From the Issyk Kul, we went into the mountains and found the next nice camp spot. One day, a local came by with his horse and I tried it 🤠

The next local came with his motorbike, and I tried that as well 😁

The ordinary way to treat the trash: smaller or bigger holes that get filled up and closed when full. Sometimes extending the capacity by burning the trash 🔥

We met again with Merel and Leon and had a great time at a very small lake in the mountains ⛺

The view on a hike, we did together, was wonderful. Here is our tour on Komoot ⛰️

After a couple of days at the small lake, we split up and Racki and I went for a two day hike to another lake higher in the mountains 🚀

The hike was pretty exhausting for me and I felt kind of tensed but in the end our destination was very beautiful ❤️

We slept one night in our tiny one person tent. All alone at that beautiful spot 🥳

The next day, in the sun, the lake was even more beautiful ☀️

And we went back to Rosinante. Here are our tours on Komoot: to the lake, back to Rosinante 🚀

And in the next few days we made it to the climbing area south of Bishkek, where we have been some months ago 🎊

We met again with Merel and Leon and climbing together was awesome! And this time very special: Merel and Leon had both no experience with rock climbing. For Leon, who did a lot of free climbing while mountaineering, the rock climbing (even in his hiking boots) felt natural from the get go. No fear and very intuitive and free body movements. Merel got frightened a lot in the beginning but she lived through all the moments of fear, pressure, stress, and panic attacks. It was awesome to see someone experiencing all this and being happy to do so. We helped here by joining her on the wall etc. but she did the crazy emotional work. It was so impressive to see her process and experience that Racki and I often thought back to when climbing. This experience gave me a lot. From then on, I’m often thinking back to these days when facing a route or move that seems impossible to me. Refreshing these memories often helps me to geniue believe that everything might be possible, that I can just try regardless of doubts and fears! Thanks Merel 🤗

That was us on a nice and very funny movie night in the camper of our friends. And on another day, we did a 7a 📽️

After days of climbing, we went to Almaty (Kazakhstan). Our first mission was to extend the customs document for Rosinante because when we entered the customs union of Russia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, the customs officer gave us just about two months. I thought that it would be easy to extend it at the border crossing between Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, but it was not possible. The only option the border officers knew about was a border run to Uzbekistan which would have been a detour of about 1200km and two border crossings that potentially would have taken about twelve hours! We researched but didn’t find any info about extending the document in Almaty. We asked friends in Almaty and one said that there might be a possibility. So we went to Almaty and the next day we happily managed to start the extension process in a Kazakh customs department. It took us only a couple of hours and a lot of  conversations via Google Translate, but we did it! Rosinante was finally allowed to stay again for one year in the customs union 🥳

In Almaty we stayed mostly at the Atakent Mall. It’s a well known parking lot next to a small park 🅿️

We met old and new friends and had a look at their homes on wheels 😁

Some of them had lovely and sometimes pretty weird decorations.

And finally I bought a guitar. She was a portable headless guitar and because of her modern look, I named her Io. From there on I started practicing mostly every day. It was a rough start. The finger positioning, the strumming, … It was so hard. But I’m still playing and I love it.

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.