Tag: photos

One day in crazy Delhi, India (March 2025)

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.

House and cat sitting while cleaning and maintaining Rosinante in Almaty Kazakhstan (March 20205)

We went back to Almaty (Kazakhstan) to take care of the house and cat of friends while they were in Germany for their holidays.
For us this was perfect to clean and maintain Rosinante’s camping cabin.
First of all we emptied the whole cabin and cleaned it a crazy lot. Some parts of the carpet we had to clean with bleach to remove moldy or strong dirt.
I was not a big fan of bleach but in the end, when living for so long in a small cabin, it is like a magical cleaner.
Again, we had a look at everything we had and sorted everything in a keep, maybe and a give away pile.
And we washed almost everything we had.
After the cleaning, we bought Rosinante a nice anti-rust treatment for most of the metal parts of the frame, rear bumper, wheel suspension etc.
This is her after cleaning .
And this with the new protection.
The guy who did it was a recommendation of the Startroopies (friends of ours) and we felt he did a good job for 400€.
After that we put everything back inside and it went very well. Letting go of some stuff absolutely helped. Especially because we wanted to keep the snowboards inside the driver’s cabin to protect them from the weather etc.
Our heating and air condition blower started to make disturbing noises and so we went to car city in Almaty to get a new one.
And the new and stronger coil springs for Rosinante’s rear suspension, which we had sent to a Kazakh friend, arrived and we mounted them by ourselves.
And the handling of Rosinante, which never had been bad, improved a lot.
After cleaning Rosinante, I had my teeth cleaned.
And Racki got some Hannibal Lector treatment.
This was the crazy cat we were sitting. She was super cute and very, very much attached to humans. Every morning at around 4 o’clock she came in our bed and woke us up by lying down around or on our heads. And if we ignored this, she started biting our feet until we fed her and let her out of the house.
One advantage of a house: an oven for casserole and french fries.
It was really nice to live in a house for these three weeks but living in Rosinante was always nicer.
The last day, we cleaned everything we used and when I was cleaning the shower bath, the holding for the shower gels fell off the wall and smashed the shower faucet.
I got pretty pissed. Especially because I knew our friends would come back the next day and I imagined that it would not be so nice to come home with a kid and having no shower or bath.
Because of the insurance, we did not try to repair it. In the end, we found a temporary solution in using a hose we were about to trash.
We did a very nice hike with Maria and her dog Vedinger.
The snow was pretty deep. Sometimes even waist deep and so we had to fight through it.
Vedinger had to fight as well but enjoyed it a lot.
And of course we went out with our friends.
One night we visited a “gay bar”. It was good fun.
And on one of our last nights in Almaty we had a proper farewell party.

Spring, hiking and climbing in lovely Armenia (April, May 2024)

After more than three months in the ski resort and  organizing a lot of stuff in Tbilisi, we made it back into Rosinante and the nature life and went to Armenia!
It was awesome to run around in T-shirts again and discover new places.
We found super nice camp spots.
And the scenery in Armenia was very diverse.
Like always we had different temporary dog friends. Some were more funny than others.
Waterfalls!
And more waterfalls!
These stones looked very exotic. They are called Symphony of Stones and I’d say they are one of the biggest tourist attractions in Armenia.
Most of the time we searched for our own hiking tours and found very nice ones.
On that river crossing, Racki and I tried different approaches. Both of us got wet feet. Who would have guessed?
This monastery in Tatev looked very nice. Next to the monastery we took one of the longest (distance between two pillars) cable cars in the world.
And the birds in that region were huge and majestic!
Here are the hikes we did on Komoot:
Angel Canyon
Wings For Life Run
Jermuk Waterfall
Shaki Waterfall and Zorats Karer (ancient tomb memorial) unexpected hiking tour, Tatev monastery, Devil’s bridge, Hermitage, Wings of Tatev (cable car)
Azat valley, Symphony of stones and Geghard monastery
Parz Lake round Short hike down to the river (Lastiver)
And we went back into the climbing life! It was awesome! After a couple of days we were fit again and did weeks of climbing!
This was my favorite route. 38m long and 6b grade. It was awesome. But before it was awesome, it was a frustrating experience for me.
During that time my grandfather died in Germany and that was another special experience for me. He was quite old and had his illnesses and so it was no surprise but still it caught me. Mostly it remembered me at the time when my parents and other grandparents died and this kicked me really out of balance. I got kind of stressed, partly pissed and it was not the easiest time for Racki and me. I guess I could not really communicate my imbalance or did not understand what was going on with me which made me kind of pull back which maybe confused Racki who always loves to do something together. But in the end I mostly found my balance again and we got relaxed again.
In Armenia we met so many lovely people! It was unbelievable. Even compared with other regions of great hospitality this was so amazing. This guy (a natural reserve ranger) let us stay in the reserve area, explained a lot of interesting stuff to us and gifted us a lot of grilled lamb. Which I ate because I’m not as strictly vegetarian as Racki.
These guys took us with them to a hot spring bath and we had a good time together. And there were a lot more of these lovely Armenian people.
Our diesel heater showed some malfunction and to be able to maintain and repair it without putting the cabin off our pickup we realized one of my dream improvements for Rosinante: we installed the heater from the inside. In Yerevan these nice guys laser cut a custom stainless steel plate for us and in the end they wanted no payment at all.
This is the custom cut plate. In Germany we maybe could have ordered one online but in countries like Armenia this is not so easy or even impossible. The tasks of the car life.
The sexy pig-batman-ass hole in which we fit the heater.
We cleaned the heater and afterwards it worked flawlessly again. I’d say it’s normal that diesel heaters get dirty when one uses them a lot and so I thought about it since I started living in a car. In the end it was not difficult to dismantle, clean it and put it back together. The needed spare parts we had with us. And so we learned to handle one of the big car life topics.
Some classic site seeing in Yerevan.
We did none of the famous volcano off-road tours because the weather was too cloudy and there was still too much snow on the volcanos.
But still we did some off-roading to explore nice places.
And some more tricky off-roading.
And nice roads. And in the end when crossing the border back to Georgia we normally would have had to pay 90€ driving penalties but the officials decided to let us leave without paying.