike stood. I didn´t know if they had seen the tent yet but I was sure that they had seen the bicycle. I had to act. I threw some attempt at conversation out in the darkness. “Dobryj vecher.” (Good evening)

“Dobryj” the young man replied.

“Ne trogaj velotsiped!” (Don´t touch the bike) I said trying to sound harsh. It worked. I could hear the couple walk away.

The rest of the night I didn´t sleep very much, I was mostly listening for sounds in the dark and painting dreadful scenarios in my head. It had only been one guy and a girl, but what if they would bring ten male friends to hunt down the foreigner? Of course it is a quite unrealistic scenario, but what if? The next day I decided never to set up camp near a path but to instead follow my stealth routines. People always ask me how I can sleep in the forest alone at night. Isn´t it scary? (Strashno) The secret is to put up the tent in a place where it is extremely unlikely anyone would walk or drive. In places where people frequently move you can also very often see that they have littered a lot and of course such paths are also well trodden. So when I follow these guidelines I always feel safe at night. The only time I was compromised during camping was when I broke this simple rule. An other time near Lutsk in western Ukraine I camped in a small forest and had kids and vehicles driving at a path some 30 meters from my camp. They didn´t see me, only a dog approached during the night and I scared him off standing upright in the sleeping bag making some intimidating sounds. So “find a place where people don´t go” is my advice to all those camping alone. Of course another option could be to put up the tent near a house where you have asked the owner. But this makes me feel a lot more unsafe. As long as you are seen you are vulnerable. No one will harm something they can not see. Anyhow, generally the fear among people for camping alone is extremely exaggerated. How often do crazy axe murderers roam the forest looking for innocent campers to kill? And even if they did, they would have a hard time finding me.

The day after I followed the stream on a decent asphalt road and after a few hours the valley plained out. I could see autumn was already getting a hold on the Carpathians. The trees still carried their leaves but they where slightly turning yellow. The air had a smell of autumn. I felt some kind of pity over this. I had left home late in the summer and the consequence of this would be cycling through  autumn ad perhaps even winter. But as I got down to lower terrain autumn didn´t seem to have advanced that far. I met a black stray puppy on the road. He followed me for a while but then went after a cargo truck instead. I kept on trucking down the road and after a few hours  I entered the town Vyzhnytsa. I had an ordinary Ukrainian mealtime at a local restaurant. Some borstjtj and chicken with potatoes I think. After cycling a bit further I was out of the mountains. The terrain was plainer now. Behind me there were already fields and behind them I could see the round foothills of the Carpathians a few kilometers away. The clouds vanished and the sun shone on the road. I passed a monument from “the great patriotic war”. These monuments are everywhere in the post soviet states and usually they are not that interesting but this time I made an exception and took a picture. 

Monument for the Great Patriotic War, Carpathians in the background

 

I went through a small town on a very straight road. Outside the town I took a short break on the side of the road when a man on a horse carriage passed me. “Where are you going?” he asked. “I´m going to Chernivtsy.” I answered. The man insisted on carrying me and my bike on his wagon for a while. I thought that it seemed like fun so why not? So we loaded the bike on the carriage and then went towards Chernivtsy. 

The man told me his name was Ruslan, he was a farmer. He spoke some kind of mix between Ukrainian and Russian and used a lot of the Russian profane slang, “mat”. Ruslan asked me where I was going to sleep. When I told him I planned to sleep in a tent he invited me to stay in his home over night. Ruslan stopped at a local shop and bought us some beer. Then he sat behind the horse, opened the beer and we drove off onto a dirt road. At the dirt road we met his friend Vova who had some problem with his motorcycle. Ruslan wanted to take both the motorbike and my bike on the carriage. I didn´t think it would be possible and I was starting to think this might be bad for the bike. Maybe it was better that I went by bike behind the wagon? Ruslan didn´t approve of that and I was convinced to try it. We got both bikes on the wagon and then all three continued the trip together. Ruslan beat the horse because he thought it was slow and lazy and the horse went faster. We came into a really narrow dirt track which went through a forest. It was a bumpy ride and it was hard to hold onto the wagon. On some occasions the sitting pad broke and once I even fell off the wagon into the mud. It was great fun. We passed the edge of a steep hill and could see a beautiful landscape on our side. Vova told me that there sometimes were landslides here. In spring 2010 several houses were buried in a landslide and some people were severly injured or killed. Vova told me he had rescued some people from underneath the earth. We finally arrived in the village. 

