Trapped in assumptions and visiting magnificent rock formations in Kazakhstan on our way to Russia

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.