Upside-down weather world in Kazakhstan

With a newly repaired back wheel we could leave the capital of Kazakhstan, Astana.
The temperatures were agreeable with 23 degrees, also the sun rays, although it seemed more like a late summer’s day in Austria than a summer’s day in Kazakhstan. Well, we didn’t care too much about that as tailwind was blowing us forward, even at the many road works between Astana and Karagandy.

There it was that we found the only real toilet as we know it in the Western world, for the next about 600 km.
Just so you know, actual toilets are very rare in Kazakhstan, you’ll only find it in a hotel. Usually, at cafezis and gas stations there is only disgusting cottage with a filthy hole in the ground, sometimes even four in a row for better conversation. 😉

comfortably placed

In a bigger village named Oskarovka we asked at a school (or kindergarden?) if we could camp in the backyard – and were welcomed to do so. Unfortunately, there were many cars driving and dogs barking nearby until far after midnight which is why it wasn’t really a good night’s rest – in spite of earplugs.

The next morning the sky welcomed us in dark shades and already after a few kilometers it started raining heavily. Add the pretty rough head and side wind as well as the lots of road works and traffic and you can imagine how our bicycles and we looked like. 😉
Chilled trough we stopped at a cafezi for a little tea break. After we could cycle some dry kilometers, a thunderstorm was about to hit us. Luckily, there was another cafezi where we could watch the thunderstorm rather relaxed from the warm inside.

As the day had been quite long due to the mentioned settings, we arrived in Karagandy pretty late. And before we could search for an accomodation, another thunderstorm was arriving while we had to hide from it at a gas station. At that point even Stefan got quite mad about how the day went, Alexandra had lost her good temper a while before especially as her right knee was hurting badly.
When the rain stopped for a bit we quickly searched for a hotel and stayed at the first we found as it was starting to rain again. Although it didn’t have WiFi it was pretty nice there, dry for example. 😉

The next morning we left as the sky looked a bit better. But when we reached the city center it looked worse again and we searched for internet to have a look at the weather forecast. As it didn’t look good for that day, we decided to get a room at a different hotel in Karagandy and wait for better times…
Also it gave us time to wash our dirty bicycles!

just a little bit dirty after the rainy weather and the road works

shampooooo

and clean again – sparkling clean!