Steppe 1. Cycling through the Kazahk desert.
I am sitting in a hotel that I definitely can’t afford, eating instant noodles that definitely won’t keep me full, and relishing in the momentary sensation of what is definitely not cleanliness by anyone else’s standards, but by my own is the cleanest I’ve been in a while. I am doing all of this because I fought hard for it, and earned every luxurious moment I am experiencing. I made it through wind, sun, sand, road works, rationed water, stale bread, countless selfies, unyielding landscapes, outdated maps, and desert madness. I pedaled hard, pedaled relentlessly, and got kicked by my pedals when I pushed because I could pedal no more. I never ate enough, never drank enough, and never sunblocked enough. I watched sunrise after sunset, listened to the wind make a mockery of our tent, and made faces at camels. I made my way from Aktau to Beyneu, working for every kilometer of desert road that moved beneath my wheels. I biked.
Cycling the Kazakh Steppe was definitely the beginning of a new and different section of this trip. Not only did the landscape, people, and culture change pretty drastically, but so did we. All of a sudden we had no more excuses. Our third country meant we weren’t newbies anymore, and getting off the ferry meant that the only thing standing between us and Mongolia would now be our legs. We had unquestioningly reached Central Asia, and it was clearly not going to make anything easy for us. And so we left the semi comfort of our, and I hesitate to call it this, “hotel” and headed north into the desert, armed with 5 litres of water each, enough food for quite some time, and a list of chaihanna (teahouse) locations from about three years ago. Once we got out of the city the wind started. And it never stopped. But on we pedaled, celebrating insufficiently the luxury of a temporary tailwind, with no concept of what was in store. As the kilometres ticked by, traffic lessened, and the landscape became more isolated and remote, we rejoiced. We were here and we were doing it. At 1000km we even pulled over to have a windy dance party accompanied by music from Sophie’s new radio. From there the days blur together, blending into a seemingly endless ride through the desert. So I won’t try to wrench the memories apart. Instead I’ll let them live here the same as they do in my mind, settled into a comfortable pattern and routine, with only outlying moments to serve as a reminder that this took over a week of individual days, not just one really long 192 hour day.
So I’ll let you in on my really, really long day. It always starts the same, I wake in the glow of a green tinted light as the sun begins to rise outside of my four nylon walls, and eventually crawl out of my sleeping bag in a far less elegant way than might be accomplished by someone else. I step outside, check that the bikes are still there, and take note of the direction the wind is currently blowing. I’ve learnt that on these roads, the direction of the wind can be directly correlated to our moods. I’m not exactly sure why I take note of the wind, seeing as how its direction is bound to change several times throughout the day, but somehow will never end up directly behind us as we cycle. I love this part of the day. The air is clean and crisp, the world is still and silent, and I am reminded that no matter how normal this all feels to me, it is anything but normal. With that daily dose of gratitude and a wind nipping at me, I return to the confines of my little green home to wait for Sophie to wake and our day to really start.
Eventually we are ready to really begin. I have wrestled my way into my rapidly solidifying biking outfit, ignoring the crunch of sand, sweat, and other unidentifiable new friends the fabric of my clothes have made. Then on to my hair. Some may think that I just braid it back. In reality the strength and athleticism that is required to take my wind whipped, sand saturated hair and rip through the tangles to tame it into something resembling a braid should have won me several gold medals by now. I’m thinking of petitioning the Olympic committee. With our clothes not currently crawling away, we turn to packing up the tent in the wind. This can sometimes be a feat of gymnastics as we learn that if you let go of it, it belongs to the wind. With a combination of speed, bodies, and panniers, we manage to somehow take down and put away our tent. Now it’s time for breakfast, the most important meal of the day!
Food for us is a constant battle. And in the desert that battle is compounded. As cyclists we are always hungry, but we also have limited water, fuel for the stove, and are often in some sort of gale force wind. Our solution: increasingly stale bread for me, and oats with cold water for Soph. Neither full nor satisfied from our glamorous and exciting breakfast, we get on the bikes and make our way back to the road to begin the game of pedaling through a flat desert without losing your mind. We’re 2km in and are somehow posing for our first selfie of the day. We are major celebrities in the steppe, everyone wants to take our picture, despite our state of cleanliness and the unsurprising fact that our conversations are limited to where are you from and where are you going. Fun fact about cyclists: they are much more inclined to pose for pictures if you reward them with food or drink. Selfie accomplished, we get back to pedaling, assured in the fact that there will be more photos further down the road. Never fear Kazakh social media, you will see plenty of us.
The road stretches before us as far as the eye can see, and there is no way of telling how far away any mystery object is. So we keep pedaling, wind roaring constantly in our ears as it whips by us in every direction we don’t want. We refer to our list of chaihannas and hope to every force in the universe that the one marked in 20km still exists. We play eye spy, though due to the lack of changing scenery you have to get pretty creative about what you’re spying. We also have sing-alongs, though neither of us remember the lyrics so we make most of them up. We play chicken with camels crossing the road, and of course we play personrockhousecamel, a game where you have to guess if an object in the distance is a person, rock, house, or camel. And then you cycle for an extraordinary distance before you can actually differentiate objects and find out if anyone won. In short we very quickly lost our minds. In a moment of pure vindictive boredom Soph posited that perhaps I was actually cycling alone and she was just in my mind. Having seen pretty much no one else for days, this was more of a distinct possibility than I cared to admit, and left me distraught and pondering for hours if I was in some sort of solo desert Fight Club situation. I’ll break the suspense for you, I was not. Soph was in fact cycling by my side, but at least we had passed some time thinking about something other than the wind and my thirst.
And so each day went, sometimes finding the chaihanna on our list and celebrating with some plov (a fatty and fried rice dish that eventually grew on us and became a favourite), and sometimes finding only the skeletal remains of what was once a glorious haven from the wind, and now just made our mouths water. The latter discoveries led to finding creative wind shelters in abandoned cars and tires to cook some lunch so we could keep cycling despite feeling constantly like we were pedaling on the spot. At night we faced our biggest challenge of the day: finding somewhere to camp. And by biggest challenge I mean we looked at each other, decided if we would go left or right, and then pushed our bikes about 200m from the road and set up the tent. The joys of vast empty land is that pretty much every square inch can be your campground. As the sun set spectacularly and the wild horses came to see what was going on, we ate dinner and relaxed in our tiny shelter. The Stars came out every night in unfathomable numbers, filling the sky with constellation after constellation, galaxy after galaxy, and planet after planet. Though most nights I was asleep before I saw this happening, when I inevitably had to wiggle out of my sleeping bag to pee, the unreal giant sky above me made me smile and simultaneously feel small and insignificant, almost letting me forget that I was about to have to try to get back into my sleeping bag, a task which can definitely not be managed smoothly or gracefully, and then back to sleep, ready for another day in the desert.
