Category: overlanding

Sitting our new pet friends, city life and winter hiking in Almaty, Kazakhstan (November 2025)

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 🚀

Rock climbing with friends and puppies and Io in Tamgaly Tas (September, October 2025)

After a couple of days in Almaty, we went to Tamgaly Tas, our favorite rock climbing area in Central Asia.
In the end, we stayed there about two months.
Our friends Merely and Leon joined us for a week and we did a lot of climbing together  🚀
Leon was not able to find climbing shoes in his size. Size 46 is not so Common in Central Asia.
After some routes in his hiking boots, we thought that maybe climbing barefoot is an option and so we tried it.
And I have to say, it works a lot better than I would have thought.
Leon did really well and climbed a 6c in top rope barefoot ✨
And Merel continued her climbing journey and developed natural movements and a mostly calm mind while climbing.
Just minor panic attacks from time to time. The salt in the soup 😁
Before Leon and Merely continued their journey, we gifted them a sticker and we are looking forward to see them again 🤗
The weather was mostly very good. Only some days the wind got pretty nasty and a few times we had small sand storms 🌬️
We moved into our camp spot that we used the year before for so long. Home sweet home 🏡
And then we met again with Sarah, Maria, Luci, Wouter and Vedinger 🥳
We had a proper camp and such a nice climbing life. Everyday something was going on ⛺
And every evening, we had dinner together, hang around or played some cards and had a good time 🎉
One day, we helped locals to change their flat tyre. They only had that tiny car jack which was not capable of lifting their off road car. They wanted to gift us this tiny jack as reward for helping them 😄
We had a great time together and sometimes even did small operations 🙃
And of course we did a lot of climbing. Sarah and Wouter bought themselves their own shoes, harnesses and helmets and got all into climbing. They learned a whole lot. Sarah did her first leading routes and on one of the last climbing days, Racki and I did another 7a route. Wouter gifted me his almost new climbing shoes because they were too tight for him and we gifted them Rackis old rope 🎊
And Sarah took some nice photos of Racki playing with the puppy stray dogs 🐕
They were absolutely cute 🥰
And me learning to play my guitar called Io 🎸
It was a crazy difficult process but I managed more and to let it sound like a guitar 😁
I was very happy with this move. The beginning looks not that hard on the video, but for me it was the first time to build up the tension like that 🎉

Hikes and special rock climbing with friends in Kyrgyzstan and Io (August, September 2025)

From the Issyk Kul, we went into the mountains and found the next nice camp spot.
One day, a local came by with his horse and I tried it 🤠
The next local came with his motorbike, and I tried that as well 😁
The ordinary way to treat the trash: smaller or bigger holes that get filled up and closed when full. Sometimes extending the capacity by burning the trash 🔥
We met again with Merel and Leon and had a great time at a very small lake in the mountains ⛺
The view on a hike, we did together, was wonderful. Here is our tour on Komoot ⛰️
After a couple of days at the small lake, we split up and Racki and I went for a two day hike to another lake higher in the mountains 🚀
The hike was pretty exhausting for me and I felt kind of tensed but in the end our destination was very beautiful ❤️
We slept one night in our tiny one person tent. All alone at that beautiful spot 🥳
The next day, in the sun, the lake was even more beautiful ☀️
And we went back to Rosinante. Here are our tours on Komoot: to the lake, back to Rosinante 🚀
And in the next few days we made it to the climbing area south of Bishkek, where we have been some months ago 🎊
We met again with Merel and Leon and climbing together was awesome! And this time very special: Merel and Leon had both no experience with rock climbing. For Leon, who did a lot of free climbing while mountaineering, the rock climbing (even in his hiking boots) felt natural from the get go. No fear and very intuitive and free body movements.
Merel got frightened a lot in the beginning but she lived through all the moments of fear, pressure, stress, and panic attacks. It was awesome to see someone experiencing all this and being happy to do so. We helped here by joining her on the wall etc. but she did the crazy emotional work.
It was so impressive to see her process and experience that Racki and I often thought back to when climbing. This experience gave me a lot.
From then on, I’m often thinking back to these days when facing a route or move that seems impossible to me. Refreshing these memories often helps me to geniue believe that everything might be possible, that I can just try regardless of doubts and fears! Thanks Merel 🤗
That was us on a nice and very funny movie night in the camper of our friends. And on another day, we did a 7a 📽️
After days of climbing, we went to Almaty (Kazakhstan).
Our first mission was to extend the customs document for Rosinante because when we entered the customs union of Russia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, the customs officer gave us just about two months. I thought that it would be easy to extend it at the border crossing between Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, but it was not possible. The only option the border officers knew about was a border run to Uzbekistan which would have been a detour of about 1200km and two border crossings that potentially would have taken about twelve hours!
We researched but didn’t find any info about extending the document in Almaty. We asked friends in Almaty and one said that there might be a possibility. So we went to Almaty and the next day we happily managed to start the extension process in a Kazakh customs department. It took us only a couple of hours and a lot of  conversations via Google Translate, but we did it!
Rosinante was finally allowed to stay again for one year in the customs union 🥳
In Almaty we stayed mostly at the Atakent Mall. It’s a well known parking lot next to a small park 🅿️
We met old and new friends and had a look at their homes on wheels 😁
Some of them had lovely and sometimes pretty weird decorations.
And finally I bought a guitar. She was a portable headless guitar and because of her modern look, I named her Io. From there on I started practicing mostly every day. It was a rough start.
The finger positioning, the strumming, … It was so hard. But I’m still playing and I love it.