Now it was time for some more beer at the village shop. Then we went to a neighbor of Ruslan and Vova and had some dinner and of course vodka. Later the same night we continued to Ruslans home. His wife was very upset, probably because Ruslan was drunk. She also didn´t like that he had brought a complete stranger to stay in her house. I wasn´t allowed into the house but I got to sleep on the haystack in their barn. The day after Ruslans wife had calmed down and I got some breakfast and coffee. Then Ruslan drove me and my bike with the horse carriage to the asphalt road. Overall this was a good experience, but maybe not so good for the bicycle. I might have to do some painting work on it.

Tank in the centre of Chernivtsy

I went the 25 kilometers to Chernivtsy were I found a hotel. I had to make some contact with Sweden and I stayed there for two nights. The back wheel wasn´t straight so I had to adjust the spokes to straighten it which wasn´t very easy until I figured out how to do it. There wasn´t very much to say about Chernivtsy. People there still mostly spoke Ukrainian which I found somewhat frustrating at times since their English usually was extremely bad.

 

I then went on heading for Odessa. Soon there were more hills. I passed a few villages on a road with many small hills and downhills. In the evening I was invited by a drunk truck driver to stay at his home. I went to his house. It was one of the newer and better built houses I had seen in the villages. The truck driver told me that he hadn´t finished building yet because at the moment he was short on money. His family lived off his truck driving and their apple plantation. The interior of the house was pretty fancy. They even had some fake Greek marble columns. But their toilet was in a small wooden hut on the yard. We had some food and drinks together and the truck driver complained: “we live poorly, not like you in Sweden”. I slept well and the next day after having some breakfast I started cycling further. The roads were pretty tough now. Lots of small hills. This was because all the rivers and streams in the area went from north to south, towards the black sea and I was going towards the east. I passed the river Bug at Novodnistrovsk and had a nice view over their electrical dam station.

The roads into and out of the river basin were steep. I went through the villages Mogilev Podolskiy, Jampil, Vilshanka and Studena. In one of the villages, I think it was in Mogilev Podolskiy, I met another drunk ukrainan guy. He invited me to drink with him. We bought vodka in a local shop but had to hide from the police so they wouldn´t see us drinking on the street. That´s forbidden. He was very suspicious against the police and was convinced that we were followed by KGB. “You see those guys in the car over there, they´re KGB!” Then we went to his friends paint shop were we got some food and some more vodka. But my new found friend was a little bit suspicious towards me. “Are you sure you´re not a Russian spy?” He told me about his service in Afghanistan. “Many of our guys got killed, it was terrible”.

 Between all of these villages there were one or more valleys I had to pass. It was probably the most physically demanding part of the trip so far, but I felt like I could take anything. My body had started to adapt to the workload. And the downhills were pure fun. Between Vilshanka and Studena I cycled on some nice dirt roads and small tracks because there were no real roads. So this was a pleasant part of the trip. I had a nice camping experience in the same area. I put up my tent on a small hill and could at the same time see the sunset, a rainbow and an old airplane flying over the fields. I didn´t catch the airplane on picture, but it was beautiful.

Hiding in the corn fields

"Miru - Mir" Peace to the World, common soviet slogan.

The next days the riding became easier, the roads were almost plain all the way down to Odessa and the last part I had a slight downhill for about 70 kilometers.  I had some interesting encounters with locals here as well. I met some Moldovan Ukrainians who also went by horse carriage on the road. They had just bought some local wine and offered me to taste some.

I passed by at a place where they were bringing in the barley. Here I was invited for some food and coffee by a retired pilot of the soviet air force. I got to meet his young wife and his two sons and we had a look at his pigeons. Some of them he had brought home from Chechnya. I asked him if it wasn´t dangerous to go to Checnya. He said that it was not dangerous there anymore. I wasn´t convinced. There is not so much more to say about the last days before I came to Odessa. In a small village I met some kids in the age around 15-17 years. This was what I had been warned about by a Russian American master chef in the hostel in Vilnius. He had told me that there were lots of teenage gangs roaming the streets of Ukraine and beating up foreigners. The kids didn´t beat me up, instead they

showed me the way towards Odessa.

