Tag: Kazakhstan

Rock sport climbing and living in Baling, Lubuk Pedati, Malaysia (January 2026)

We went to Baling to try the next climbing area called Lubuk Pedati (see it on thecrag.com). After one night at the official camp spot right next to the noisy small road, we moved our tent to the other side of the river, directly in front of the climbing crag. It was a beautiful place and our only neighbor was happy with us camping there.
The bridge connecting both sides of the river was broken but the locals already started repairing it. Crossing the river by foot was possible through the waist deep water.
The routes were very awesome! Especially the trees growing next to the crag and connecting to the rock looked fantastic. We did a lot of 3D climbing and even encountered a hornet that did bite Racki before we moved it away from the climbing route. The weather was super nice. No rain at all.
One day, we did a small hike and visited some of the caves.
Beautiful stones.
And alien artifacts.
And we met this huge tree. Racki is standing beside it to indicate its hugeness.
One of the fattest lianes we had met so far.
During our time in Baling, I got pretty ill and could not climb for more than a week. So we moved from our tent to a bungalow.
And we found the cheapest accommodation for about 11 Euro per night.
The protection foil has to stay, of course 😁
The locals were friendly and interested as always. Here Racki is playing Badminton with local girls 🤗
Every evening we went to one of the cheap authentic restaurants and for some meeting western tourists was quite a highlight. So there were a lot of selfies and Instagram videos. This family was especially super nice. They even invited us to our last dinner before we left Baling again.

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 🎉