us backpackers… our last moment in urumqi…

After 2 weeks stucked here in Urumqi city, I finally got my Kazakhstan visa. It is time, to be back on the road again! After days and days staying here in a city, I finally can hit the road again, back to the place that I should be, the mountains! When i was in the embassy to pick up my visa, many curious kazakhs people came and tried to talk to me. I realized theyre not speaking chinese to me. I concentrated to listen to them and finally i got it… theyre speaking russian! Heck, i know nothing about the language, so i spent most of my free time learning russian on the internet. First i learned about the alphabets, and its Cyrillic… which consists of 33 letters, some borrowed from Greek n Hebrew. Gosh… gonna be a hard time learning russian, with my malay tounge. But i like the challenge :)

taking a rest between rides

I felt quite sad to leave this place, met so many travelers here. Met another Israeli traveler here, very friendly woman. She even invited me to cycle in Israel and she said could host me. I was tempted to show her my passport, that we cant enter Israel but… that might not be a very good idea. Hehe. Pascal is with me now, riding with me for some distance, before we separate on our own ways. Our first day of ride wasnt so pleasant. The first 20km was boring, took us quite a while to leave the city, then slowly, less and less vehicles along our way. The terrain was quite flat at first but it was mostly gravels. The second day, we started to climb, from 900m altitude to some 3000m altitude. Tough ride, we were climbing all the way. The locals here were so nice to us, provided us shelter. We havent camp so far, because the curious local people here wanted to host us. We didnt do much, probably some 50km daily now, since we were climbing all the way. And yes, the climb here is much tougher than our Cameron Highlands road. It was steep, riding at very high altitude, and the temperature?… It was 4 celcius at 1 time.

Stayed in a very warm Kazakh family today. We were riding through the mountains, tired of endless climb, and at some point, we found a Kazakh yurt. Went in search of water, they finally asked us if we wanna stay a night in their place. We agreed and they cook delicious food for us. It was a very nice experience living with this warm Kazakh family, the experience that i will only get when travel with bicycle. Im so glad im cycling, most of these experiences that i had, i can never get it if i book a travel tour and travel by group with other tourists. Me and Pascal spent most of our time playing with their 3 yrs old lovely but aggressvie kid. It is cold here at some 3000m altitude. We are expecting tough ride to the mountain pass tomorrow, getting ready for subzero temperature!!