We went to the Ala Archa National Park south of Bishkek to do some mountaineering. Our weather app (meteoblue, it’s the best one) was quite sure that it wouldn’t get colder than -15 but it got -25 degrees Celsius in the night. That was the coldest we had witnessed in Rosinante so far and Racki and I both agreed that it was our limit. The heater was running non stop on full power, we had to put all our additional thermal stuff like blankets in front of the rear hatch and the alcove and still it wouldn’t get warmer than 16 degrees inside. In the morning I started Rosinante to charge our living battery and after a long pre heating she started up without any problems.

I had not much sleep because I was worried that our heater would stop working again but in the morning we started an extraordinary tour!

Beautiful mountains.

In every direction.

This is one of my favorite photos of all time.

We went up to the summit Komsomolets on 4204 meters and the view was crazy. Here is our tour on Komoot with more photos etc.https://www.komoot.com/tour/1982168557?ref=atd

Back in Bishkek, we met a super nice Kyrgyz couple and their friend for dinner. We had first met them at the Issyk Kul and they had invited us to visit them. It was a very nice and interesting evening with plenty of food and a lot of stories.

It was Racki’s birthday, we went to an awesome Indian restaurant and I gifted her a self designed shirt.

After the city, we found a very nice camp spot up the mountain near the biggest ski resort around Bishkek and one of the biggest in the whole country.

While waiting for more snow, we had fun with our slides.

And then we had our first snowboard day! The pistes of the ski area were not well prepared and not so steep but still it was fun to ride again.

After the snowboard day, we wanted to go back to Almaty (in Kazakhstan) to spend Christmas with our friends there. But at the border the officers told us that we weren’t allowed to leave Kyrgyzstan because we over did our visa days! It turned out that the calculation of the visa days worked differently than what we did. As Germans we are allowed to stay 60 days in a period of 120 days without a visa. We thought that after one period of 120 days finished, a new one would start and that we would be allowed to stay another 60 days. But it was different. Every time you cross the border the officers check how many days of the last 120 you stayed on Kyrgyzstan. If these are more than 60, you over did your visa days. We could not pay a fee at the border but had to go back to Bishkek to get a police report and apply for a leave visa. That would take at least a week and we would not be able to celebrate Christmas with our friends. Racki and I were sad. Racki was more sad and I got frustrated again. To get the report from the police we had to go to a police station. The officers were all very friendly but still it was just shit. And expensive. We had to pay at a payment terminal in a supermarket and it took us an hour to figure out how we should do it. Some Kyrgyz people tried to help us but couldn’t do it as well. In the end a police officer came along and showed us what to do. Applying for the leave visa was pretty easy and quickly done online. But it was expensive as well. In the end this visa fuck up cost each of us about 180 Euros. A lot of money for us with the life we were living. For me it was about one fifth of the money I needed for a whole month. For Racki it was even more.

When we went to Bishkek a couple of weeks ago, I preordered a new laptop in a small gaming laptop shop. I was thinking if it would all work out. “German thoughts”… The guys there were super friendly and the price was better than in Germany. And for the preorder I got an discount. At the day after we had our visa disaster, they messaged me that I could pick up my new laptop. If we would have crossed the border as we had planned, we would have to ship the laptop to Almaty, so it was easier to pick it up. But I still would have preferred to spend Christmas with our friends.

After a period of feeling not good about life and the universe etc. I managed to get more positive again, to live with what was coming. On Christmas we went to the first Christmas Market in Bishkek. It was sponsored by Coca Cola and a bit different than the ones in Germany but still we enjoyed it a lot.

We got our leave visa and spent a wonderful New Year’s eve with our friends in Almaty.

And had a nice party in a small bar club as well!

The next days we spent doing some maintenance and improvements on Rosinante. We were sure that the brake pads of rear brake needed to be changed, but they did not. Another 120 Euros for basically nothing.

We improved the cables leading from the starter battery to our charging booster and did super good. Now with a sense line and bigger cables charging our 220 Ah Lithium battery was much better.

One day, we took the dog of friends for a nice walk on the snowy mountains.

And we had fun spending time doing city stuff with our friends. But our plans to stay in Almaty for longer changed when we found out that the method to calculate the visa days was the same as in Kyrgyzstan. We had to leave on January 10th.

After the visa days disaster in Kyrgyzstan, we checked again how the visa days in Kazakhstan were calculated. And it was the same as in Kyrgyzstan. The amount of days was different, which we of course already knew, but the calculation of the periods was the same. On one website of government there was the exact and right description: “in every period of 180 days you are allowed to stay 90 days”. The most important seems to be the “every” which describes what in German is called a “rolierend” way to calculate the visa days. We applied for a mountain tourism visa in Kyrgyzstan and luckily we got it. Without it, it would have become pretty expensive and complicated to stay in central Asia for the winter for us.

Back in Kyrgyzstan, we did our first ski/ snowboard tours. Racki had a split board and I went up with snowshoes and my snowboard on my back.

We had good fun and the scenery was super beautiful.

On the hunt for more snow we went up to the highest mountain areas of Kyrgyzstan south west of Bishkek on 2200 to 3200 meters. We got stuck in the snow while looking for a nice camp spot near snow covered hills that would allow ski touring.

We found a camp spot but did not check the weather forecast until it was dark only to find out that the forecast was -25 degrees Celsius. With what we had learned the last time, it went all pretty good. We did a nice ski tour but the snow was barely deep enough.

After the ski tour, we drove down a bit to have a warmer camp spot while new snow was about to come. After a few days we went up again and found a lot of snow.

We did another ski tour and this one was very exhausting because the snow was so light that I sunk in it even with my snowshoes. Sometimes waist deep.

But still it was a nice tour with the most snow we’ve had so far.

The main road was in very good condition. Even now in winter.

After the ski touring we went further south west to the Toktogul Reservoir. We had been there before in summer and it was very beautiful in winter as well. We took one of my favorite photos of all time at our beautiful camp spot.

And did some laundry and cleaning of Rosinante’s interior and tent fabric.

We went further south in the region west of Osh because the snow was still barely enough for ski touring and we preferred warmer conditions when ski touring would not be possible. Racki found nice hiking tours. On one we encountered this cute bridge.

Racki’s Slide broke on one of the slopes.

And we found more nice views.

This is the way most locals deal with the snow and wet. They have inner and outer shoes which can be easily separated.

This stuff, which friends gifted us in Almaty, helped a lot curing my throat pain.

We built a nice little website, one which Racki is offering talks and messaging with people who are feeling lonely: https://nicht-alleine.org

And of course we were playing our favorite board games. This round of Spirit Island was crazy but still we won!

We went again up a bit further. When preparing for ski touring with all the equipment it was pretty packed in Rosinante.

Here we had a ski in and ski out. It was a funny tour and we did snowboard down narrow hiking paths.

Our next camp spot already felt like spring.

Slipky (our water kefir) and our plant (called sibling) enjoyed the sun and warmth as much as we did.

And the snow seemed to already be vanishing.