We had the first cold nights and the days got colder as well in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Because it was too cold for rock climbing , we drove in the city and stayed most of the time at the parking lot of the Atakent Mall. Even now at the end of the travelers season, there were a lot of other campers 🌨️

Sarah and Wouter were there as well and together with the other campers we had a great party night with a lot of dancing 💃🕺

We went two times to an escape room in Almaty. From the website we were aware that these escape rooms would be more focused on horror than on puzzles but boy, we were surprised nevertheless! Before starting an escape room, we could choose a level of horror and physical contact. For the first room, we picked full contact, maximum level. Oh ha! The escape room was more of a hall with several rooms. It was dark and often pitch black. We did puzzles but the most impressive were the actors who were chasing us in horror outfits equipped with tasers and real chainsaws! The chainsaws were missing the sharp chains but still they did not miss their intention. The tasers were real tasers. I had burn marks for several days. The actors pushed us on the floor, dragged us around , and grabbed our legs when we were solving puzzles. And there were explosions, loud, disturbing horror noises! Although we needed some help with the descriptions in Russian, we had an crazy and exciting experience 🧟‍♂️

Racki saw a pet sitting request in one of the climbing groups for Almaty on telegram. The contact to the pet owners was super nice from the get go and after just a few messages with them everything was set. The woman was already out of town but her husband was still in Almaty. We met with him to get to know Sam (a big, powerful and lovely dog) and Furry (a very fluffy, beautiful and agile cat). The communication was a bit handicapped because Nikita could not speak English and we no Russian but Google Translate helped us out 🥰

Lovely brothers 🤗

Racki learned the Russian commands for Sam 🐕

And I put this cute automatic brain translator hat on Furry. It worked sometimes a bit 🤣

Furry loved taking a wall, climbing trees. A real climber 💪

Interesting sleeping posture for such a big dog 😅

Very furry 😁

I practiced playing guitar and we liked our apartment life with our two pet friends 🎸

After more then two years we had to say goodbye to our water kefir Isarne-Schlippky. We did our best, but the car life, especially in winter, suited it not very well ⚰️

We cleaned Rosinante and prepared her for the four month stay in Almaty without us 🧹

And we got Rosinante another rust treatment because the rust guy did not do a good job treating the parts of her frame where she touched the car lift 🙃

Sam was ill and had to get antibiotics. But not as pills but with an injection. It was not so easy because he had to get three injections! On the third day he really hated it and when he saw Racki putting on the plastic gloves and preparing the injections he got very sad. When trying to give him the injections, he snapped at us and we had trouble holding him. 35kg of a powerful dog can get pretty strong. And we felt the stress for him got a whole lot. So a friend of Sam came by and together we managed to continue the injections 🥳

The brothers were so funny. Especially when they were playing together 🥰

One day, we did a hike to the Big Almaty Lake. It was beautiful and Sam had a lot of fun playing in the snow ❄️

The lake was a famous attraction for locals and tourists but in the middle of the week there were only a few other hikers. Here is our track on Komoot 🚶🚶‍♀️🚶🏼‍♀️🐕‍🦺

We had an awesome barbeque with our friend Gleb and his girlfriend and mother 🎊

And then it was time to park Rosinante for the winter 👋

And start our trip to Malaysia and Thailand with backpacks, tent and climbing gear 🚀

After some more days, we met again with our friends, who we got to know in Tajikistan, for the Travel Fest. The location was directly at the lake, the weather was perfect and there was a lot going on 🥳

Most of the visitors camped in the festival area in cars or tents and they did a lot of motor sport. First came the motocross and after that the quads 🎉

And then the jeeps 🚀

They had good strategies to cool their cars during the race 💦

And in the last race, the obstacles got ridiculous! Before the race we and all the visitors and racers investigated the jumps and the big pits. We were wondering how they would approach them in the race 🤔 Turned out that some would just go with full force 🚀

And took the hard landing 😶

Got stuck 🙃

And broke down on top of the other side. But after twenty minutes or so the car was running again 😄

In the process some got pushed into the pit by cars (at the top left of the photo) 🤣

And others winched themselves out pretty good and fast 🚀

Where as others stayed in the pit until the end of the race and had to get recovered 🐢

We played beach volleyball, were swimming in the lake and had a good time with our neighbors 🌞 Although the four of us were the only visitors from Europe/ western countries. During the day there were a lot of games going on and we had a lot of fries 😁

Every evening the music started and we had good parties 🎶

With a lot of dancing under the moon on the beach 💃🕺

And after three days the crazy off-road festival was over and we were very happy to have been there 🎊

After the festival we stayed a bit more at the lake and chilled with bonfires…

… and stick bread 😋

One day, the garbage truck which collected the trash from the festival got stuck on the sandy track near our camp spot. We tried to help them but with a truck like that it was pointless. The truck crew waited a long time, we gave them water and snacks but in the evening, they just left. I think the truck is still there 🙃

After the lake, Racki and I made use of the good weather and drove to the mountains of Karakol. At that point of the track, we turned around and took a camp spot nearby. As always it doesn’t look that wild in the photo but it was.  The rental and taxi Buchankas and old soviet jeeps were shaking like crazy going through there 😄

So we took the hike from our camp spot. On the way we came across very beautiful yurt camps 🎉

The hike was beautiful and very famous. We had never met as many hikers on a hike in central asia before 😁

The Ala Köl had a very nice color 🎉

And we had a good time hiking back to Rosinante and finishing this 27 km hike. See the whole tour in Komoot ⛰️

After the hike, we went back to the Issyk Kul to chill again 🌞

One day, we built ourselves a scale to check how many bags we would need to take our climbing equipment with us to Malaysia and Thailand from November to March 👍