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 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.