After a few days of easy cycling I reached Odessa on a sunny day. I was content with achieving my own personal minimum goal of this trip, to reach the black sea. In Odessa I got my Russian visa. I stayed at Lafa hostel with some very friendly and interesting people, Russians as well as Americans, Belgians, Poles and British. I will not delve into detail about Odessa but it is a quite pleasant town, close to the sea and lots of old architecture. The only problem was the weather, almost constant rain. I spent most of the time waiting at the embassy for handing in visa documents and for collecting the visa. The rest of the time was spent on drinking beer, visiting a night club, meeting some street workout people (very impressive boys and girls, I saw one of them doing three sets of 12 muscle ups at a steel bar in the street) trying to find a better GPS device, buying a new sleeping bag and planning the further trip. The most dramatic episode was when me, a French guy and two polacks went to the beach.  It was cold, the season was almost over. Me and the frenchie, Xavier went for a swim. We tried to befriend some beautiful girls from Transnistria. We had a little chat, then they said they had to go study. Then Xavier started dancing to the music that were playing on the beach and injured his foot on some sharp object in the sand. We got some help from medical personell on the beach. Xavier had to go to the hospital. I went with him in an ambulance and we came to Odessa´s soviet looking hospital. The process was quick. The doctors stitched him up. He didn´t have to pay as much as we had feared either.

A frenchie

and a swede. The water was 14 degrees celsius

The polacks didn´t swim

 

After getting my visa for Russia I left Odessa, heading for Crimea. I went along the coast which had some very beautiful views over sandy and muddy bays.

Posing with the great poet Pushkin

 

 After one day of cycling along the rainy coastline I came to Nikolaev where I spent one night in a hotel, then I got in touch with a local guy whose phone number I got from his sister whom I had met in Ivano Frankivsk. His name is Vova and he is an illusionist, working a lot with fire. I slept two nights in his apartment and he and his Estonian room mate, also an illusionist showed me some “magic”. I also got help with finding a new handlebar for the bike. Vova knew a bike shop were they had “butterfly” handle bars and I got one for my bike. I also visited the local zoo. We had some beer at a restaurant overlooking the river. And of course we visited the local pub where we met a local MÖP (Military Overinterested Person). His friend made fun of the fact that Sweden had a tank without a tower (Stridsvagn S). But in general they were nice people. I also got to watch some soviet cartoons “The hedgehog in the fog” and a very beautiful version of “The old man and the sea”. We also visited his mother who treated us with lots of food. The last day Vova followed me for a while with his bike and we went to a “medieval” restaurant some 15 kilometers from Nikolaev.

The bike shop

In soviet Ukraine vacuum cleaner pumps matresses!

Yeah, I know, these are not ukrainian animals but still pretty cool.

At the medieval restaurant they had Another illusionist!

And a very sccary dragon

A truck at a police station

Then I went further and in the evening I reached Kherson. I found a hotel Vova had told me about. The old lady in the reception there still had a lot of soviet mentality. She wouldn´t let me take the bike with me into the hotel. “If my boss sees that I let a bike in I will be punished”. I had to find some other place. I got help from a local bike enthusiast who invited me to his place. He shared his apartment with another guy and we had a really good time even though their living standard was “Spartan” by Swedish measures. What they did have that most Swedish people don´t have was lots of Grape Vine in their yard. The next day I got to see Kherson. The city had some good views over the river and some interesting monuments.

This one goes out to all the "green" truckers out there!

I was convinced to take a night train to Simferopol. My host thought it would be better to save some time because there was nothing interesting on the road. The next night I took the night train to Simferopol which wasn´t too complicated with the bike. You just had to take the front wheel off and wrap the bike in a plastic bag and it was good to go. I arrived in Simferopol the next morning and spent the day trying to hunt down a good GPS device. The problem was that I had bought a Garmin Etrex10, which can´t store maps. I wanted to be able to use Open Street Map so I had to find a better GPS device. After driving around to different shops who only sold GPS devices for cars I got help from a man in a shop who sent me to a guy who traded with handheld GPS units. He didn´t have the model Etrex 20 which I was looking for but he had Dakota 20 which had touch screen but was more expensive. I bought it and the GPS problem was finally sold. With a GPS device it is so much easier to find your way when you enter a city by bike. The next day I met a Ukrainian cyclist who had already spent a week in Crimea and was preparing to leave with train. He accompanied me for a while on my way to Bachchissaray. Now began the most interesting part of the trip so far.
 

When I get to Astrakhan I will give you the story about Crimea and my journey through southern Russia.