Winter was coming and with it came the first snow. So we left the Tamgaly Tas climbing area and moved to the city of Almaty.
After months of climbing, we started the city life and went to a regulars’ table of German immigrants (no photo) in a Paulaner restaurant and drank a lot of wheat beer.
Had a bonfire with friends.
And made new animal friends.
Did some hiking with our good friend Maria and her Kund (“Kind” (which means child) + “Hund” (which means dog) in the early winter weather.
After some days, we went back to Kyrgyzstan where we did a lot of beautiful winter hikes.
The weather was cold but beautiful!
And sometimes pretty white.
Our diesel heater stopped working from time to time and that really pissed me off. I guess in about three years of living in a car, I learned a lot. How to do things and how to deal with things. But still a not working diesel heater when temperatures went down to about -10 degrees Celsius was not easy to cope with. At some point I talked to Racki if it made still sense to live in Rosinante in winter. My mood went down a lot. We cleaned the heater, which is necessary from time to time, but it didn’t help.
Still I had to crouch under the car mostly every morning and sometimes during the day to somehow get the fuel line working again. It was not nice to handle the metal clamps of the fuel line with these temperatures, rearranging the fuel line because that somehow helped get the heater running again. And then doing the same the next day because it did not help for a long time. We thought about staying in a hostel but did not want to spend the money. We tried a lot to optimize everything.
At some point we took a big water bottle, filled it up from Rosinante’s auxiliary tank and had the heater suck the diesel from that bottle. This somehow worked better than having it pumping the diesel from Rosinante’s main tank. The diesel seemed to be liquid and in a good condition but still in the end, the final solution was pretty easy and obvious: the diesel got too viscous in the cold. After we put some anti gel additive in the tank, the heater was working very reliably.
I felt much better once we had solved that issue after two weeks of unrewarding trying and failing but still I felt very exhausted and stressed. It was a hard time for Racki and me because I did not feel much like talking a lot and felt kind of depressed. It felt like there was always a heavy weight on me and us. But we never fought or accused each other and so we managed to let go of the weight.
In a shop for handmade stuff we bought an original Kyrgyz carpet for a friend and I found this little fellow: Boris.
The glint wine season started.
In Karakul we had the service on our snowboards done to have them ready for ski touring once there would be enough snow. Our transportation method for our snowboards turned out to be pretty stupid. Back in Gudauri, we had put them into a strong plastic bag and had put them on Rosinante’s roof. The result of the weather, changing temperatures and humidity caused a lot of rust on the edges of them. But the friendly guys from a ski service did their best and a very good job. We bought some slides in a supermarket and had a lot of fun sliding down the slopes.
We managed to find a fast and satisfying routine for living in the cold temperatures in Rosinante and it felt better and everything started to feel more easy for me again.
Drying of washed clothes still worked.
On our winter hikes there was a lot to see.
And we had wonderful views around the Issyk Kul. One of the biggest lakes in the world.
On the way to Bishkek, we found these.
And because most of our hiking trail was covered with ice, we tried to slide down the trail while sitting on stones. I did not work that much.