After preparing Rosinante, getting our Russian transit visa, and choosing an agency for our stays in China, and all the activities in Almaty and Tamgaly Tas, it was time to continue our journey.

Our plan was: nine days of transit through Russia (with lots of climbing) to Mongolia, two months in Mongolia (mostly driving bad roads), two month China (climbing and sightseeing), three months in Laos and Cambodia (climbing and sightseeing), two more months in China (climbing, snowboarding and sightseeing) in which we would drive back to Kazakhstan.

Just a few days before leaving, another overlander with a Hilux and I had a look under the hood of Rosinante. He noticed a leak at our intercooler. And when I checked the cooling liquid, the level was pretty low, but not too low. I did never see it like that when Rosinante was cold. I didn’t panic, but it didn’t feel so good because we were about to leave and continue driving a lot.

So I cleaned the area around the leak, put a marker to see if Rosinante was loosing cooling liquid. We bought a big bottle of compatible cooling liquid to be able to refill more than our spare bottle could handle, if it would be necessary.

On our way out of Almaty, we went to a mechanic who we got recommended by Kasia and Michael. That mechanic was supposed to help us getting a technical certificate for Rosinante which confirms that she is running well etc. It was a mandatory document for the Chinese car documents…

We had the document already prepared and had arranged everything with the mechanic via WhatsApp. When we reached the garage, I thought our friends were kidding. We already have seen a lot but this garage looked just like a scrapyard. A lot of garages we got to know on our travels looked like a scrapyard, but this one just looked absolutely fucked. After searching for some minutes, we found one guy sleeping in a container who did not understand us and couldn’t deal with Google Translate. After searching some more, we found the mechanic. And we found the actual garage behind all the scrap, mud, wreckages. The mechanic guy was very friendly and gave us a tour. And it turned out that this garage was one of the most elaborated we’ve seen in the stan countries so far.

They had all kind of high level machines, were 3d measuring cars and parts, had laser cutters for metal constructions and were doing all kind of things.

And after giving us his stamp on our document for the China trip, I showed him the leak in Rosinante’s cooler and he just said that he was absolutely sure that there was no liquid flowing through that part of the cooler. The moisty stuff that had accumulated around the “leak” was most likely just some water that got under the hood, mixed itself with dirt and some oily liquid.

For me, this was another example for what is just happening a lot while overlanding: you think you know something and it turns out to be different. Somebody else thinks he knows something and it turns out to be different. And even after all this years of traveling and all the assumptions that turn out to be wrong, I still get trapped by them.

We continued our travels, but wait, what were these boards next to the highway in Kazakhstan about? Recycling? …

… No littering?! Were we still in Kazakhstan? Normally, here the only one caring about stuff like that was the wind. …

Safety? This couldn’t be Kazakhstan!

But it was. And we found our first real overlanding camp spot on our way to the north east of Kazakhstan. It was awesome!

The overlanding travels had us back and we were driving a lot to make it to the north east of Kazakhstan.

Eventually we arrived at the Lake Marakol. But it was very different than what we knew from the stan countries: we were not allowed to drive to the shore of the lake because of the breeding season and there were hardly any nice camp spots away from the shore. But in the end, we found a nice place.

It was a beautiful lake for sure.

But having a really nice view was only possible to hike and fight our way through a lot of bushes. See our hike on komoot.

We liked it: back in the stans, hiking, nature… beautiful. But I personally would not recommend Marakol Lake. There are so many lakes that are more beautiful, easier to reach, with a lot of camp spots.

From the lake, we went into the steppe and found this place!

Astonishing!

Such nice formations!

And the colors!

We loved the all the details.

And parked right next to the rocks.

And the sunsets were so beautiful as well!

And there were stars all over the sky!

We continued …

… to more rocks in the steppe.

Nice colors.

Next to the big Lake Zaysan.

Unfortunately thousands of grass hoppers lost their lives in Rosinante’s wheels.

Another beautiful camp spot with a very good internet connection for Racki to work online.

And this was our last camp spot before entering Russia. It was beautiful and close to the border.

And of course I was practicing playing the guitar almost every day.

We entered Tajikistan for the second time after we did the Pamir Highway in summer 2024 and found a camp spot at a lake in the first bigger town after the border to Uzbekistan. Soon three kids joint us. Because of the language barrier, we exchanged only some basic communication. We played on my cajon and soon some more children joint us. So we had a whole gang around us. But it was fun. After the children a younger couple came around and after them came the police. The police officers were interested in Rosinante and our nomad life and the leader of the group could speak some German and gave us his phone number to call him if we need help or something else. So for us meeting the police was fun. For the younger couple who came along before it was not so much fun because they had to pay a fine for “romantic behavior in public”. Different cultures, different rules…

We went into the mountains and took a pretty high mountain pass to get into north/ central Tajikistan. Finding a camp spot was not so easy that time. It took us about two hours of searching. But in the process we got in contact with a lot of villagers and finally we found a spot with a nice view.

On our hike we found interesting alien plant.

And this crazy happy puppy who pissed herself so happy she was to see us. It was a really crazy and absolutely cute on. After following us for a while her parents persuaded her to join them again. It was pretty funny. Here you can see our hike on Komoot.

Our next destination was Dushanbe. It was a nice and slow paced city. We liked it. I think this photo looks like it could be from the 70s or 80s. Because of the old bus.

We did some sight seeing, went to a restaurant for dinner and enjoyed some city life stuff.

