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.

In March 2025, the travel route we had in mind was: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal. And after that destination unknown. We organized everything. The Carnet de Passage (special customs document for our car which is necessary to enter certain countries with an own car) and the visa. We tried to get a visa for India in Kyrgyzstan, but it was not possible. The only options left were: going to Germany and applying there in an Indian embassy or applying for an evisa online and flying to India to get the visa stamped in our passports.

Because getting the evisa stamped in our passports was not possible on the land borders and Rosinante was not used to flying, we decided to take the cheapest flight to Delhi and back to Almaty, Kazakhstan. Our ecological hearts were bleeding but we did not see another option. Later we found out , that it’s most likely possible to get an Indian visa in Tajikistan… No matter what, we made the best out of it and took a flight in the morning/ night of my birthday from Almaty to Delhi. We were tired and so we took a taxi to a park that looked nice on Google Maps. The rollercoaster/ taxi ride was a good introduction to the traffic in Delhi. WTF. We had a lot of experience with traffic in a lot of different countries and I’d say we are pretty fast and active drivers who make use of mostly everything that’s allowed or tolerated in the traffic. But this was different, special, fast and tight. Often only a few centimeters were left between the cars, trucks, busses, tuktuks, people, cows, walls etc.

The park was a good place to ease our tired minds. There, a lot of people did yoga, meditated and practiced breathing techniques. To me it felt nice that these practices were so much a part of the daily life of the Indians.

After breakfast, we did some sight seeing and I absolutely liked the style of the historical buildings.

The next method of transportation, we tried, was a tuk tuk. We got an electric one and had the most relaxed driver. After the taxi ride, that experience was very different. Less pushing. But of course vehicles, animals and humans were everywhere.

We got pretty tired and took a nap on a meadow near one of the historical buildings.

Everybody was super friendly and lovely. Several Indian groups wanted to take a selfie with us which we always find funny.

A nice home for one of the stray dogs.

One of the many tourist bazaars.

An ordinary shopping area in the old town.

Infinite small shops.

We liked the monkeys and the cows a lot.

Packed, tight corridors.

And sideways.

We decided to take a rigsha. Before we started, we showed the driver where we wanted to go because we were wondering if it wouldn’t be too far. About seven kilometers. He was fine with that.

In the car free area of old town, he pushed our rigsha through the tiniest free spots. After some kilometers he got exhausted and driving on the bigger streets of Delhi, with big trucks and busses, felt more and more adventurous. Sometimes he spoke to other locals, told them where he was going and they showed him pretty much respect for his mission. We asked if we should switch to a taxi, but he wanted to get going. In the end, we made it, our driver was happy and I felt that he was kind of proud.

In a small Buddhist temple, I did a meditation and Racki relaxed a bit. After that we had dinner and took the metro to the airport.

Goodbye Delhi after 15 hours to get our visa stamped in our passports. It was a crazy short visit, but an interesting one as well.

Back in the airport of Almaty, Racki got a super discount on Baileys (her favorite drink). A successful end of our trip.