After trying two iOverlander camp spots, we found our own one. This one was pretty wired and located in a small area that got used for parking and dumping building materials and trash. But it was pretty green and mostly silent.

The traffic lights in Tajikistan make the impossible possible: green and red at the same time.

They seemed to like it.

Racki’s macrame skills reached a professional level and she got super fast and enjoyed it a lot.

I got my own custom made bracelet with alien eyes! And we started to give the locals bracelets as presents when we spent more time with them or they had gifted us something. They all loved the bracelets.

After climbing for a couple of days (you can read about it in this post), we found another nice spot at a river and went for a waterfall hike. We only took our “hiking flip flops” and soon our tour escalated into some climbing. Like always. I would always recommend to take proper shoes and hiking poles on every hike in the stan countries because you really never know what will happen.

The waterfall was amazing! We guessed it was about 60 meters high. Here is our tour on Komoot.

We continued our way on the ordinary Tajik roads.

And found a nice spot at a big reservoir and had some chilled days.

Soon we got two new dog friends. Racki played a lot with them and we cooked a big portion of rice with dog food for them because they looked quite hungry. They were barking all night but fortunately not right next to Rosinante but a couple of hundred meters away.

We continued our way and found a nice spot in the greens close to a small town. Soon everyone in the town seem to know that someone interesting had arrived and so we met a whole lot of locals. Especially the kids were very interested and sometimes just sit in front of us and examined what we were doing for hours. We played with the cajon, fixed a bike, and mostly had fun with them. Some of the locals spoke a bit of German and some a bit of English. Especially one young man impressed us: Abudakha. He had been learning English a lot and loved to talk and practice with us. We talked a lot about the differences of Tajik and German culture and life and learned a lot.

On May the 4th we did the Wings For Life Run. Last year, we did it in Armenia and this time we run through the hills and farming area of Tajikistan with our friend Abudakha.

Another evening Abudakha showed us the local museum and recreation site and explained a lot of the historical stuff there. After coming back home to Rosinante, I realized that my ear buds were missing. I searched everything more than once but could not find there. I got pissed and suspected the kids with whom we had spend some time before. The next day some of the kids came visiting us again but trying to ask them about the ear buds did not work. Later Abudakha came around and I asked him to ask the kids if they know who took the ear buds. They knew something and quickly went off. Half an hour later they came back with my ear buds. They had got them from two of the kids who had been around the day before. I was super happy that I got my ear buds back. Not only because I felt stupid that I had let some kids steal my stuff, but because getting these special ear buds in the stan countries would have been pretty much impossible.

We left Abudakha and the village and went to a place they had recommended us. It was a beautiful place!

The translation of its name was something like “40 girls” and witch that the absolutely beautiful stone formations are meant.

We took a nice hike around the main rocks and they were astonishing from all sites.

I’d say it was one of the most beautiful hikes. See it on Komoot.

And our camp spot was very nice as well. And as always the locals tried to go as far as they could with there cars, regardless the scratching, rubber and clutch smell. The situation at the border between India and Pakistan escalated and so we were stuck in the stans. Nobody was allowed to cross the border between Pakistan and India and there were fights going on in the border area. So we decided not to go to Afghanistan and then to Pakistan and India. After evaluating some options, we decided to stay in the stans for a couple of weeks and check how the border situation would develop.

So we went to visit the small town of Kulob. Again I liked the old stuff the most. Like this small fairy wheel.

And of course the president’s photos were everywhere. Most likely he is the politician I’d recognize the easiest.

On the way to Uzbekistan, we parked near some fields and a small canal. Everything was like always. Some locals passed by, we greeted each other, had a short talk etc. But later in the night, this changed. Around two in the morning someone was shaking Rosinante and started laughing. We woke up but thought that some kids were just pranking us. But a couple of minutes later, we got woken up by a loud smash and noise. We went outside with our head lights and checked the situation. We did not find anybody but we found our windshield smashed. It was not just a crack like from a small stone while driving. It was broken by a real heavy impact. And what is more, Rosinante’s hood was damaged as well. We were shocked and started searching for someone who did it further away from Rosinante, but we could not find anybody. We did not even find a stone or something that could have done that damage… So we decided to leave that place immediately because I could not have continued sleeping there and we did not want that who or whatever had damaged Rosinante, would damage her even more. And we were not feeling good about this situation. In over three years of traveling never something like that had happened. Not even something that came close. We were meeting barely unfriendly people not to say any hostile ones…

So we packed and went off to another place in the direction of Dushanbe because we could not think of another place nearby where we could get a new windshield. The next morning, we researched for a mechanic in Dushanbe on Google Maps and iOverlander. We found a promising one and started messaging on Whats App. He could speak German and English and so the communication was easy. We made an appointment for the next day. At our nice green camp spot in Dushanbe, we met nice and lovely family who gifted us food. Racki gave them some of her beautiful bracelets in return. Unfortunately I got a heavy diarrhea in the evening. Most of the night I spent shitting and in the morning, I even had to puke. I didn’t know what caused it, but I was pretty much fucked. But we needed to go to the mechanic because we had only two visa days left in Tajikistan and we did not know if the repair would run smoothly. And what is more the area where we wanted to go in Uzbekistan looked pretty rural on the maps and so there was very little hope to find a new windshield over there. At the mechanic I was barely surviving. But Racki talked to the mechanics and managed everything. They were super nice and we felt very good about what they would do. We briefly searched for the reason of a squeaking noise we had in the front of Rosinante, but I felt to tired and weak to investigate it thoroughly. And so we left into the direction of Uzbekistan once the windshield got repaired.